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I rang the doorbell, which made the dog bark even louder. He appeared in the side window, a grey German Shepherd with hazel eyes. When he saw me, he immediately sat on his haunches and waited patiently.
“Aren’t you a good boy?” I whispered, bent down to peer through the glass. I put my hand on the deck railing to steady myself, and noticed a lush white towel hanging over the edge. I wonder what that’s for.
Nobody came to the door, so I knocked. After a few more seconds, I cupped my hands to the window. Just our luck—the owner wasn’t here.
“Can I help you?” a man behind me asked.
I turned to face the man who had spoken, and did a double-take.
Jack freaking Franco.
6
Alyssa
Jack Franco stood by the mailbox of the house, wearing only a pair of skin-tight black swim trunks that went halfway down to his knees. Beads of moisture covered his body. His sandy-blond hair was so wet it looked dark, and a narrow stream of water was running down his neck and across his chest. The moisture accentuated his sun-kissed skin and muscles, and there was a lot to accentuate. Veins bulged out of his thick forearms and hands like they were trying to escape. The corded lines of muscle in his shoulders hinted, nay shouted, about functional strength. He was panting with effort, which made every one of the abdominal muscles in his six-pack ripple in the afternoon light.
Oh my God, I couldn’t help but think. He didn’t look like this at the fire station yesterday.
He stopped short when he recognized me. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
I shook off my daze and pointed around the corner. “We…”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” Jack’s face twisted in a snarl, and his piercing blue eyes were full of fire. “If you’ve come to thank me again for the fire, or to apologize for what you did the last time we saw each other eight years ago, I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. It’s too late, Alyssa.”
The ferocity of his speech took me aback, and I stood there on his porch like an idiot.
Brandi came around the corner and immediately began laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this your place?”
Although Jack reacted with anger at seeing me, Brandi caught him off guard. His eyes widened and he looked back and forth between us.
“We’re renting your guest house,” I explained.
His shoulders slumped like he had just finished a long sprint. Or maybe a long swim, based on what he was wearing. “God damnit.”
“I always knew this was a small town,” Brandi said, still laughing. “But I never realized it was this small!”
“This is all a big misunderstanding,” I said, exiting his porch. “We’ll cancel our booking and find another place.”
“We will?” Brandi asked.
“Come on. The sooner we’re gone, the better.”
Brandi followed me back to the car while scrolling on her phone. “If we cancel the booking now, they’ll take the deposit.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s eight hundred dollars, Alyssa.”
I froze with my hand on the car door. “What!”
“The guest house costs two hundred bucks a night, give or take. I booked it for a week. If you really want to cancel, that’s fine, but…”
I hesitated. I couldn’t afford that right now. I had expected to pay for a single night in a hotel and spend the rest of the time staying at our mother’s house. I was lucky that Brandi was offering to pay for everything so far.
“Did you search me out?” Jack suddenly asked. He had followed us down the driveway, and was standing ten feet behind us with the towel draped over his shoulders. Somehow, that only accentuated the parts of his body that I could still see. “Did you plan all of this, or is it all just a crazy coincidence?”
“Why would I plan this?” I replied.
