“Of course not.” Julian was taken aback. Why would he laugh at her name? “Is it…bad?”
“It’s not the norm,” she snorted, “that’s for sure. I’ll start by saying that my parents must have been huge fans of the ‘British Invasion’.”
Huh.Her parentsmusthave been fans? Didn’t she know for sure, and couldn’t she ask them? It was something to file away for future pondering. But for now…
“Paul?” Julian guessed. The Beatle was the first person who popped into his head.
P. threw back her head and laughed. “No, but I like it. I actually think that’s what you should call me from now on.”
“Um, maybe.” Julian shook his head as if to settle his brain. “But tell me…what is it, really?”
She gave a big, exaggerated sigh. “Since I’m not sporting go-go boots or a paisley mini-skirt to give you a hint, I guess I’ll just have to spit it out.”
She thrust her hand toward him for a shake. “It’s very nice to meet you, Julian. My name is Petula. Petula Bothswait.”
Petula.
Julian loved it. It was perfect. It suited her bubbliness.
He took Petula’s palm in his, feeling an immediate connection.
Julian, always pragmatic, somehow knew that his world, now that he’d met Petula, would never be the same again.
CHAPTER 2
Petula had noticed Julian before.She’d actually been checking him out for weeks. Ever since the first time she’d noticed him in the shop. She’d tried not to fixate, but there was something about him…
Uh, uh.No way. She sternly reminded herself she didn’t do men.
Men were dangerous. Well, notallmen, but in her experience, a lot of them. The ones at work with whom she’d slowly and cautiously become friends could be trusted. There were also a few, long-time customers on her route whom she felt were above-board—the Sothard brothers being amongst them—andthere was her older brother, Statler.
Statler was her rock. Her one certainty in life. The single person she trusted more than anyone on earth. Without him, she didn’t know where she’d be right now, and that was huge.
Petula gave her head a slight shake.
Other than those few exceptions, she never trusted anybody with a Y chromosome without having a lot of background info on them. So what was with her, and this odd reaction to Julian?
She withdrew her hand from his, quickly put it behind her back, and wiped it surreptitiously on her pantleg. The tingleshe’d felt, Petula told herself, couldn’t be anything other than a bit of her annoying carpel tunnel flaring up.
Taking a deep breath, she regrouped as her name lingered in the air between them, but she wasn’t sorry she’d told him. Her lowered shields had to be part and parcel of what she already knew about his family, which was quite a bit, actually. The Sothards were a mainstay in the area.
She’d long understood that the Sothard men were all cut from a reliable mold. Every person from Bangor to Orono seemed to know somebody in the esteemed family, and raved about the innate “goodness” that ran through their hard-working bloodlines.
The patriarch of the clan owned a lumber mill; his parents who’d retired from the business still lived nearby. Ellen Sothard, the mother of the brood who ran Diver Downeast, not only worked at a local camp, she volunteered wherever there was a need, and fed everyone who required help.
Their boys…
Not boys.Definitely men.
The fact that most of them had served one way or another didn’t hurt their reputations, and went a long way toward Petula being at ease around the group of physically imposing males. But that was neither here nor there. Petula didn’treallyknow any of them, personally, other than joshing with them when she delivered a package, so she had no idea if their public characters matched what they were like in private.
People hid so much beneath the surface.
Sure, Spence, Buck’s—and more recently Trask’s—new wives looked very happy with their choice of men.
Petula silently scoffed.
Right.
