Page 19 of Rogue Wave

A few moments later she whispered so softly that I barely heard it. “Thank you.”

Two words.

That was it.

But I felt those two words spoken in her soft voice deep in my chest.

Hell, if I didn’t get away soon, this woman would have me breaking every rule in the damn book just to hear her whisper sweet nothings to me in that voice over and over.

But did I leave? Nope.

I chose to continue the torture instead. Under the guise of helping her, of course.

“Do you have any family nearby you could talk to?” I asked.

I knew she’d had family help her move in. I’d been at work that day, but Dougie, George, and Dottie had all made a point to mention to me what a beautiful young woman the new neighbor was.

They’d mentioned that she’d had about half a dozen people helping her move in, though I knew nothing about them. I’d intentionally never asked because that led to getting to know people, which defeated my purpose of not wanting to get close to Hazel.

“I do, but my family is very nosy,” she said softly but with a smile. “If I tell them I’m having a hard time with it—or anything, really—they will all rapidly descend here, and you don’t want that kind of chaos right next door.”

She was already her own brand of chaos next door, so I could only imagine what it would be like to have more people like her.

“Do they live far?” I asked, trying to gauge how likely it would be that they would just randomly show up.

“Mom, Auntie, and Gale only live about an hour away from here, but it’s hard for them to just up and leave quickly since we have a lot of animals on the farm.”

“You grew up on a farm?”

She shrugged and grinned. “Not a traditional one in that sense. It’s more like an animal sanctuary. We’ve had a lot of animals over the years, but right now they just have two llamas, an ostrich, a brand-new donkey, and too many cats and dogs to count.”

That sounded more like her personality.

“Plus, all the kids that rotated in and out were their own form of a zoo,” she continued, but that caught my attention.

“Kids?”

She turned to look me in the eye, and those beautiful green irises with flecks of gold bore into me. “I’m adopted. I have my birth sister, Cora, and then three other sisters I gained through living with the O’Haras.”

She gave me a brief backstory of her adopted family, and I realized that my assumptions about her life had been wrong.

Totally wrong.

She did, in fact, have plenty of opportunities to be jaded by life like me, but in true Hazel fashion, she chose not to be.

She chose to keep a positive outlook.

She chose to love freely and go out of her way to share her joy.

I couldn’t help but be drawn to her even more. She was slowly burrowing herself into my life, and I knew I may not be strong enough to fight it for too much longer.

6

“You must be an octopus, because you’ve got a strong grip on me.”

– It’s sea-duction

Hazel