I don’t know how, but...wow.”
It shouldn’t matter that she’d honed in on the precise emotions he’d tried to convey when he took the picture. He shouldn’t feel like giving the universe a giant high five that she was the first one to catch what he’d been putting out there.
But he couldn’t stop himself from doing a tiny fist pump in the air when she turned back to the photo.
“Where did you take this?”
“Oh, that old place out on Becker. The one you can just see from Route 31. But only in winter when there’s no leaves.”
“Huh. I never... Wait.” Her head snapped up. “You mean the Cline place?”
He was pretty sure that was the name Ian had used when Xander asked about it. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Big brick place, lots of outbuildings? You have to go down Shannette Road to get to it?”
“That’s it. You’ve been there?”
“No.”
If he hadn’t got a clue from the clipped tone, he would have from the way she eyeballed him like he was some kind of biology project. “You know that nobody goes there, right? Except teenagers doing things they can’t do at home.”
Yeah, he’d got that idea from the bottles he’d spotted lying around. “I figured that might be the case.”
“What on earth made you go there?”
How to explain something he didn’t fully understand himself? “It looked... I don’t know. Interesting. And overgrown and everything, so, lots of good shots.”
“Until you crash through a rotting floor and break your camera. Not to mention your head.”
“I take Lulu with me.”
She shifted her attention to the snoozing dog. “Oh yeah. I see how she’d be a real help.”
“Well, she’s better than Lassie. She only helped when Timmy fell down a well. Anything else and the kid was out of luck.”
A smothered snicker was his reward. He suspected she would have gone full-out guffaw if she hadn’t felt obliged to lecture him.
Sure enough, her next sentence continued the warnings.
“Seriously, Xander. You really shouldn’t go there. Not alone, at least.”
“I’m careful.”
“Really.”
She didn’t have to say it. He could see the question in her mind, as clear as if he had developed abilities he didn’t believe in: As careful as you were when you broke the law?
Or maybe that was just his brain filling in the words his mother would say if she knew about his explorations.
“Well,” she said, turning back to the photo, “I guess I can’t be too hard on you, seeing as I like this so much. But don’t go again, okay?”
“Would you worry?”
Not a good question. He knew it. But damn it, a man needed some kind of clue.
“Of course. You’re my friend. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” She reached for the door and tossed a grin over her shoulder. “Especially when I might need you to give my résumé another tweak.”
“I feel so used.”
“You should.”
He should also feel a lot less excited at the prospect.
But he knew that wasn’t happening.
* * *
SHE WAS ALMOST home free.
Heather waited at the door to the garage while Xander went in to get the bike. Almost done. Just a couple more minutes and she would be riding old Johnny back to her place, her legs settling into the familiar tempo and the river breeze in her hair.
Except her pulse had fallen into a totally different rhythm. And no breeze could cool the low-level heat that had built inside her throughout her time at Xander’s table.
She had hoped—prayed—that heading outside, away from the potent blend of privacy and proximity, would slap some sense into her. But then she had seen the photo, whispering to her about hidden treasures begging to be uncovered. And then he had brushed past her on the way into the garage, and all the little hairs on her arm had stood up.
And now she couldn’t see anything but him.
The way his T-shirt hugged the muscles in his arms and chest when he picked up the bike with ease. The little bit of skin she could see when the shirt pulled away from his jeans, revealing what she was pretty sure was a tattoo. Either that or Cady had attacked him with Magic Markers.
But that was as far as she was going to explore. He was pushing the bike toward her. At any moment, he would emerge from the garage, and she would ride off into the sunshine alone.
Except when he glanced her way, he stopped walking.
And when she met his gaze, she stopped breathing.
For one crazy moment, she couldn’t move. Except—no. She could.
The wrong way.
Her stupid foot had inched her forward. Into the garage. Into the shadows. Away from the world.
Closer to Xander.
She had taken one full step before it registered. She took another while her body was catching up to her brain.
Then she took a deep breath and slammed into a wall of common sense.
“Here. I can get it.” She walked briskly toward the bike, took up residence on the opposite side from him and gripped the handlebars.
Except he didn’t let go.
And damn, she could feel every breath he took, all through her.
“Heather...”
She had to get out. Now.
“Thanks for all your help,” she said, and pushed the bike out the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”
HEATHER’S FAVORITE COUNSELOR once told her that sooner or later, everybody screwed up. The real test of character was in what they did next.
Which was why Heather spent the following week staying far, far away from anyplace where she might possibly run into Xander.
Because a woman who was trying to convince her ex to even up the custody arrangement—a woman who wanted to make sure her child had a solid, stable life—probably shouldn’t find herself remembering the sound of a man’s laughter long after it had burst out of him. Even if—especially if—that woman hadn’t laughed with a man in a long, long time.
So a week after she submitted the résumé, when she received a request for an interview, she tamped down the urge to call him with the news. Email would be fine. And a couple of hours later when a call came in from his number, she deliberately let it go to voice mail.
The best thing she could do—for herself, for Millie, for Xander, too—would be to keep him on the fringes of her life.
To keep him as a satellite.
What she really needed to do was make a plan. She had raced home from work as fast as traffic would allow, made herself a grilled cheese sandwich and settled in at her kitchen table with her laptop and a notebook. Step one was to review the materials that had accompanied the email.
The selection process will go as follows:
Qualified applicants will have one month to prepare a sample plan for a community celebration.