"Ducking," I said.
"But why?"
I looked up to whisper, "Because that's him."
She turned to stare out the window. "Sothat'syour old boss? Seriously?"
Boy, was it ever.Even though I'd looked for only a split second, the image was burned into my brain. He'd been walking out through the front door of – yup, you guessed it – the house across the street.
And, as if this weren't bad enough, he'd looked like every girl's fantasy in black running pants and a thin gray T-shirt. His biceps had been bulging, and the shirt had been slightly damp, as if he'd just finished with one heck of a workout.
The shirt had clung to him like a second skin, making his chiseled abs look more delicious than Christmas pie.
But who cared?
Ididn't, that's for sure.
And besides, didn't he realize it was winter?
The idiot.
At the window, Gwen was still looking. She wore a befuddled expression, as if she'd just seen a gingerbread man driving a Buick.
I told her, "You're not ducking."
She turned and eyed me with obvious concern. "I don't need to duck."
"Why not?"
"Because he doesn't even know me."
"Oh." I tried to laugh. "Yeah. I guess that's right."
"And youdorealize you're acting crazy, right?"
"It's notthatcrazy," I said, even as I began crawling toward the nearby Christmas tree.
Gwen asked, "What are you doingnow?"
Wasn't it obvious?"I'm gonna look at him through the branches."
"Oh." She paused for a long moment. "I guess that makes sense."
It did.
And it didn't.
Sure, the branches would allow me to watch him without being spotted. But why on Earth would I want to watch him at all?
The abs had nothing to do with it.
Really, they didn't.
Still, I kept on crawling. When I reached the tree, I scuttled behind it and crouched like a chipmunk as I peered out through the lower branches.
Outside, Cole Henster was strolling toward the property's mailbox. This was a bad sign, unless…maybe he was getting someoneelse'smail?
Hey, it wasn'tthatfar-fetched. Just yesterday, I'd collected the mail from my aunt's mailbox, so there wassomeprecedent, right? Of course, I hadn't collected the mail today, but only because it was Sunday.
