It became somewhat harder to convince herself of that once she saw Garrett, even if he didn’t smile a bit. Instead, he just quirked an eyebrow in her direction when she entered.
It was, she reasoned, not her fault at all for finding him handsome. He was handsome, that much was objective. Even the whole growly, rugged man with a beard thing worked for him. It was all too easy to picture him chopping wood or hauling bales of hay, like somebody that would grace the cover of a frontier romance novel.
You read too many books, Eleanor Ridley, she told herself.
“Hi,” she said instead, forcing herself to banish the thoughts. “I got an email that my stuff got here?”
“Yeah, of course,” Garrett agreed, nodding in a way that was almost amiable. “I’ve got it in the back for you.”
“You know,” Eleanor said as she followed him through the store. She was babbling. Why was she babbling? She didn’t have a reason to benervousaround Garrett, even if hewashandsome. “I was impressed that you had an automated email thing set up. You don’t see that a lot for small shops.”
“What, because you think I’m too dumb to work a computer?” He tossed the words over his shoulder like a grenade. Eleanor gasped and backpedaled.
“No, no, of course not!” she exclaimed. “I meant… well, of course you can do it! That kind of thing is so easy these days. Not that you need it to beeasyto work it, obviously. I think you’re perfectly competent—oh my goodness, Garret Wilder, are youteasing me?”
He’d glanced over his shoulder at her about midway through her ranting explanation, and the gleam in his eye had made his intent unmistakable.
“Couldn’t help myself,” he said, humor in his voice. She wished he would turn around fully. Was he smiling? Surely it would be a nice smile. “After all, we were almost set to have a mishap-free encounter. Wouldn’t want to break our streak, would we?”
“You are incorrigible,” she told him… but she was laughing too.
Her purchases, the doors and the prized picture window, were bundled together, carefully wrapped in layers of protective packaging, her name written on the outside in careless block lettering. For some reason, the thought of Garrett scrawling ELEANOR made her blush like a schoolgirl.
“Amazing,” she said. “I’ll just?—”
She broke off as she tried and failed to lift the bundle.
When she looked over at Garrett, not a little embarrassed, he was once again looking amused. He wasn’tquitesmiling, but that little crooked half-smile did look rather appealing on him.
“Need some help?” he asked mildly.
She lifted her chin. “If you please,” she said primly.
Garrett, of course, made lifting the package look like child’s play, which didnotmake Eleanor wonder about how his muscles bunched and worked under his worn flannel shirt. Instead, she focused on making sure the route back to her car was clear for him, hurrying in front to open the door from the storage area, then out through the front of the store. She pressed her keys to open the trunk of her car and…
“Ohno,” she said, aghast. How had she not thought of this? All her planning and she’d not once thought of the transportation issue. “It’s not going to fit.”
Garrett grimaced, looking at the package, the car, and then back again, as if somehow this would cause the dimensions of one or the other to change.
“Nope,” he agreed. “Doesn’t look like it.”
Eleanor wanted to smack herself in the forehead. “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “I guess I’ll go rent a truck or something?” Did she even know where the closest rental place was? Having to drive there and then back here would cut into her day, and she’d really wanted to get this window in place today…
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Garrett said. “I’ll grab my truck and take it over.”
His gruffness belied the generosity of his offer so much so that, for a moment, Eleanor was taken aback. He was already turning back toward Nut and Bolts when she protested.
“No, wait!” she said. “I can’t let you do that! You have a business to run.”
He shrugged. “I’ll leave a note.”
Eleanor had never really felt that Indianapolis, which she’d always seen has having a local energy, was a massive city, but boy did she feel like a city girl sometimes.
“But what if somebody wants to come buy something?” she asked.
He looked confused by the question. “They’ll come back,” he said.
“But—”
