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The man was at my side in an instant, helping me up from the ground. “Are you alright…”
My bare hand was in his, my glove hanging from my wrist by its elasticized string. “Julia.” I met his eyes but realized that they now looked green.
“Julia.” He smiled and gently took the goggles off my face and slid them onto my helmet. “Maybe wait until you get outside to put these on.”
The shop kid was already folding the t-shirts. “L-l-l-let me help you,” I stammered.
“I’ve got this. It’s giving me something to do. I’m bored out of my mind in here until the lifts start running.”
The man with the great ass and the blue eyes had disappeared again, and this time I’d had the perfect opportunity to get his name, and instead, I’d made a complete fool out of myself.
ChapterThree
My daydream was interrupted by a machine gun-style knock on the front door. I took a sip of my tea—it was cold. How long had I been thinking about those blue eyes from my past?
I pulled back the curtain on the front door to see a beautiful woman standing on my doorstep—she looked like a mixture of a Viking woman and Taylor Swift, and her hair was so blonde it was almost white. I opened the door. “Hi?”
“Julia?” She held out her hand. “I’m Serena. Charlotte asked me to come by to make sure that you’re getting settled in okay. Would you like to go for a coffee?”
I glanced into the house where my cold tea sat on the counter and all of a sudden, even though the fire was crackling in the fireplace, the house felt cold and lonely. “I would love a coffee.” I glanced at my watch, wondering if it was too early for a drink.
Serena must have been a mind reader. “Or a glass of wine or two?” She smiled and pumped her eyebrows at me.
“Now we’re talking. Let me grab my coat.” I checked the fire and pulled on a knee-length down coat and a hat.
Serena and I bonded almost instantly on the short walk from Sycamore to Main Street. Snow crunched under our feet and the tree boughs hung heavily with snow over our heads. “Did you grow up here?” I asked as we rounded the corner and were met with the only set of stoplights in town.
“Oh, my God no.” Serena laughed. “Although, I shouldn’t say it like that. I think this would’ve been a great place to grow up. I was a full-on city girl, but I fell in love with a Rapidian.”
“A Rapidian?”
“That’s the endearing term for someone who lives here.” She stopped and held up her mitten, “But, you have to have lived here for a while before you can call yourself a Rapidian. They get weird about that.”
“Are you… one?” Serena looked like she’d stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine.
“Not yet.” She smiled. “Maybe if I give birth to one, they’ll give me an honorary title.” She laughed.
“What about Charlotte?” I asked. Charlotte gave off a sophisticated city girl vibe—especially with her understated designer clothes and her car.
“Born and bred Rapidian.”
“What?” I stopped in my tracks, literally. It had snowed at least six inches and our footprints were quickly getting filled in behind us. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.” Serena put her hands in the pocket of her purple down jacket and kept walking. “She’s one of the local success stories. I mean, she left and came back, but she’s one of the wealthiest women in the state, on her own. Although, it doesn’t hurt her net worth that she married a retired hockey star named Logan Brush.”
“I’ve heard of him.” I had to jog a little to keep up with Serena’s supermodel stride. We walked past a quaint flower shop and the woman inside paused from behind a bouquet of roses to wave.
“That’s Emma.” Serena waved back. “Her boyfriend Charlie owns the Beardog Brewpub.” We walked past the coffee shop where a pretty woman was washing the windows. “That’s Meghan.” As though Meghan heard us, she waved through the window.
“Do you know everyone in this town?” I had grown up in Brooklyn and hadn’t spent any time in a small town. I had formed my perception of living in a place with a population under five thousand based solely on Christmas movies where the city girl falls in love with a guy in a plaid shirt. Walking the street with Serena, it felt surreal, like I’d been transported back in time to a place where people knew everyone and where eye contact with strangers was a thing. Not only eye contact, Serena waved and smiled at everyone she saw.
Serena gave a light shrug. “Almost everyone. Freddie, my fiancé, is a Rapidian, and Logan Brush’s younger brother. EVERYONE knows the Brush brothers.” She groaned and laughed at the same time. “It’s a real community here. Everyone looks out for each other, which is a good thing—but it also means that everyone is in everyone’s business. For example…” She wrapped her arm over my shoulders. “Guaranteed there are rumors about why you’re in town.”
“But I just got here.”
She held open the door to the Beardog Brewery. “That’s how small-town gossip works.”
I stepped into a modern pub with high ceilings and an exposed brick wall. A floor-to-ceiling glass wall showed off the huge metal casks—the beer was brewed onsite. It was like it had been plucked out of the city and dropped into Chance Rapids.
