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She blinked. “Where?”
“Here.”Spreading his arms out, he stepped back onto the sidewalk. “The night you lost your cat. I was supposed to be in San Francisco for a meeting with one of the Oceanview investors. But his flight from Seattle was delayed, and he texted me to reschedule. So I drove down here a day early. Mrs. Higgins didn’t have an upstairs room ready, so she asked if I’d stay in the Rosebud Room for one night. There arefiverooms and a guest cottage at the Outside Inn.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“There was a one in six chance that she’d put me in that room.” He strode a few paces, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Given everything else that had to happen, I don’t even know what the chances were of me being here on the night that your cat escaped. Much less the chances of Porkchop taking cover right under my window. Or of me even hearing you because I was going to take a shower and decided to answer an email first, which was the only reason I was sitting at the desk, which just happens to be next to the window. If I’d been in the shower, I wouldn’t have heard you.”
Not a coincidence.
“Hunter.”
He stopped and looked at her, his eyes dark. “I don’t believe in fate.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Or in luck or destiny or any of that crap.” A glower descended over his face. “I believe in hard work and rational thinking.”
“So do I.”
“Then how do you explainthis?” He gestured abruptly between them, his glower deepening.
“I also believe that not everything can be explained.” Aria approached him, her breathing shallow. “And that everything you just said means youweresupposed to be in the Rosebud Room at the exact moment that Porkchop and I showed up. If you hadn’t been, I never would have caught him. I wouldn’t have climbed through the window of your room. You wouldn’t have kissed me. Ever.”
“And you wouldn’t have thrown off my plans,” he retorted. “I plan for everything in life. When I was a kid, I wanted a life that was the exact opposite of the shithole I lived in, so I planned my entire future. I have schedules, timelines, spreadsheets. I have strategies for all possible outcomes. But none of my strategies…none…could have prepared me for you.”
Aria swallowed hard, her throat suddenly tight. “Is that a good thing?”
“I’ve always told myself the unexpected is not a good thing.” He studied her. “That’s why I plan.”
“But sometimes you have to change your plans, right?” She felt as if they were poised on the edge of a cliff, primed to leap without knowing what lay at the bottom. “Life doesn’t always go the way we expect it to. Coincidences, fate, serendipity…all of those things affect what wethinkis going to happen or what we expect to happen.”
Hunter reached out to curl a lock of her hair around his finger. He tucked it behind her ear and dropped his hand back to his side.
“I sure as hell didn’t expect you.” He stepped away from her. “Ever. And I have no idea what to do with you now.”
His expression closed off. He turned and walked back to the inn.
