forties or early fifties. She has tanned skin, as if she spends a lot of time outdoors, and light blonde hair with small streaks of gray. Her face is scrunched together with concern, emphasizing her wrinkles. She is beautiful. Her aged appearance gives off an aura of wisdom and for that, I immediately trust her. My eyes don’t stay on her for long though, because I am drawn to the man standing behind her, looking at me closely.
He looks like he walked straight out of photo shoot for GQ. Looking to be above six feet tall, he stands almost a whole foot above than me. His arms are crossed in front of his chest emphasizing his muscular physique. He has dark, shaggy brown hair that shines under the dulled light of the store. My hand instantly itches to reach out and touch it—to push the long ends out of his eyes. My eyes slowly travel down from his hair to his eyes.
When our eyes connect, my stomach tightens. There is something mesmerizing about his eyes. The color maybe? He stares back at me with deep emerald eyes; the color of the leaves in the fall, right before they begin to change colors. I swallow audibly and try to clear the fog in my mind. He is gorgeous and I can’t stop staring at him. It takes everything in me not to let out a girly sigh at the attractiveness of this man. Talk about awkward…
“Ryanne?” he asks. “Ryanne Arden?”
His deep voice breaks my trance. Dang, even his voice is hot. Why didn’t I notice that before? Blinking rapidly, I look away. He looks familiar. I rack my brain trying to recognize him. I must have a look of confusion on my face, because the corner of his full mouth rises slightly as if I had said something funny.
“How do you know my name?” I ask slowly trying to keep my obvious embarrassment out of my voice.
“We go to the same school.” His straightforward answer baffles me. I know that I would have recognized him had I seen him at school. When I continue watching him, he starts smiling at me—a full-blown smile that would cause any grown woman to stop in her tracks and gawk. Averting my eyes, I stare down at the patterned carpet. I can’t think straight with him looking at me like that.
Fidgeting in my chair, the only response I can come up with is, “Oh.” I’m not very attentive in school, but I hope that I would have recognized this totally gorgeous guy if I had seen him before. I can’t be that out of it all the time, right?
Outside, the storm begins to pick up again. Loud thunder sounds, shaking the windows of the old shop. Startled, I jump and look out the window, watching the heavy rain flood the street. The sudden movement and loud noise causes my headache to worsen. I hear the woman talking, but I can’t tear my eyes from the window. The weather has been very capricious lately.
Feeling someone tap my leg, I jerk my eyes away from the window and look at the woman crouching in front of me. “Sorry, what?”
Slightly amused, she repeats, “Why didn’t you move when you saw the car coming?”
“I tried, but I couldn’t. I felt like I was frozen.”
Colton gives me a look that I can’t decipher. “Then how did you end up…not…getting hit?”
With a sigh, I turn and look out the window again. “I don’t know. One second I was looking at the car coming towards me, thinking that I was about to die, and the next second I was on the other side of the road.” I turn and look back at them, debating on whether or not I want to tell them. “This is going to sound crazy, but I think the wind pushed me.”
They both look at each other briefly and then turn back towards me, “The wind?”
“Yeah, right before the car was going to hit me there was a huge gust of wind. I felt like I had been picked up and blown to the…” Judging by their facial expressions, they both think I’m going insane. “You know what? Never mind, forget I said anything.”
“No, dear, we believe you.”
“You do?”
She reaches out and puts her hand on my knee. “This town is full of unexplainable things. Not everything is as it seems.”
“Wh—”
While I try to respond, Colton throws the woman an enigmatic expression. “Well, I have to be getting