AllFreeNovel
Share Us
No sign of Hunter the Englishman.
Ah well.
Good thing I didn’t get my hopes up. Best to expect nothing when it comes to men.
I reach around the wooden clown cutout to wipe some blueberries from my eyebrow.
Gross.
Just a few more minutes then I can head home, enjoy a hot shower, and watch a flick before I take off tomorrow to meet my sister in LA. I’ll spend the week traveling with Amy and her kids. She and her hubs recently split, so we plan to hit up the amusement parks along the coast during the day, then drink wine and toast good riddance to jackwads when her kids go to bed.
Except, her ex isn’t a jackwad, but that’s a story for another time and another bottle.
Tonight, I’ll go to bed alone.
I take one more pie to the face, then wipe it off.
“Hello again.”
The smooth-as-butter voice sends tingles rushing down my back. Hunter stands in front of me. He’s the one and only person in line now.
I was wrong. Gladly wrong. “Nice timing,” I say.
“Well, I didn’t want to miss my shot,” he says, the corner of his lips twitching.
“Definitely don’t miss that,” I say with a smirk that I intend to be cocky. It might not be so effective under a layer of pie filling. I can only imagine I look like a Jackson Pollock painting trying to be witty.
“I won’t.” Hunter turns on his heel, heads to a volunteer, and buys the last two cherry pies.
Setting one down on the ground, he takes the other and backs up a few feet, balancing the tin just so in his palm. Then he stares at me with narrowed eyes, the tip of his tongue wetting the corner of his lips while he’s assessing the angle or maybe the launch trajectory.
Lifting the pie like a deadly weapon, he aims.
And…fuck.
My face is covered in cherries.
I wipe off the filling then taunt, “Barely touched me.”
His grin is pure cheek. “I better try harder then.”
“You do that.”
Another cock of his arm. Another fire of the cannon. And…hell. I’m gooped once again. He threw that one so hard a little bit of filling even ended up on his nose.
Dragging the heel of my hand across my eyes, I wipe some of the mess away, then smile through the cutout hole. “I guess you got me,” I say.
His smile is wicked. His eyes are determined. “That’s all I want.”
That hot spark?
It’s molten now.
I pop out of the booth, grab my towel, and wipe the filling from my face and the remnants of pie crust from my hair.
Hunter steps closer. “I think you missed a spot,” he says, gesturing at my cheek. “You know, I could help you get the rest off. If you’d like,” he says in an invitation as clear as the bright blue sky.
Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t look up pickup lines. I highly doubt Can I throw a pie at your face and then invite myself over? is on any published list.
But it’s on my new list since it worked on me.
“You want to get out of here? I live nearby,” I say, feeling that familiar fear of rejection but pushing past it.
“I’d love to,” he says.
We leave the park and walk along its edge toward the Marina. “So, are you a professional pie hurler by day?” I ask.
“Is that your clever way of asking me what I do for a living?”
“Maybe it is,” I ask, smiling. “By the way, I play football for the Hawks.”
“My friend Sarah told me as much,” he says. “She’s a colleague. She went to the carnival with me.”
“Do you need to text her?” I ask, but I hope I don’t sound overbearing. Mostly, I don’t want him to suddenly remember to text his friend while I’m stripping his clothes off.
“No. She took off to find a frisbee game,” he says as we cross the street. He flashes a grin my way, that dimple lighting up his face. “She’s not worried about me like you’re worried about her.”
“Didn’t mean to sound bossy,” I say, not mentioning my slight self-interest in the suggestion.
Hunter licks his lips. “But bossy can be good.”
This man. I hope I can keep up. “Yes. It can. And I’m glad she’s keeping busy,” I say.
“Me too,” he says, maybe trying to hide a grin. He takes a beat, then says, “In any case, I work at Webflix in their UK office. I started earlier this year working on new show acquisitions.”
“Well, then, you’re just the man I want to talk to.”
Hunter gives me a playful look. “Do you have a show to pitch me?”
“No. I’ve got a big beef with you. That’s What She Said—I was not happy with the ending. They broke up. What the hell?”
“That was a rough one. Confession: I practically tore my hair out when I saw the screener. I truly wanted them together,” Hunter says.
