I’d never before felt such an…attraction to a guy. Sure, Chase was hot and he was fun and I was looking forward to our date. But I wasn’t worried about what he thought of me. When I met him, my heart hadn’t pounded so hard that I thought I’d crack a rib. I hadn’t been nervous.
That’s what I’d been in the hallway just then. Nervous. I’d never been so unsettled around a guy. So why this one?
It didn’t make sense. I’d always been cool around guys.
It didn’t help matters that when I finally got to my feet and looked in the mirror, I was reminded of my unflattering appearance. I’d given Josh Wynter the worst impression of me in every way imaginable.
Why did I feel such overwhelming disappointment?
When I got back to my bedroom, I looked out the window. No truck out in the street. I’d almost decided that meant that our visitors were gone…before I remembered that they wouldn’t have a truck. So how would they haul their carpentry materials?
But more important, how would I know when they’d left? I wouldn’t hear a vehicle revving up its engine before being driven away. How would I ever hear people arrive or leave?
Obviously the doorbell chime couldn’t be heard up here.
Sometime later, I dressed in my jeans and a bulky cable-knit sweater. I was still wearing my fuzzy slippers as I made my way cautiously downstairs, checking for the Wynter guy, really hoping that I wasn’t going to run into him.
I made it safely to the first floor without running into anyone. I glanced into the library and the parlor—all clear.
I needed my coffee—badly. So I had to risk a visit to the kitchen, where I might indeed find people.
But I didn’t. I found only Mom, and while she’s technically a person, she’s one I know.
She was standing in front of the window, gazing out at the wintery backyard, one of her precious china cups in her hand. She glanced over her shoulder. “Coffee’s ready.”
“Great!”
I grabbed my favorite mug. It was blue and huge, twice the size of a normal mug, and said on the side, “Still not enough.” Tara had given it to me.
I filled it to the brim, added a little milk, stirred in some sugar, and practically inhaled my first sip, relishing the flavor. Then I moved to the window, pressed my hip against the counter, and looked outside.
“Uh, Mom, do you think in the future, you could let me know when we’re going to have company in the morning?” I asked.
She finally looked at me then. Really looked at me. “Was there a problem?”
“Only running into someone I didn’t know before I was ready to be presented to the world.”
She smiled wryly. “Sorry. Mr. Wynter finished up a project earlier than expected, so he had time this morning to drop by to discuss some of the remodeling I want done. They’re going to start tomorrow.”
“They?” My stomach knotted up.
“He and his son.” She looked back out the window. “I can’t believe how pristine the snow is.”
She wanted to talk snow and I wanted to talk…
“So what do you know about his son?”
Mom shook her head. “Not a lot. His name is Josh. He goes to school here.”
Great. That was so not what I wanted to hear.
“Do you know what grade he’s in?”
“No, we didn’t really discuss personal things.” She studied me. “Are you sure everything is all right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“He seemed nice.”
“He was. I wasn’t.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I wasn’t awake yet.”
It was a lame excuse. I knew it. Mom knew it.
“I’m sure you’ll get a chance to apologize,” she said, moving away from the counter.
That’s what worried me. Seeing him again, trying to figure out what to say. I never had a problem figuring out what to say to guys. This was so weird, so unlike me. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it had killed off some brain cells.
“I noticed it snowing last night. I guess I need to shovel the snow off the walk.”
Mom gave me another wry grin. “No. Josh already did it. See? Nice guy.”
Totally nice guy. Maybe too nice.
My instincts were sending out some sort of warning.
Too bad it was sending it out in a secret code that I couldn’t decipher.
Shortly after lunch our stuff arrived on a wagon with runners. A burly guy who didn’t even bother wearing a jacket carted all the boxes into the house.
In my bedroom two hours later, I had half a dozen boxes opened, trying to figure out where to put things so they looked right. But nothing really looked right here yet.
I didn’t want to duplicate my room back in Texas, but I wanted to feel like this room was truly mine. It was just so different from what I’d had before, though. As much as I loved it, I wanted some of my former life to fit. As much as I’d wanted this adventure, I hadn’t expected to miss the familiar so much.
And it didn’t make the unpacking go any quicker because I kept staring off into space and thinking about Josh Wynter. Maybe I could convince him that he’d met my evil twin or something.
“Hiya!”
I jerked back to the present. I was on the bed arranging various stuffed animals I’d collected over the years. Nathalie stood in the doorway, two girls beside her.
“Your mom said we could come on up,” she said.
“Oh, great. I was just”—I slid off the bed—“trying to figure out where to put things.”
“These are my best friends.” Nathalie left it at that, like maybe they were nameless, or she couldn’t remember their names.
“I’m Shanna,” one girl said. Her hair—the color of the charcoal briquettes my dad used in his grill back home—hung thick and straight past her shoulders. “And this is Corey.”
I couldn’t tell much about Corey. Her hair was all stuffed beneath her knitted red cap, but based on her fair features I thought she was probably blond. Then again, maybe she had dark hair and was only sun-deprived. I wasn’t familiar enough with this world yet to make assumptions.
“I told them all about you,” Nathalie said.
“Like what, exactly?”
“Oh, you know, like you’re from Texas, but you don’t have a drawl. You’re my new best friend—”
I was? That was a nice thing to say.
“—and that you have the most totally awesome bedroom. And of course, they wanted to see it, so here we are!”
“Yeah,” Shanna said. “Nathalie said maybe we could have a sleepover sometime.”
“That’d be great.” And I realized I actually thought it would be.
“Oh, and I told them that you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“The island is not the place to be if you don’t have a boyfriend,” Corey said.
“Do you have boyfriends?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Corey said.
I didn’t want to have to explain my stance on not getting serious yet, so I just said, “Well, I am going out with a guy—“
“Yeah, I heard,” Corey said. “My brother.”
“Chase is your brother?”
“Yeah.” She walked to the rounded window and looked out. “I can see only a small portion of the lake from my room because of the row of houses in front of us. I have to turn my head at an awkward angle and cross my eyes to see between the houses.”
“Sorry ’bout that,” I said, figuring I was living in the row of houses in front of her.
“She’s just messing with you,” Shanna said.
“So she can see the lake?” I asked.
“No, but she doesn’t care about a view. I mean, it’s not like you have to walk far to see the lake. We’re in the middle of it, after all.”
“We were thinking of going to the mall,” Nathalie said. “Did you want to come with us?”
“There’s a mall here?” I asked.
Hallelujah!
M
y dad was always saying that Tara and I should get frequent shopper points for all the time we spent at the mall. The Galleria in Dallas was my favorite, by far, but I never turned away a chance to go to a mall. Any mall.
“Of course we have a mall,” Nathalie said. “We have four, actually.”
“How do we get there?” I asked.
“We walk.”
The mall we went to was in the shopping district. It was small, with no department stores, but it did have several interesting shops. More like boutiques. Very specialized.
Shopping with Nathalie and her friends—who were quickly becoming my friends—was a lot like shopping with Tara. We tried on more clothes than we’d ever buy. As a matter of fact, I ended up being the only one who bought anything—some fur-lined, knee-high boots and a couple of thick woolen sweaters.
After we’d shopped until we were almost ready to drop, we stopped in a little bakery. We each bought a slice of cake and some hot chocolate. Then we sat at a round table near the window.
“This is so good,” I said, sipping the hot chocolate. “I have a feeling I’m only going to be drinking warm beverages from now on.”
“You’ll get used to the cold,” Shanna said.
“And the weather is really nice in the summer,” Corey said. “The island is perfect for nature lovers.”
“Well, summer can’t get here fast enough, as far as I’m concerned,” I said. “I mean, I knew it would be cold—”
“This isn’t really all that cold,” Corey said.
“It’s freezing!” I said. “With the wind chill, it’s twenty degrees.”
Corey shrugged. “Well, yeah, but it can get colder.”
I shivered.
“Like I said, you’ll get used to it,” Shanna assured me. “We barely notice the cold. So what do you do for fun if there’s no snow around?”
“Shop, go to concerts, see movies. You know. Stuff.”
Shanna leaned forward. “So tell us about the guys in Texas. They’re hot, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Especially in the summer when the temperature is, like, a hundred degrees.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Shanna said.
I grinned, then told them about the guys I knew back home.
5
The next morning, I threw on baggy sweats before leaving my bedroom. Fortunately, I didn’t run into any surprises on my way to the bathroom. After brushing my teeth, combing my hair, and making myself feel halfway decent—I needed coffee to feel completely decent—I headed downstairs.
And there was Josh Wynter, on the second floor, lugging a rolled tarp into one of the bedrooms. He stopped in the doorway, studying me.
I shifted from one slippered foot to the other. “Good morning,” I grumbled.
He glanced around, pointed a thumb at his chest. “You talking to me?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not a morning person, okay?”
“No offense, but in that case, living in a bed-and-breakfast is probably not the way to go.”
“I know. I’m trying to talk my mom into changing it into a bed-and-dinner.”
He laughed. He had a great laugh. A deep rumble that made my toes curl inside my fuzzy socks. Weird. Guys never made my toes curl.
I angled my head thoughtfully. “I could probably even do a bed-and-lunch.”
Laughing more, he leaned against the doorjamb. His blue eyes were sparkling now. His eyes seemed even bluer because of his dark hair.
“I don’t even eat breakfast,” I confessed.
“It’s the most important meal of the day.”
“So what are you, a nutritionist?”
“Nah. A TV watcher. It’s amazing the useless bits of information you can pick up watching TV.”
“Well, if they said it on TV, it’s gotta be true.”
His grin broadened. Did the guy ever stop smiling once he got started? And what did it say about my morning persona that I was irritated by his smile—and by the fact that he was incredibly good-looking? In a horror movie, he’d definitely be the one who survived.
He almost made me regret having a date Friday night. Every girl I’d met so far had a boyfriend. Would I be the only girl interested in dating different guys? Would that stop me from fitting in? And would one or two dates with Josh be enough? Would it satisfy my craving to be with him?
Wait, craving? I never felt that way about anyone. It was like someone I didn’t know had taken possession of my thoughts.
“I’ve gotta get some coffee,” I mumbled.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“I won’t.”
I shuffled by him. Peering into the room, I could see that all the furniture had been moved into its center. How long had he been here? Obviously quite a while. He’d probably had coffee and breakfast already.
“Don’t let me stop you from working,” I said.
“I won’t,” he said.
He walked into the room, and I hurried down the stairs. At the bottom, I was surprised to hear laughter weaving into the entryway. My mom’s laughter. Light and airy.
It was really too early in the morning for light and airy, but I was rooted to the spot. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Mom laugh with such abandon. Then she giggled. “Oh, Ralph.”
Ralph? Who the heck was Ralph?
I strode through the dining room and into the kitchen. Mom was sitting at the table beside a man I assumed was Mr. Wynter, because he looked a lot like Josh. Wearing guilty expressions, they both looked up when I walked in.
“Hey, hon,” Mom said. “Help yourself to coffee, then you can pick out some wallpaper for your bedroom.”
I grabbed my usual morning mug and poured coffee, milk, and sugar into it. Leaning against the counter, I took a sip and began to feel more human. “I heard you laughing. What was so funny?”
“Mr. Wynter was just telling me a story about one of his customers.”
“Isn’t there, like, some sort of customer/carpenter privilege?”
I didn’t want to think about the nasty things that Josh could tell people about me.
Mr. Wynter actually turned bright red. “Uh, well, uh…it wasn’t anything…it wasn’t a secret.”
“Don’t worry about it, Dad,” Josh said, suddenly appearing in the doorway. “She’s just worried that we’ll tell people she’s not a morning person.”
How had he figured that out?
“We’ll sign a nondisclosure statement,” he added. “Although truthfully, it’s pretty obvious.”
“Thanks…I think,” I said, before taking a big gulp of coffee.
“Ashleigh, pour Josh some coffee,” Mom said.
“That’s okay,” Josh said, walking around me and grabbing a mug from the mug tree. “I’m not a guest.”
He winked at me. My toes did that whole crazy curling thing again and my heart started fluttering like a bird trapped in my chest. What is up with that? I thought. I’m always cool, calm, and collected around guys, but then, I never felt like anything was at stake before. Why did I feel like something was at stake here? My attitude about guys had always been like ’em and leave ’em—at least until I’m out of college. But I had a feeling that Josh Wynter would be a hard guy to leave.
Josh leaned one hip against the counter and sipped his black coffee.
“Ashleigh, come look at the wallpaper selections,” Mom said.
Good. A distraction. That was what I needed. I sat at the table and started looking through the binder.
“Have lots of this in stock,” Mr. Wynter said, pointing to a swatch of wallpaper.
Josh cleared his throat. I glanced over at him. He slowly shook his head. It looked like he was fighting back another grin.
Maybe because the wallpaper his dad wanted me to select was a puke green with mallard ducks on it. Not that I had anything against ducks, but puke green? I could certainly understand why he had a lot in stock. Who would want it? What I couldn’t understand was the reason he’d ordered it in the first place.
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“That’s not really me,” I said carefully.
“How ’bout this? We have this striped stuff….”
That looked like drunk candy canes. Hard to explain, but trust me.
“Uh, no—”
“Dad, why don’t you just let her look?”
His dad looked disgruntled, but then the wrinkles on his face eased. “I guess there’s no hurry. We have plenty to keep us busy with the guestrooms.”
“Speaking of the guestrooms,” Mom said, “I’d like to run an idea I had for one of them by you. Would you mind coming upstairs?”
“Not at all,” Mr. Wynter said. He shoved himself out of his chair and followed Mom out of the kitchen.
She’d mentioned putting a window seat with a storage area in one of the rooms that had a view of the lake. I had a feeling she was going to keep the Wynters busy all winter. I smiled at that thought and went back to looking at the samples of wallpaper.
“If you don’t see anything you like, you can go to the hardware store down the street,” Josh said. “They have a bigger selection, not in stock, but that can be ordered. We can get it from the mainland.”
I looked over at him. “Won’t it be more expensive?”
“Yeah. Dad tends to buy stuff on closeout. It never occurs to him there’s a reason stuff is on closeout—like, no one wanted it to begin with.”
“You mean, you don’t think ducks sitting in puke was someone’s first choice?”
“Probably not.”
He grinned. Really broadly. He had a nice smile, a very friendly smile. Not teasing, not flirtatious like Chase’s. It was just…nice. And I thought I could look at it forever and never grow tired of it.
Whoa! Slow down, Ash.
I needed to get out of there.
I closed the book. “I don’t know that I really need or want wallpaper. I’d love to have some shelves, though.”
“Those are easy enough to make. Shoot, I could make those tonight. No problem.”
“I don’t know. My room is very oddly shaped.”
“I just have to take some measurements.”
“It’s the room at the top of the stairs, right off the third floor.”
“I sorta figured that out yesterday.”