We tried again. This time, he moved right, and I went left, and we did it again. After bumping our carts twice, we both stopped and laughed. He ran his fingers through his perfectly coiffed hair, and I wondered what it would feel like if it were my fingers running through it.Stop it!a voice chastised.
“I’m sorry.” His laugh sounded almost nervous.Yeah, right! Like I could make a guy like that nervous.“I’m Ash. Asher,” he introduced himself, side-stepping his almost empty cart to extend his hand.
“Ember,” I answered, and for some reason, I took his hand. Heat with a touch of an electric zip tingled as our palms met.
“Nice to meet you, Ember. Maybe we’ll bump into each other again.”
I opened my mouth to say it would be highly unlikely since I was going to hunker down until the new year but shut it. He didn’t know it. The chances of ever seeing him or a man like him who elicited such an instant visceral physical reaction was slim to none. I pulled my hand back.
“Maybe,” I mumbled.Invite him over!I could hear Rosie’s voice in my head, but there was no way I would do that. He could be a serial killer or cheater for all I knew. I sure as hell wasn’t going to invite him over to a cabin I’d rented. That’s how you ended up onDateline.
“I should get my shopping done. Snow looks bad.”
“Right, shit, right.” He moved, and this time, I passed his cart as he waved. “Nice to meet you, Ember.” I smiled and waved back.
He was very nice to look at. Maybe if I weren’t so burnt out from work and, well, life, because it felt like all I did was work, I might have given him my number.
But I didn’t.
I also didn’t see him again at the store. Not even a glimpse while I was in line at the front of the store before I checked out. Something I might have regretted by the time I was loading bags into my car before shaking the thought away and heading to my little getaway in the woods.
4.Ember
“Wait, wait, wait! What do you mean, he was hot,” Rosie asked over the phone.
“You know, hot. He was all tall, with dark hair and a little bit of a mysterious but bossy vibe to him.” I winced. I knew I’d given too much away.
“Mysterious but bossy?” Rosie questioned. I could imagine her green eyes flaring to life.
“Yeah.” I shrugged pointlessly. It wasn’t like she could see me. “Like he wouldn’t be afraid to tell you how and where, if you know what I mean.” We laughed even though the connection kept crackling between us. Being on different continents would do that normally, but with the storm about to hit, I had a feeling it would only get worse.
“Age?” she asked, and I stopped. My hand on the neck of the wine bottle in my hand I had just started to take out of the bag as I thought about Asher.
Asher. Even his name fit him.
“I’d guess older than us,” I muttered. “He was in seriously great shape,” I added, thinking about his broad shoulders and the way his chest seemed to look bigger than life as I’d stood in front of him, the white dress shirt slightly wrinkled yet somehowstretched far to fit the wide expanse of the slab of muscle I was almost positive lay beneath. “Dressed like he worked with you on a Ralph Lauren shoot. But with a little gray at his temples of his brown hair.” I kept working on the groceries.
“Gray at his temples, huh?”
“Mhm.” I held a can of whipped cream. “And on the scruff of his jaw,” I mentioned, unable to hold back the wistfulness in my voice as I spoke to Rosie, almost done with the groceries. She’d called to check in just as I’d walked in, and we’d stayed on the phone as I got settled and put everything away.
“It sounds like you noticed a lot about him.” I knew that tone. I wasn’t stupid.
“Rosie,” I groaned. “It wasn’t like that. It was just a cute… coincidence. We like the same cookies.”
“Same gross cookies,” she mumbled, and my lips twitched. “All I am saying is, I know you, Em. You hardly notice anything about anyone, unless you’re working.”
“It’s my job to notice things when I’m at work,” I argued, not touching the other thing she had said because she wasn’t wrong. “If I don’t notice things at work, people could die.”
“I know that but…” She sighed, and I could tell by her tone that she was more than likely grinning from ear to ear. “And you didn’t get his number? Or a last name?”
“What would I want a last name for?”
“Uh, hello! That way, we could look him up on social media.” I rolled my eyes. Rosie could give the FBI a lesson or two on finding stuff out online.
“I doubt I’ll have reception or Wi-Fi for that within the next hour,” I joked. “Plus, it wasn’t even like that. We just met in passing. He probably has a wife and a house full of kids,” I mumbled. I wasn’t sure why, but the thought of Asher with someone made something in my stomach dip. And not in a good way.
“You said he wasn’t wearing a ring,” She pointed out.
