is curl up on the oversized couch in my townhouse living room with the most recent romance novel I checked out. Now, it looks like I’ll be waiting for a tow truck instead of pulling on yoga pants.
The sky splits in a flash of light, right down the center, and not three seconds later does a boom from the heavens seem to shake the earth below my tires. The rain is threatening, and I dig in my bag for my phone to call Johnny at the garage I regularly use in Fawn Hill.
But the line just rings and rings, and either he’s talking to every single resident of my small hometown, or I’m out of range. It’s probably the latter, and I have to suck in a shaky breath to keep from crying.
Today has been trying. This week has been trying. Hell, the last ten years of my life have been trying. That’s just how it goes when you are nowhere near where you expected to be at this age. At one time in my life, I thought by twenty-eight, I’d be married with two children, watching from the stands as the only man I ever loved—
I have to mentally shut the images flooding my brain down. Now the tears do come, sharp and brutal, stinging my face just as equally as they’re stinging my heart. How, after all these years, I can still be such a mess over him … it’s the cruelest act of fate I’ve ever seen.
But, I’m a big girl now. I have my dream job; I run a local government entity, own my townhouse and have friends who love me for me. And hey, I negotiated with a car salesman last week to get this car down five thousand dollars in price. It may be malfunctioning now, but I’d worked hard to both save for this car and advocate for myself.
So, remembering that, I swallow my emotion and call every garage or tow company within a twenty-five-mile radius. As I dial, the car gets worse; the smoke wafting over the hood and the smell of burning stinging my nostrils. I get out of the car, just in case it blows up, and continue my quest for a tow.
I’m on garage number ten, whose voicemail I get when headlights come beaming in my direction. Another car! Thank heavens. My car broke down on a back road that even locals don’t normally use, but I like the shortcut back from Lancaster … and it’s a bit like driving down memory lane.
The vehicle approaching is a truck, one of those monster things with tires as big as my torso and a bed that you could fit an entire football team into. Nighttime is fast upon us, and I can’t make out the color as dusk sets in, but who cares.
I flag it down, attempting to point to my smoking car just in case the driver doesn’t realize that I’m stranded out here. It’s not likely that anyone from this part of Pennsylvania won’t stop, but occasionally, you’ll get a jerk or two.
The truck slows down, and my heart rate instantly picks up.
Because I know this truck.
Not intimately, it’s been far too long for him to still have the same pickup he drove in high school. But I’ve seen it around town. It haunts my periphery, and whenever I spot it, I try to stay far away from it.
The driver cuts the engine, and then there he is. Climbing out in all of his giant, muscled glory.
My knees go weak, my mouth runs dry, my heart shakes unsteadily.
Bowen Nash has always been the most gorgeous male specimen in my opinion; I never could take my eyes off of him. From the first time I saw him my freshman year of high school, the big, bad baseball-playing sophomore whose smile could charm a viper … every other guy ceased to exist.
But at this moment? He was a man in every sense of the word. And my lord, no man had ever done it better.
Broad, muscled shoulders led to arms thickly roped with hard-earned biceps and forearms. His chest alone was probably as long as my wingspan, and it led to a tapered waist where I imagined the steel-cut abs were smattered with hair darker than the close-cut fade that adorned his head. Not that I’d seen them in a very long time, but …
Now he’s walking toward me, those massive, sculpted thighs pressing against the fabric of his jeans as