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Chapter 1
Sherry hits the roof when we tell her the news that we’re staying in Salt Gap. Her long braid bounces back and forth as she runs around the front desk at the inn and throws her arms around Miranda and me. Sherry must lift weights in her free time because she squeezes me so hard I have to struggle to breathe.
“You girls are welcome here as long as you’d like,” she says, finally pulling away like a boa constrictor deciding it doesn’t want to eat us.
“I was thinking we should find a more permanent place to live,” I say, realizing that I haven’t been thinking about it at all. And now that I am thinking, where are we going to live?
“Are there any houses for sale?” Miranda asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen any real estate signs, have you?” she asks me. I shake my head. That’s odd. It’s been three days and I haven’t seen a single real estate sign. I would have never believed that a few days ago when my life revolved around real estate. There’s even a stack of Carter Properties signs propped on the wall in my office. Well, my old office.
Sherry thinks on it and shakes her head. “I don’t think Tyler’s houses are finished yet. Darlings, I could drive you around town if you’d like. We can ask around and see if any other homes are available. I have a few hours free on Sunday.”
I gnaw on my bottom lip. “Tyler’s houses?” She can’t possibly mean my Tyler. I mean, that Tyler.
“Tyler Hudson. He bought the duplexes off Shouse Street and he’s been fixin’ them up to rent them out. He’s about your age.” She grabs the inn’s telephone and dials a number from memory. “I don’t think they’re ready yet, but we can—Hello Tyler, this is Sherry.”
Miranda and I exchange glances. The slight cocky expression on her face says I told you this was fate. Sherry’s talking about the goats now and something about how the fainting one keeps getting picked on by an older goat named Maurice.
I clear my throat. She glances at me and then remembers the reason she called him. “Listen, Tyler, I have a question. Are any of your duplexes ready to be rented out?”
Miranda and I listen with so much anticipation we could hear a pin drop. Sherry nods and says a few uh-huhs. “It’s these two darlings from Houston. They keep their room real clean here so I know they would make great tenants. Mmhmm. Yes, her name is Robin and the girl’s name is Miranda. Oh?” She glances at us and I feel my face turn thoroughly red. “You’ve already met them! That’s lovely. Okay, well I’ll tell her. Okay dear, buh-bye.”
The phone clicks back onto the receiver and I’m pretty sure my heart stops. “He says one of the duplexes is almost ready to rent if you’d like to swing by and see it.”
“When?” I ask, my voice light like I hadn’t remembered to breathe in the last few minutes.
“Now. Or whenever. He’s there all day.” Sherry takes a piece of stationery out of a drawer and starts drawing a map. When she hands it to me, it looks like a capital letter H. “Here we are here, at the square,” she says pointing to the obvious inn-shaped square with the initials SGI written on it. “Now the quickest way is to go down here, take a left, and take another left. Sure, you could go this way but it’s twenty miles an hour speed limits and too many stop signs.”
“Thanks, this is great,” I say. Then my heart sinks. “Wait, I don’t have a car yet.”
“I’ll call Marcus,” Miranda says. “He’ll take us.” She reaches her arm around me and grabs my phone out of my back pocket. I make a mental note as her hand grabs my ass, to get her a new charger for her phone. Whatever it costs, it’ll be worth it. Then she proceeds to do the one arm in the air salute to the signal gods as she walks around the room, hoping for that one precious bar.
Ten minutes later, Marcus wears black Salt Gap High School sweatpants, no shirt and is sitting in his truck ready to give us a ride. Miranda lets out a breath of air when she pulls open the passenger door and I’m thinking the same thing. Only I’m ten years older than he is, so that’s totally inappropriate. But the boy’s got abs and, I mean, they should be appreciated. From a safe, legal distance of course.
“Are you in track or something?” Miranda asks, commenting on his pants.
“Yes ma’am,” he says with a wink. “Six minute mile.” He throws his arm over her shoulder to look back as he reverses out of the inn’s small driveway. “Where am I taking y’all?”
I’m not sure I like the whole arm-around-my-pregnant-niece thing, but I let it slide. Unfolding my hand drawn map, I hold it up for him to see. “Um, we’re going to this intersection, then taking a left and another left. It’s called Shouse Street.
He laughs, not looking at my directions. “Okay, can do. Tyler’s place?”
“Er, yeah.” I roll my eyes at Miranda’s not-so-subtle attempt to give me the look again. The look about fate and destiny and all that. “We’re headed to the duplexes actually. He’s going to rent one to us.”
“No shit?” Marcus says as a big Texas-sized grin spreads across his face. “You guys staying for a while or something?”
“Yep,” Miranda beams.
“Or something is more like it,” I add.
Miranda tells him not to worry about me. Right, because I forgot that she’s running the show now. Hell. I don’t know. Maybe she is.
Shouse Street is a dead end road with two duplex homes on each side. The two on the left are in terrible condition, missing windows, plywood doors, and old chipped paint. But the two on the right are beautiful, remodeled cottage-style homes. A newer model black Ford truck is parked in the yard of the first one and that’s where Marcus parks too, only he stays in the driveway. So Tyler drives a shiny new truck? I don’t know why I find that so ridiculously sexy, but I do. Not that it matters.
Not that any guy matters.
My knees go wobbly as I pull open the door and climb out onto the gravel. Tyler is here and I’ll see him soon. And he’ll make yet another impression of me as he shows us this house that I already know I’m going to love. Maybe this is fate.
“Yo!” Marcus calls out with his hands cupped over his mouth. “I got some pretty ladies lookin’ for a place to stay!”
Miranda giggles. Of course she would. We walk up to the front porch, which smells like new lumber and has a porch swing and a brand new Welcome mat at the door. The price tag still hangs off the side of the mat. Marcus swings open the front door and steps inside without knocking. Miranda is right at his heels and I lag along behind, realizing that the moment I step through this door is the moment my life will change forever.
Okay, so it doesn’t actually change. I step from the white porch into the dark cherry wood floors and nothing at all happens. I don’t hear angels singing and I don’t get a warm rush of fate sweeping over me or anything. It’s just like stepping into any other empty house that’s on the market
, ready for me to make it sell.
It has that recently remodeled smell that I love so much. “This is great,” I say, leaving my mouth open in awe as I take in the granite kitchen countertops and reclaimed wooden cabinets. I find Miranda and Marcus sitting together on the bay window in a bedroom. The master bedroom, by the looks of it.
“This is my room,” I say, slapping my hand on the shiny white door frame to claim it.
Miranda rolls her eyes and immediately jumps up like the room is gross now that it’s mine. “I hope we get this place,” she says, wandering into the room down the hall, which to my chagrin is actually bigger and has a better view of the bluebonnets in the back yard. “I wish we knew where your boyfriend was.”
Marcus’s eyes crouch together. “You have a boyfriend?”
“I was talking about Tyler,” Miranda says with a coy smile in my direction. My chest burns with the pain of an embarrassed thumping heart. I could kill her.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I say, keeping my voice bold and confident even though I’m riddled with mortification thanks to her. “I don’t even know this Tyler guy.”
“He owns these houses,” Marcus says. “I don’t know where he is though. Are you sure you were supposed to come over now?”
“That’s not his truck in the driveway?” I ask.
Marcus shakes his head. “Nah, that’s Bryce’s truck. He’s a contractor. I don’t know where he is either, I guess they left together.”
“Guess we’ll have to come back tomorrow,” Miranda says. “Or you could hang out with us for a while and bring us back?”
“Yeah sure, I don’t have any plans,” Marcus says. He offers to show her the bluebonnets and they venture off into the backyard. I watch Miranda through the back windows. Her hair flows lightly in the breeze and she smiles at everything Marcus tells her. She’s happy here. Maybe that’s only because she’s here and not home. I want her to be happy. But I don’t know how long this happiness will last.
I take another tour of the house alone, my fingers clenched nervously at my sides. My heart sinks and I feel like a total idiot for it. Tyler is just some guy who I barely even know, but here I am obsessing over the fact that I don’t get to see him when I was all psyched up for the opportunity. I don’t know what I was thinking would happen. It’s not like he’d take one look at me, declare his undying love and sweep me off to live happily ever after with him. And I don’t even want that. So why the hell do I keep thinking about it?
But… this is a fate journey after all. So, I guess anything is possible. To avoid daydreaming about Tyler like my life is a romance novel, my mind goes into automatic realtor mode without my realizing it. One kitchen wall doesn’t have a strip of floor molding and there’s a hanging wire by the back door. Also, a nail sticks out a little too far in the door frame.
And someone didn’t align the over-the-stove cabinets correctly because this one on the left is slightly lower than the right. I have to use a lot of force to pull it open because it’s not attached perfectly straight. Plus it’s reclaimed wood, which is beautiful in its own right but a total bitch to get right when crafting into cabinets. People pay a lot of money for this kind of detail in Houston. But I bet it’s common out here in the country.
I have to stand on my tip toes to shove the little cabinet door closed. It needs to be lifted on the end and shoved at exactly the right moment and—there! Got it.
“Something wrong with the cabinet?” The voice makes me jump in an embarrassing flinching move that has me pulling the cabinet door back open after it was finally shut.
“Crap!” I squeak, my voice high-pitched as I spin around and see Tyler standing in the kitchen, looking so ridiculously hot that he probably just came back from a photo shoot for the cover of a romance novel called something like The Construction Worker Next Door.
