The second cookie freezes halfway to my mouth. The blue pickup truck I saw downtown is now parked in my driveway.
CHAPTER THREE
“Are you listening to me?” Natalie asks.
“Uh, yeah, sorry. There’s a random guy in my driveway.”
“Is he hot?”
I roll my eyes. Trust Natalie to ask that first thing. I squint, but all I can see is that the driver is still sitting behind the wheel. “Thanks for your concern about my safety,” I say as I make my way to the front of the house and open the door. From here, I can see the driver has his head bent, and his thumbs are flying over the keyboard of his phone.
Natalie makes a ‘pff’ sound. “Little towns like Honeysuckle Creek are pretty much the safest place on earth, Joss. There’s probably a neighborhood watch and, if not, I’m sure the neighbors are nosy enough that they stop anything bad from happening.”
This makes me chuckle. Unlike me, Nat actually has real-life experience with small towns. She was born and raised in a village east of Toronto that she’s often referred to as ‘the Stars Hollow of Ontario, complete with the weird Kirk guy and the hot, grumpy diner owner’. She left at sixteen to pursue a career in acting, and has never looked back.
“You’re probably right. The guy is still sitting there, so I can’t see him well enough yet. You will, however, be pleased to know he’s driving a pickup truck.”
Natalie snorts. “I love it! Go see if he’s hot and then invite him inside.”
“You and your one-track mind,” I mutter as I slip my feet into my boots. I’m halfway down the driveway when he glances up, his eyes settling on me for the briefest moment before returning to his phone. His head snaps up in that double-take way I’ve seen a million times over the years, making me wonder if he recognizes me or if I’ve simply startled him.
He raises the phone to his ear as he opens the truck door, shooting me a small smile that looks…rueful? He holds up a finger in a ‘just a minute’ gesture as he hops out of the truck and closes the door.
“Mae? We were just texting two seconds ago so I know you still have your phone in your hand and you know it’s me calling. Call me back, I’m at the rental.”
As he speaks into the phone, I take a moment to check him out. I’m used to good-looking guys; I’ve worked with dozens of them over the years and I was married to a man who was named Canada’s Hottest Actor two years in a row. I learned a long time ago not to get too excited about a pretty face or a nice body for a variety of reasons, chief among them the fact the personality often didn’t match the exterior. But wow. The exterior on this guy makes me pause.
He’s not overly tall, maybe five-feet-ten or so, with a sturdy build. His hair is thick and dark, nearly black, and it curls around his ears and over his forehead in a way that just begs to be touched. A puffy black jacket is open over a blue Henley and dark jeans that have faded—and not the ‘I bought these like this for several hundred dollars’ kind of faded, but rather the ‘I’ve had these jeans forever and they’ve faded naturally from wear and washing’. His gaze lifts to meet mine as he disconnects the call, and I’m met with rich brown eyes that smile just a second before his mouth does.
I hear someone calling my name as if from a distance. It takes a beat to realize my phone-holding hand has dropped to my side as I stand here staring at the stranger whose smile is growing from friendly to amused. I lift the phone in time to hear, “Joss?Joss?Hellooooo, are you still there? Have you been murdered?”
“Hey, I’m here, sorry,” I say quickly. “I have to go, okay? I’ll call you later.”
“Ooh, he’s hot isn’t he?” She screeches it so loud, I’m worried the guy has heard her. Now it’s my turn to smile apologetically and hold up a finger for him to wait as Nat adds, “So hot you forgot you were even on the phone with me.”
“Yes and yes. Gotta go.”
“No hurry to call me back. In fact, take your time. And enjoy.”
I hang up as she starts cackling in my ear. “Sorry about that,” I say to the guy. His eyes rise to meet mine again. I’m ninety-nine percent sure he was just checking me out, which makes me go hot and prickly all over. Good thing too since it only now occurs to me I didn’t grab my coat on the way out the door. At least it’s not snowing anymore.
“No worries,” he says with an easy smile. “Are you Josslyn Hazelwood?”
“That’s me. It’s just Joss, though.”
“Joss.” He says it slowly, paired with a small nod. I don’t think my name has ever sounded better. He steps forward and holds out his hand for me to shake. “I’m Liam Doherty. I’m one of the people who look after Mae Murphy’s rentals, including this house. She said the fridge was making a funny noise when she was over earlier today and she wanted me to take a look at it. I told her she should call you to let you know I was coming so it wouldn’t seem like some strange man was showing up at your door and asking to come in.”
Only as he slips his hand from mine to answer his ringing phone do I realize we’ve been shaking hands this whole time.
“Hey, Mae,” he says into his phone. “No, no need to call her now, she’s standing right in front of me. One sec.” He holds out the phone, and I take it. Mrs. Murphy tells me Liam is going to have a look at the fridge, and I don’t need to worry about being alone in the house with him because he’s a ‘good boy’. Judging by the funny noise Liam makes in the back of his throat and the way he laughs under his breath, he must have overheard that last part.
When I hand the phone back to him, something possesses me to ask, “Are you? A good boy, I mean.”
He ducks his head, scratching at the stubble sprouting on his cheeks and chin. It’s nearly black, like his hair; paired with his tanned skin and wavy hair, it makes for an incredibly sexy picture. He shoves his phone in the pocket of his jeans and motions toward the house. “Well,” he says as we start walking, “I’d say that’s true now, although it wasn’t always the case.”
Consider my curiosity piqued. I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t volunteer anything else. We reach the front door and he leans past me to push it open before ushering me inside with a warm hand on the small of my back.
“And I don’t know about the ‘boy’ part,” he says. “Although I suppose whether I’m thirty-seven or sixty-seven, I’ll always be a boy to Mae and probably half the other people in Honeywell too. Hazards of small-town living.” He gives me another of those easy smiles. His teeth are straight and white, with a tiny space between the two front ones.
