It took me an hour of searching the wood out back, while on the verge of a heart attack, to find her. Thank God she’d bumped into a guy walking his dog and stopped to play with them or she might have kept going. I wonder if it’s why her previous owners gave her up—she was too much of a free spirit for them.
My latest snowball crashes to the ground and disintegrates. And there Elsa goes again, digging and wagging. There has never been a brighter light in my life.
While most of me is glad I moved away from Owen in the nick of time, a small part wonders if it would really have been so terrible to kiss a man who makes my body react in a way it’s never reacted before. Even when I was madly in love with Alastair, he didn’t make my belly flip the way Owen has since the moment I opened the door and saw him standing there.
Why did he have to get lost outside my door and cause all this confusion? My life was perfect and simple before that.
I scoop up more snow and pack it into a hard ball as Elsa runs up to me, ears pricked, eyes bright, and pink tongue on full display, eager for another round.
“Last one.”
As the sun sets behind the trees, I hurl the snowball across the yard.
Elsa zooms after it.
Would it be ridiculous to think that since I’ve made it to my mid-twenties without ever having a one-night stand, it might be time to give it a whirl? Probably.
Elsa barks at the ground, where the snowball shattered into a thousand pieces.
After a year and a half on my own, I’m not immune to the charms of a handsome man. And he’s a lot less annoying than he seemed when he was frustrated and lost last night. I mean, he can’t be all bad if he makes banana bread and hugs me when I’m upset about my parents.
Maybe kissing him wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Kissing the stranger who knocked at my door one winter would definitely be the wildest memory I’d ever had.
Actually, now I come to think about it, it might even be the best of all worlds—hot kisses with a hot guy, but the hot guy leaves, and then I get my blissful solitude back. I mean, that sounds like a win-win, right?
Elsa rushes back, hopeful for another snowball.
“Nope, that’s it. Time to go in.”
As I turn back to the house, Owen’s face disappears from the kitchen window.
Inside the back door, I make Elsa wait on the mat while I peel off my layers of outdoor clothing.
“Looked like a good game,” Owen says from the kitchen.
“It’s her favorite.” I kneel to remove Elsa’s coat and boots. “We play out there every day before dinner.”
As I grab Elsa’s towel, my gaze drifts to Owen, standing with his hands in his pockets, smiling at us, dimple at the ready.
I can’t help but smile back. “You should have joined us. It’s fun.”
He leans back against the counter and crosses one ankle over the other. “Oh, I don’t think I’d be very good at it.”
Elsa pushes her face into the towel as I rub off the snow.
“Or maybe you just don’t know how to have fun.”
He looks a little put out. “That’s not true. I have lots of fun.”
I point Elsa toward the living room. “All done.” She shakes and trots off toward the fire as I hang up the towel.
“And what do you have fun doing?” As I turn back to face him, his eyes shoot up from butt-level to my face. My insides do a little happy dance. He was totally checking out my ass. I’ll check out his biceps then. The plaid fabric of his shirt pulls tight around them as he folds his arms.
“Enlighten me,” I demand. “What fun things do you do?”
“Well, I…” He looks at the floor and runs his toe around the edge of a tile. “How old is this place?”
Drawn to him like a bee to nectar, I push my shoulders back and stride over. I rest a hand on the counter next to him, close enough that his body heat warms my fingers. “Oh, you don’t dodge the question that easily. Spill the beans, what’s fun for you?”
