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He grinned a grin that had my ovaries throbbing. “So I've been told.”
The feed store was where things started getting personal. Not because of the scavenger hunt and not in the way I’d expected. It blindsided me.
We'd stopped to find props for the honeymoon-disaster photo when an older woman approached him. “Damon Lockhart!”
He turned and his smile split his face. “Mrs. Henderson.”
She wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you again for fixing Henry's fence latch. He hasn't stopped talking about it.”
Damon shrugged. “Had to finish my community service hours somehow.”
She playfully swatted his arm. “Oh, hush.”
Then she rose onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek and turned to me. “You take care of this one. He's a decent man, which is an endangered species.”
I smiled. “I will.” The words came out automatically. It seemed my mouth was making emotional commitments without consulting management. My brain immediately requested clarification. My heart declined to comment.
A few minutes later, three boys around seven or eight came running toward us.
“Damon!”
He crouched to greet them. They practically tackled him. One demanded to know when he was coming back to help with baseball practice. Another wanted to show him a missing tooth. The third informed him that his dad said Damon couldn't pitch worth a darn.
Damon clutched his chest. “Ah, that hurts.”
The boys dissolved into giggles.
When they ran off, I looked at him. “Friends of yours?”
“I bribe them.”
“With what?”
“Candy. Baseballs. Questionable life advice.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, more to hide the smile threatening at the corners of my mouth than anything else. He was infuriating, in the best possible way, and I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. Not yet.
Damon flashed that devil-may-care grin, his dimples on full display, and it should have been illegal, the way it made him instantly more attractive. He offered his arm like we were about to waltz down Main Street, and against my better judgment, I threaded mine through. It felt weirdly natural, like we’d done it a hundred times before. And we kept walking.
At the park, a woman who Damon referred to as Gina threw her arms around him. “Thank you for bringing groceries to Grandma last week. Seriously. You're a lifesaver.”
“Miss Betsy pays me in chocolate chip cookies.” Damon waved her off dismissively. “I'm the one getting the better deal.”
We hadn’t made it ten feet before a man who introduced himself to me as Greg stopped us. He gripped Damon’s arm as they shook hands, and sincerity rolled off him in waves. “Hey, man. Dad told me you’ve been stopping by a lot after his surgery.”
Damon shrugged. “Tell him I expect a rematch in gin rummy.”
Greg’s eyes filled with tears. “He said you spent three hours watching westerns with him today, you don’t know what that means to him, to all of us.”
Today. Three hours. The meeting that he couldn’t reschedule. That’s what he was doing.
“Trust me, I’m getting the better end of the deal. You know I don't have a social life.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that statement.
Greg looked between us. “Could've fooled me.”
Damon just grinned. But I was beginning to notice something. A pattern. Everywhere we went, someone had a story about Damon. Not about his flirting. Not about his reputation. About something he'd done for them.
