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With its remote location and artificially low GDP, their small town in Wyoming could only be seen by many as a place to visit but never to stay in. Moreover, with signal jammers secretly installed to keep the place free from the shackles of the Internet, Hartland also allowed Thornton and his brothers to lead ordinary, private lives and never be pestered by the assholes, gold-diggers, and sycophants that were steadily gobbling up the cities.
There were still times, of course, when annoying tourists would find their way to his bookstore, but since they rarely stayed long, Thornton was able to tolerate their presence. It was only when he received Oliver’s letter about a Hollywood crew filming in Hartland for three months that he knew he had to make a few changes.
The rules of Hartland Initiative were clear: in any situation where the truth about their precious town was in danger of being exposed, members were given two choices: leave until it was safe to return…or stay in character and play their respective roles to perfection until countermeasures had been put into place.
According to the local grapevine, Slade and Farica, co-owners of the Redwood Cafe, had already flown out of Wyoming. The American tycoon had taken with him his part-time waitress girlfriend Kady for a honeymoon (never mind if they weren’t married) while the Dutch heiress had simply left a few days earlier for a scheduled business trip.
Thornton knew he could do the same. He just didn’t want to. But at the same time, he also knew he still had to play by the rules. If filming were to take place at his street, and any of the crew members or even the cast decided to enter the shop…
Just thinking about it had been enough to have Thornton call Oliver’s office to take the other man’s offer. He definitely needed a shop assistant to take over during those crucially intolerable times. That way, he wouldn’t need to control his temper and force himself to bear the presence of fools. And since the mayor’s secretary, Frankie, was supposed to be extremely reliable and resourceful, he had been hoping that the recruitment process would be quick and painless.
Instead, it had been the opposite.
All the women Frankie had him interview were terrified of him, and Thornton hadn’t the patience to wait for them to realize he wasn’t quite the hardened brute his gruff demeanor made him out to be. He had been close to throwing the towel on the whole thing altogether when Frankie suggested one last candidate, and one she personally vouched for to boot.
Blake Golding.
The moment he heard the name, he had instructed Frankie to offer the person an employment contract, thinking that Blake was a bloke…
But obviously, she was not.
Instead, she was this petite brunette with a smile that lit up her entire face. The whole time they had been talking, her smile hadn’t slipped a single time, and it was this which threw him off. For the first time in years, he found himself perplexed, off-kilter even, and when she suddenly gasped—
“Oh my gosh.”
A rapid rewind of their entire encounter blitzed through his mind, but for the life of him, Thornton couldn’t figure out what the girl was oh-my-goshing about.
“I just realized why your voice sounds so familiar…” Eyes sparkling with merriment lifted up to his. “Has anyone told you how much you sound like John Wick?”
Thornton just stared at her, but this didn’t seem to faze her at all.
“It’s like every sentence you drop comes with a serious amount of gravitas,” she told him helpfully.
“Really.”
The girl was already grinning even before he was done speaking. “See?” she pointed out with a cheeky grin. “You just did it again!”
Thornton frowned. “Did what?”
“That! A normal person would’ve said it like this – did what?”
Thornton winced. Those last two words had been uttered in a somewhat shrill, questioning tone that hurt his ears.
“But when you say it, it’s like did what.” This time, she intoned the words in a deep, grave voice like…
Thornton frowned. No. This girl’s insanity was obviously contagious. She almost had him convinced he really did sound like John Wick.
Which he did not, he thought forcefully.
“I see it in your eyes,” she teased. “You see it now, don’t you?”
“No,” he rejected flatly. “I don’t.” He punctuated his words with a cold, hard stare, but instead of having her run away like most others did, she just kept grinning and talking, enumerating all the ways he resembled a certain fictional assassin.
Thornton was incredulous. And amazed. Maybe she was a little dense, maybe it was something else, but either way it didn’t matter. This girl was not scared of him at all, and while it was unfortunate that she had to be female, he could work with that.
“…and don’t even get me started on your beard, Mr. Blackwood. It’s as if your barber—”
