Page 6 of Not Home Alone

My biggest regret.

The girl who was responsible for the best night of my life. The girl who will forever remind me of the worst version of myself.

Merrily freaking Tucker.

I’ve had fantasies like this. Where I’m walking out of the shower and find her standing there. Minus the fireplace poker. Minus the sweater with snowmen all over it. Except she is so much prettier than any photo I’ve seen of her on Instagram over the years, prettier than the two times I saw her from afar when I was in town over the last decade. And she still somehow looks sweet and cheerful even while glaring at me and brandishing a pointy metal rod. I’m the one who’s usually brandishing a rod in my fantasy.

I step down to the foyer and watch her slowly turn to face me, raising that fireplace tool like a dainty umbrella.

What is happening?

Her lips finally move and one little word cracks the frozen moment between us. “No!”

She looks genuinely horrified. I use the touchscreen panel in the front hall to turn off the music. That right there is the only person on earth who can provide the kind of jolt to the system this song gives me and there’s still a ninety percent chance I’m hallucinating… “Merrily?”

Her stance relaxes the slightest bit. “Grant.” My name is expelled from her glossy, puffy lips. Like she’s kicking it out the door.

Good. She still hates me. God knows the entire framework of my identity in Holly Grove would crumble if Merrily Tucker didn’t still hate me. “What are you doing here?”

“What is happening right now?”

“What are you doing in this house?”

“What are you doing in this house?”

“I asked you first, Tucker.”

“Could you put some clothes on?”

“Could you put that poker down?”

“Poker?” she quips, with a straight face. “I hardly know ’er.”

And now I remember why I haven’t been able to forget about this person for ten years.

I haven’t met one other woman who can simultaneously bewilder, threaten me, make me smile, and make me horny at the same time. All while wearing a sweater that no one under seventy should wear by choice. And delivering a joke like she’s the cheesy old uncle at Christmas dinner, even though she has a face and a body that could stop traffic.

Merrily Tucker has gotten even prettier over the years.

Even when she’s scowling at me.

She lowers the fireplace tool and steps to the side without turning her back to me. “My dad knows I’m here, and he’ll be checking on me any minute now,” she says, although she doesn’t sound totally confident that it’s true. “So you better not try anything.” She hangs the poker on the rack with the other fireplace tools.

“You’re the one who broke into my house while I was taking a shower,” I say with a smirk, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “You better not try anything either.”

She scoffs at that, but when her gaze dips down to the general area of my most awesomeness, she catches her breath and it turns into a coughing fit. And now she’s glaring at me again. While covering her mouth and coughing.

“You better not give me a cold,” I tell her.

She pulls herself together and says, “Oh my god, I don’t have a cold—but you will if you don’t put something on!”

I don’t like many things in this world, but I am loving how uncomfortable my mostly naked body is making her right now. “I’m really comfortable, thanks for your concern.” I take a few steps forward and lean against the edge of the wall by the entrance to the living room, casually scratching my pecs. “And I don’t think you really want me to get dressed, now do you?” She clenches her fists and her pretty little nostrils flare. I watch as her face turns eight shades of pink and it’s not from anger. “Why don’t you tell me how you got in here.”

Now she crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I used the key to open the front door. And then I walked through it. How did you get in here?”

“I came in through the garage. How do you have the key to this house?”

“The property manager gave it to me because I rented this house. For two weeks.”