“Oh!” Haddie replied. “That is really nice of you. Thank you.” Then she hesitated for a second. “But maybe next time, not so much tough love?”
Hope shrugged. “He shared, though, didn’t he?”
The woman wasn’t wrong. Haddie learned more about Levi in the past ten minutes than she had in the past two weeks.
“Right,” Haddie admitted. “Again…thanks.”
In that moment, Haddie realized that Hope wasn’t only nice but also really pretty. And even though she knew, logically, that Hope could orshouldonly have a professional interest in Levi, she was shocked by a wave of jealousy at the possibility of her interest being otherwise.
Which was ridiculous, of course. Because Haddie and Levi were friends.Onlyfriends. Although they’d been attracted to each other that night in the hotel, they’d both agreed nothing like should ever happen again between them. Yet it somehow only occurred to Haddienowthat eventually—likely sooner rather than later—Leviwould be attracted to someone else. The thought dropped like a stone in her gut, and she did not like the feeling.
“You’re welcome,” Hope replied, jolting Haddie back to the moment. She let go of Haddie’s wrist, freeing her to run after Levi and say…what? She’d simply have to figure it out when she got there.
Grateful she was dressed for a run, she jogged up the stairs and out the door, ready to break into a sprint but instead having to pull the brakes the second she reached the bottom of the town hall steps, lest she plow face-first into what she knew was a solid wall of muscle.Levimuscle.
She pinwheeled her arms, trying to keep from pitching forward, when he caught her by both wrists.
“Whoa,” he said softly, his big hands absorbing her body’s momentum and sending a shock of electricity straight to her toes.
She wriggled free as soon as she found her footing, and Levi took a step back, palms up in surrender.
“Sorry,” he added. “Was just trying to help.”
Haddie threw her arms in the air. “What kind of a person makes a dramatic exit like that only to—I don’t know—stop and take in the sights?”
Why was she angry? Or was she exasperated?Frustrated?Whatwasshe?
Instead of answering her with words, he nodded toward something above Haddie’s head, so she turned around to see whatever it was he was seeing.
“Oh,” she said softly, glancing up at the town hall’s paintedpillars. Its yellow-and-black candy-cane-stripedpillars to be exact, the tops punctuated by overlapping hubcaps painted pink, yellow, and orange to look like the wispy foliage of the trees from Dr. Seuss’sThe Lorax, though Haddie always thought they looked more like troll doll hair. “I was here last summer when those popped up. I kind of forget they’re new for some people.”
Levi crossed his arms and kept his gaze trained on the art installation Mayor Green had once called vandalism. Now he called it what it really was—a lucrative tourist attraction, thanks to the still-unnamed artist everyone knew only as the Gardener.
“I thought I was going to be late this morning, so I just kind of rushed inside without taking the time to let it sink in. Is it true no one knows who it really is? I mean, no one believes it was Old Man Wilton, right?” he asked, referring to the mayor’s insistence that the so-called vandal come forward after he and the Gardener struck a deal via social media. The old farmer stepped forward claiming it was him, but all someone had to do was look to the top of the town hall columns to know there was zero chance the man had climbed so far as the building’s roof to finish the job.
Haddie squinted, the fiery eye of the sun making the colors dance in her vision.
“It’s like walking around in a—”
“Tim Burton movie,” Levi interrupted.
Haddie gave him an approving grin. “And here I thought all you knew was Pixar.”
This earned her a laugh. “Hey. Don’t knock where yournamesake comes from, Dash.”
The nickname he’d used as an accusation the morning after their meeting now felt like a cozy, warm hug even though Haddie was so not a hugger.
“I’m sorry about what happened in there,” she told him, nodding toward the building. “And I’m sorry about your mom.”
“I’m sorry about your grandma,” he countered, but she waved him off.
“I’m out here to check onyou,” she told him.
Levi blew out a breath. “It was more than a decade ago. I should be over it by now, right?”
Haddie shook her head, and without thinking about what she was doing—because apparently she just acted these days and threw thinking out the window—she pressed a palm to the left side of his chest.
Levi’s eyes grew wide as he glanced down at her hand where she could feel his heart thump faster against her palm.
