I’m just some stranger from the city.
An irritation.
The enemy.
He fixes me with his blue eyes, and there’s such searing disappointment in that look. Such finality.
“Stay away from my family,” he growls.
Like I’m some kind ofdangerto his family.
Then he gets back in his truck and drives away, leaving me standing here, dumbfounded as fuck.
My best friend wraps an arm around me gently. “You were saying ...? Something about his inner teddy bear?”
I watch Mason’s truck disappear up Cherry Way.
Then it’s just me and Sophie ... and a few random shoppers lingering outside the grocery store and Bev & Bill’s General Store, staring.
Maybe they just witnessed that whole scene.
Sophie waves at them, then points at the building behind us. “Best smoothies you ever tasted! Grand opening on Wednesday! Bring your friends!”
“Remember that thing I said to you yesterday?” I ask her in a small voice. “If I ever plan anything more than a week in advance with a man, I want you to kick me in the junk?”
Sophie actually looks surprised, bless her. “Si. You were already planning a future with that man?”
In an even smaller voice, I confess, “When I walked by the orchard on his property, in the back of my mind, I kinda thought it would be a nice place to have a wedding.”
“That sounds more like a fantasy than a plan,” she says generously.
“It counts.”
“Shit. I really can’t kick you, though.” She turns me by the shoulders and steers me into the building, away from all the looky-loos. “So how about one tiny little ‘I told you so,’ and a bottle of wine?”
I let out afuck my lifesigh. “Make it cider and I’ll feel sufficiently punished.”
Chapter 7
Mason
I should’ve fucking known June Spencer would betray me.
Grandpa was right. You can’t trust that woman.
He’s always warned me that June is fickle, disloyal, and self-interested. He’s told me, my brother, and our parents over the years, ad nauseum, never to count on her, and I know, in his mind, he’s got his reasons. His own history with June.
But I’ve never seen this side of June before.
And I did not seehercoming.
Sierra Daniels.
A woman with haunted green eyes, the ability to win over a roomful of strangers while singing into a cider-bottle microphone, and sob-story her way into my bed. Last night, we laughed together. We laughed until we fuckingcriedtogether.
And I have no idea if one word she said was true.
I liked her so much, we didn’t even have sex. She asked me not to kiss her, and later, in bed, when she changed her mind andbeggedme to kiss her, I surprised the hell out of myself when I didn’t. When I wanted to be a gentleman about it, take care of her, even more than I wanted to take her clothes off.
