“No. I don’t have a boyfriend,” I blurted out.
“Oh.” He paused and then he said softly, almost to himself, “Good.”
A bubble of pleasure fizzled in my belly like Prosecco bubbles.
“So why did you come to Huckleberry Hill?” he asked. “Did you throw a dart at a map or something?”
I laughed. “No. Two of my best friends live here.”
“Oh yeah? Who? Maybe I know them.”
“It is a small town, so you might. Hadley and Salem Powell.”
He paused. “The Powells? You know the Powells?”
“Yeah.” I frowned. “Why? Is that weird?”
“Not weird,” he said. “Strange coincidence though, considering I work for them at Elk Ridge.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Yeah. My brother, too.”
“Brother,” I repeated. My brow furrowed for a moment and then smoothed out in recognition. “You’re Brooks.”
“Yeah. I already introduced myself.”
“No. I mean, you’reBrooks. You and your brother were in that photoshoot for Rudolph Lancaster a few weeks ago. The one that was at Elk Ridge.”
“We weren’t in the photoshoot. Not intentionally. The photographer got a little click happy.” He paused. “You know about the photoshoot?”
“Salem sent me pictures,” I explained. “Oh, that make sense now. I thought I was going crazy—you introduced yourself and your name sounded familiar. But I didn’t recognize you, because your face was kind of turned away from the camera and hidden by the sun.”
He’d been shirtless, though. And showing off a massively sculpted back with beautiful ink.
When he remained quiet, I said, “You have a lot of tattoos.”
“Yes.”
He said the word like it was painful to get out.
For whatever reason, he didn’t want to talk about it, so I clamped my mouth shut.
Embarrassment heated the back of my neck. I sounded like I was president of his fan club, mooning over his photos and ink.
It was only when he pulled into The Regal Beagle’s parking lot that I remembered what Salem had confided in me about Brooks.
He was an ex-con.
CHAPTER TWO
The Truck
I’m in a truck with an ex-con.
My heart started to drum in alarm. It was immediate and almost hijacked my brain. But I forced a deep breath of air into my lungs.
I knew two things about Brooks:
