AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Joselyn made it nearly three blocks away from the restaurant before she had to pull her car over— hands shaking, heart racing— and catch her breath. She couldn’t believe that she had nearly let herself kiss Marcus. Yes, she had felt the growing attraction between her and Marcus over the past few weeks—they were working together closely and seeing each other practically every day.
But she knew what could happen if they dated. Back when they were in high school, neither of them had been shy about voicing their opinions before they started dating or during, and they didn’t always agree with each other, of course. It hadn’t bothered her that they didn’t agree— in fact, she’d kind of enjoyed the challenge of defending her opinions.
Then she read a teen magazine with a quiz in it to see if the guy you were dating had long-term relationship potential. To see if you were “soul mates.” She had taken the quiz and had frozen when she got to the part that said, “How often do you disagree?” She and Marcus talked about big topics every day, and even if they agreed on the big parts, there were always parts where they hadn’t, so she marked “daily.”
And because of that, their relationship “failed” the test. She remembered the results saying something likeThings between the two of you might be fun for now, but soul mates, you are not. Save yourself from future heartbreak and end things.
Like an inexperienced, naive teenager, she’d believed the quiz and ended things with Marcus. Yes, the kissing had been great. Everything had been great. Well, everything but the constant guilt that came from sneaking around and breaking the promise they’d made to Everett and Kennon. And why carry that guilt if the relationship was doomed anyway?
It hadn’t taken a lot of time before she could look back on the situation and see how ridiculous and wrong the quiz had been, but at the time, she hadn’t had enough dating experience to know that.
She had always assumed that she and Marcus would take a break for a while and then get back together. It wasMarcus, after all. A part of her had always known that if “soul mates” was a real thing and not just a romantic fantasy, then she and Marcus were it, regardless of what the magazine said.
But then he left. Ran away. For a full two months, she didn’t see a glimpse of him. She had lost her boyfriend and a family member when they broke up, and those two months had been the most difficult of her life. Her best friend at the time, Addison, told her that all breakups were painful and that she would be fine after a week or two.
But looking back now, with a decade of dating and boyfriends and breakups in the mix, still nothing compared to that breakup with Marcus. Any thoughts she’d had of them eventually getting back together had fled when he did. She had known even back then that she would never be able to recover from a breakup with Marcus again.
So, when he left, she learned how to not let feelings for him work their way in. Once he came back, she learned pretty quickly how to trap them behind a steel door.
Not only would it be too painful to ever date him again, but he was also Everett’s and Kennon’s best friend. Her entire family accepted him as one of their own. Of all the people in the world she could possibly date, he was the one person she couldn’t. Ever.
They had spent plenty of time with each other in the past ten years, and nothing had happened between them. It had to have been the ice cream’s fault. It was too good, too creamy, too sweet, too delicious, too perfect. Combine that with being inches away from the very good-smelling, very muscular, very handsome man who made the ice cream, and of course, an accident happened. Or a near-accident. It was situational, that was all.
She was just going to have to make sure she didn’t end up being in that situation in the future. He didn’t need her there to make the ice cream— he just wanted her opinion on tasting it.
She could do that.
If she wasn’t tasting it after seeing the man so at home in a kitchen and so passionate about what he was creating, she would be fine.
Just fine.
* * *
Joselyn got stuck in a marketing strategy meeting at work, and by the time she made the hour-and-twenty-minute drive from her work to Nestled Hollow, she was late and Marcus was already at the Elsmore Construction offices. He must have seen her pull up because he was holding the door to the building open for her when she stepped out of her car.
He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved blue thermal shirt that she had seen him wear a million times. Why did he look so good in it this time? He had been a broad-shouldered, big-muscles kind of guy for most of his life, so it wasn’t the way those muscles showed as his arm was outstretched toward the door, the rest of his body leaning with casual confidence. The guy smiled so much he probably smiled in his sleep, so it wasn’t the way happiness at seeing her spread across his face.
It was probably because of the sun. The way it hung low and golden in the sky and reflected off the snow, bathing him in warmth. That was all it was. Ambient lighting.
He’d been wary the first time they’d met again after she very nearly kissed him, and she probably was, too— it had been hard to tell through the awkward feelings that were trying to force themselves center stage. But they were both quite well practiced at how to act around one another after they had been kissing as teens before their breakup, so being around each other after not kissing as adults was no big deal. It didn’t matter that she was now trying to act that way when she had newfound feelings for him sneaking their way in. She could pretend with the best of them, so things had settled into a more normal state over the past three days.
Besides, she expected those feelings toward him to go away any day now. “Hi,” she said as she neared Marcus, in a pretty convincing things-are-perfectly-normal voice, if she did say so herself. She was glad she had said the word when she did because as she walked past where he stood to hold the door for her, close enough to brush against him and definitely close enough to smell the crisp cleanness of his laundry detergent, she wasn’t sure she could’ve even said a simple two letter word correctly.
She smiled at the contractor and reached out to shake his hand. “I apologize for being late. I hope I didn’t throw your schedule off. I’m Joselyn Zimmerman.”
“Nate Elsmore. And not at all— Marcus and I were just chatting about Nestled Hollow High.”
She knew that the contractor had grown up in Nestled Hollow and had recently moved back, and she knew that his parents owned Elsmore Market, but she hadn’t remembered him specifically. She was just glad that there was now a contractor who was based in Nestled Hollow.
“He was three years ahead of me in school,” Marcus said, “but he remembers me.”
“Mostly,” Nate said as he motioned them to a round table with building plans on top. “I was just telling Marcus that I was surprised to see him come through my door because when you had called and set up the appointment for Marcus Williams, the name hadn’t seemed familiar. We didn’t know each other too well, but I had honestly thought his last name was Zimmerman.”
Joselyn laughed right along with them. Marcus was beefy and dark-haired and Everett and Kennon had more lean frames and sandy-blonde hair. Even though they didn’t look alike and the likelihood of three brothers from the same family being in the same grade was minuscule, people still somehow always thought that they were brothers.
Nate had already printed out building schematics on the large paper, and as the three of them sat around where it was spread on the table, he started pointing out the building dimensions and where the front and back doors and windows were.
“I took the information that Joselyn sent me from your designer and you can see I’ve marked all of that in here. You’ve got your front counter and freezer case to display your ice cream flavors going in here, and your flow of customers will be right through here, so you’ll have this space for tables and chairs. Now I’ve got your kitchen plans marked here— are you wanting a wall along here to separate it from the front of your store?”
