“The Olsen brothers.”
“They just graduated high school,” I say, not even dignifying it.
“Tom from the feed store.”
“Sixty-eight.”
“The new EMT.”
“Engaged.” I don't even look up from the list. “You told me yourself this morning. The nurse, in Pine Valley.”
“So I did.” Lily crosses him off.
“Dr. Kemp.”
“Dating my dentist.”
“Carl Tubbs.”
“Banned from the festival pie contest. It made the regional paper, and my mother reads the regional paper.”
“Beckett Fletcher.”
“Up a mountain. Always up a mountain. I need a alpha who can sit through a potato salad, not one who'll rappel out the bathroom window if someone twists an ankle in the parking lot.”
“Aiden Lee.”
“He's Finn's best friend, and I'm already asking Finn. I'm not turning this into a Finn convention.”
“What about Rowan?” I say. “The brewer at the Tipsy Berry.”
Lily shakes her head. “Hung up on somebody, Ethan says. Has been for ages, won't do a thing about it. No use to us, his head's already full.”
“Okay, so that's basically the entire eligible alpha population of Huckleberry Hollow and we've got nothing.”
Then her eyes light up.
“Hudson Grant.”
“Hollow Creek Hudson?”
“He's single, he's gorgeous, he's charming, and he once spent an entire town meeting pretending to be his own twin from out of town just to see how long it would take Pete to notice. Forty minutes, Josie. He committed to a bit for forty minutes against a professional. The man was built for this.”
She's not wrong. Hudson's the kind of charming that should be regulated, the kind that makes you grin back before you've decided to. He'd say yes just for the story. Honestly, I'm more worried he'd enjoy it too much.
She writes HUDSON in grape-scented block letters.
“Logan Walker,” I say, and then immediately feel weird about it, because Logan's been fixing the playground fence all month and I may have noticed his forearms in a way that was not entirely about carpentry. “He'd help. If I asked. He helps everyone.”
“He rebuilt my porch step the same afternoon I mentioned it,” Lily says. “I mentioned it at thepost office. He wasn't eventhere. It got back to him by two and he was on my porch by four.”
She writes LOGAN.
“Okay. Two charming, kind, plausible alphas. We need a third.”
And we both already know. The list has been heading there since the fire engine went past this morning. It's been heading there, honestly, since two months ago, on a night I am sworn on a stack of construction paper never to discuss, when Finn Morrow ended up owing me the kind of favor a man like Finn would rather die than have outstanding.
“Say it,” Lily says.
