Feeling contrite, she reached up to remove the elastic in her hair. Her hair hung limp against her cheeks, so she flipped her head over and flipped back up again. The room spun for a moment, and when her vision cleared, all she could see was a hot guy in a beard made of several different colors of blond and brown and a set of dimples just waiting to make an appearance.
Her face flushed faster than … than … well, she couldn’t really think of anything, because he was coming her way. “Oh no.” Her fingers went to her freshly painted lips.
“What?”
She hooked her mom’s elbow and spun them both around so their backs were to the guy. “It’s him,” she hissed.
“Who him?”
“The guy—the one on the bike.”
Mom angled herself so she could see out of the corner of her eye. One glance had her head swiveling around and her eyes popping out as she drank in the guy’s physique. “That’s one grade A side of beef.”
Bree lifted her mom’s chin and closed her mouth.
“Are you sure? He looks way too nice to be the guy you were telling me about.”
Bree allowed herself another look. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and his brown hair stood up straight on his head, the tips a light golden brown like he spent a lot of time in the sun. However, his smile gave him away. The way his cheeks pulled out instead of up. “I’d know that smirk anywhere.”
Their eyes met, and a jolt ran through her body. He held her gaze as if sayingI’m coming for you. The room seemed to stretch between them, making the distance between them all too long and not long enough in an instant.
Bree put her hands over her chest in shock. There was no way he was coming forher. No way.
Mom sighed. Bree yanked herself out of his hypnotic, heart-pounding staring contest. “Don’t look at him.”
“Wh—?” Mom was interrupted by their first customer of the day.
“Excuse me, how much are the hats?” The woman wore hiking boots and a ragtag bandana around her white hair. Not Mom’s target customer, who was a hip thirty-something with money to burn and enough vacation days built up to head to the wilderness for a few days a year. A sale was a sale, though, and perhaps the retired market was one Mom could branch into.
“They are thirty-five plus tax. If you like that one.” Mom didn’t give the woman a moment to absorb the sticker price before showing her several styles.
Bree shook her head in admiration. Mom was a selling machine. It was all Bree could do to model the clothing and hand out coupons that could be used next week in the online store. Talking to strangers was hard. Reading books? Easy-peasy. Answering questions about books? Like making homemade caramels disappear—pleasurable and sweet.
When she finally pulled her attention away from her mom and the woman who bought two hats, the guy was gone. Her heart tumbled like a shoe in the dryer. Disappointed? Over him? No way. He wasn’t the type of guy she should set her sights on. He was the jock and she was the mathlete. Okay, maybe not mathlete—numbers weren’t her favorite. But books! Books were a girl’s partner, playmate, and chum all wrapped up in a leather cover.
“Hello.” She handed a flyer to a mom with a baby in a wrap of fabric that twisted around her body in all directions. At least, she hoped there was a baby in there—otherwise this woman had a strange sense of fashion.
“Fifteen percent off with coupon.” She handed another one out. The older man slid his greasy hand along hers and grabbed her fingers, before he took the flyer and let go. He grinned, one tooth missing, and winked.
She wiped her hand on her khaki hiking pants and pulled a face. When she looked up, she caught sight of spiky light brown hair and her breath caught in her throat. “No way.” She stood on her tiptoes to see over the crowd. Three women in shorts that showed more cheeks than a squirrel in the middle of winter preparations parted, giving her a view of Biker Man. His eyes were tight and his shoulders hunched as he talked with the people gathered around the sports drink booth.
He caught her looking, like he had some sort of radar to detect when her eyes were on him. Recognition wrote a letter of recommendation and he winked.
He. Winked. At her. Plain Bree.
Okay, so no one had officially called her Plain Bree in her life—no one except her. You know, in those moments when she’d try to use things like liquid eyeliner and ended up looking like a villain in a Batman comic. Or when she tried to ride an ancient mountain bike to work and some muscled superman comes alongside for conversation and all she can say is “yep.” Yeah, those times were when she was Plain Bree.
“He probably winks at everyone,” she said. “He knows his boyish dimples are delightful.”
A teenaged girl overheard her personal and private conversation with herself and moved away from the shirt display as if being weird was a contagious disease.Yeah, I don’t think so, honey. I was born this out of whack. No imitators, only impersonators.She mentally snapped her fingers in a Z formation.
Bree glanced over her shoulder to findhewas still looking at her.
Well, that just wouldn’t do. Especially because her heart raced and her cheeks were heating up to rival the surface of the sun.
She wished she’d taken a second look in the mirror this morning, because she had no idea what her butt looked like in the hiking pants. Were the pockets too small? That always made her hips look like a hippopotamus’s. Then again, pockets too large made her look like a balloon butt. Ugh! There was no good way to check her backside without him seeing her check her backside.
Profile. Switch to profile.She whipped sideways and smacked a man in the lower back. He grunted and fell onto the tank tops.