Chapter One
Some women stoppedhearts when they walked into a room. Jedidiah Walker was one of those women.
Trevor Holt had been invited to Damaris Walker and Nate Kershaw’s wedding reception, along with nearly everyone else in Whiskey River and the surrounding towns. He knew Nate and had met Damaris. The saying was all brides were beautiful, but the word wasn’t nearly enough to describe this bride. Trevor thought Kershaw was a lucky man. Then he got a look at the woman standing beside the bride, dressed in a long emerald-green dress, with her dark auburn hair pulled back in some kind of fancy braid, and he almost swallowed his tongue.
“Who is that?” he asked Justin Rogers, his friend and fellow veteran who stood next to him. Trevor didn’t go to a lot of weddings or receptions, but Nate was a friend so he’d sucked it up and gone.
“That, my man, is Jedidiah Walker. Sister of the bride and baby of the Walker clan. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
“Pass.” He’d known women like her before. Case in point, his ex-wife. All looks, no brains. In Raquel’s case, what brain cells she had were dedicated to calculating how much money she could take him for.
“Why did you ask if you didn’t want to meet her?”
“Dude, I’m not blind. But I’ll just admire her from afar and not ruin it by having to talk to her.”
Justin shook his head. “All women aren’t like Raquel.”
“Most of the beautiful ones are.” Nothing was going to convince him otherwise.
He wound up meeting her anyway. One of Jedidiah’s brothers, Gabe Walker, who was a friend of his, introduced the two of them. “Trevor, just the man I was looking for. This is my sister Jedidiah. This is Trevor Holt. He’s a friend of mine so be nice.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, holding out a hand.
“Hi. Nice to meet you,” she said in a tone that implied anything but. She shook his hand with a firm grip and let go quickly.
Her voice was husky and low-pitched. Bourbon and honey. She was even prettier close up, with her green eyes and perfect complexion. She didn’t look any more pleased by the introduction than he was, which he had to admit intrigued him. Gabe wandered away and the two of them stood there like logs. “Would you like to dance?” he asked, albeit reluctantly. Dancing wasn’t his thing but what else was he supposed to do?
“Okay.”
Such enthusiasm. They went out on the dance floor and thank God it was a fast dance so they didn’t have to talk. When the dance was over and it segued into a slow song, he asked, “Are you thirsty? Why don’t we get a drink?”
“Okay.”
They walked over to the bar and picked up a couple of glasses of champagne. She sipped hers, still not speaking. Wow, he wasn’t sure he’d ever met a more taciturn woman. Annoyed, he finally asked, “Did I do something to offend you?”
She looked surprised. “No, why?”
“Generally, people at least try to have a conversation when they meet. You’ve said fewer than ten words and five of them were ‘hi, nice to meet you.’”
“Oh, sorry,” she said with a semismile. “Gabe has been introducing me to every single man who’s here. It’s irritating as hell.”
He laughed. “I can go away.”
“No. I’d just as soon talk to you as anyone else.”
“You call what you’ve been doing talking?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t, but he decided to let that pass. “So, Jedidiah, what do you do?”
“Nothing at the moment. I’m in the process of moving back to Whiskey River. What do you do?”
“I’m an app designer.”
“Really? Are you any good?”
“How am I supposed to answer that?”
