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She could no longer delay getting out of the truck to face her fate. The dogs were in doggy daycare today, so she couldn’t even use them as a diversion. A few words out of his mouth and she would know whether or not he’d found and read the letter, right? Maybe he was even accustomed to women professing their admiration of him and this would be no big deal. They could laugh about it! And then she could go home, curl up, and die.
Hallie alighted from the truck on shaky legs, lowering the rear gate.
“Need some help?” he called.
Did he mean the psychiatric kind? If so, that would indicate he’d read her confession.
Hallie peeked over her shoulder to find him coming toward her with his usual commanding grace, expression inscrutable. Even in her nervous state, every step this man took in her direction turned a screw in a different location. Deep, deep in her belly. Between her legs. Just above the notch at the center of her collarbone. Was her distress obvious to the naked eye? It didn’t appear so, since he continued to come closer instead of calling an ambulance.
As soon as she was alone with her phone, she would google, How Horny is Too Horny? Those search results ought to be interesting.
“Hi, Julian,” she sang. Too loudly.
“Hello, Hallie,” Julian said seriously, scrutinizing her closely. Wondering if she was the secret admirer? Or perhaps being fully aware of it already? For all she knew, she’d signed her actual name at the bottom. “What are you planting today?”
Oh. Oh, sweet relief. The wind blew the letter away.
Either that or he was being extremely kind.
Those were the only two options. Obviously he wasn’t interested in her now, thanks to the sloppy admission. This man would only respond to a sophisticated approach to romance. A colleague introducing him to a young professional at a gala. Something like that. Not a spewing of infatuation scrawled in the back of a spiral notebook. And that was fine, because they’d agreed to be friends, right? Yes. Friends. So thank God for the Napa winds.
“Your mother asked for color, so we’re going with some flannel bush,” Hallie said. “Those are the yellow flowered plants you see in the bed of my truck. I’m going to come back tomorrow with some Blackbeard Penstemon, too.”
“This is going to be an ongoing, long-term project.” He nodded once. “I see.”
“Yes.” The tightness at the corners of his mouth made her heart sink down to her knees. “I know you’re working. I won’t make a lot of noise.”
He nodded again. The wind tripped around them, blowing a curl across her mouth, and he surprised Hallie by reaching for it. She held her breath, lungs seizing almost painfully, but he stopped, drawing his hand back at the last second and shoving it into his pocket with a low curse. “And what are we going to do about you?”
Breathe before you pass out. “Me?”
“Yes.” That word hung so long in the air, she swore she could see the outline of those three letters. Y-E-S. “You’re more . . . disruptive to me than the dogs,” he said, almost so quietly that she didn’t hear him. “Hallie.”
That grinding snap of her name was the equivalent of fingertips raking downward over her breasts. Was he admitting to being attracted to her? Like, out loud? Between that and him almost touching one of her curls, she was in imminent danger of passing out from sheer shock and happiness. “I can’t do anything about that. Sorry,” she whispered. “However, I am not sorry that I spent last night watching Time Martians On. So, you really believe the government is hiding an entire extraterrestrial colony in New Mexico?”
“I do not believe any such thing,” he murmured, leaning closer. So close she was beginning to grow dizzy. “As I said, they were very liberal with the editing button.”
“You’re definitely on a watch list, nonetheless,” she breathed.
He hummed in his throat. “Did it . . . make you smile? Watching the documentary?”
How could one man be so magnetic? “So much that my face hurt afterward.”
A muscle popped in the history professor’s cheek. His right hand flexed at his side. And then he forcibly withdrew from the intimacy of their conversation. So abruptly that she almost staggered under the sudden absence of it. “Good.” He looked back toward the house, speaking after a few beats of silence. “I apologize for my mood. My sister, Natalie, has become my new roommate. At this rate, maybe it would be better if I rented office space in town.”
She swallowed her disappointment. “Maybe it would be.”
His attention slid down to her mouth and away, leaving her pulse rapping in her temples. Drunk or not, she’d meant every word of her letter. Her attraction to Julian Vos was twice as potent as before, when he’d been just a memory. A two-dimensional person on the internet. Then he’d gone and delivered a top-notch prank call and saved her from the Tweed Twit. Now she couldn’t stop wondering what else he was hiding under the surface.
