I still wasn’t thrilled that my father had manipulated both me and Colton. Sneaky old man.
“What are you doing? You look like a cartoon whose head is going to explode.”
“What?” I asked, brushing past her and ducking down behind the truck. The smoky smell of exhaust immediately caused my throat to close up and I forced out a few coughs.
“Autumn, you’re being ridiculous,” she added, but I was too busy trying to peek around the tire to see how close Colton was. He was stopped by a few townspeople and he chatted with them. Just as I tried to plan my escape, he quickly glanced in the direction of our family farm stand. A gasp escaped my lips as I turned around and slammed my back against the tire.
“Lover boy is coming,” Alex tittered.
“Stop. He is not my lover.”
“He’s also not just a boy. Colton Crawford is definitely all man.”
Something unfamiliar bubbled up in my stomach and I anxiously tamped it down. “If you’re so interested in the man, why don’t you go after him?” I suggested, trying my hardest not to picture my gorgeous sister with the town’s newest resident.
She glanced down at me and we exchanged narrowed eyes at each other, egging the other on to make another comment. Any further remarks were halted when Colton stopped in front of our stand where Alex greeted him.
I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle my gasp, trying not to get caught. Did I believe Colton hadn’t noticed me earlier? Not at all. But I held out hope that he would simply believe I had wandered off somewhere else in the market.
Just as quickly as I built up my hope, it was quickly squashed as a large shadow loomed over me.
“Hiding out?” the deep voice said with a chuckle. I peered up at him, the sun shone behind his oversized frame, making it hard to see his face. But those deep brown eyes of his still called out to me. I hated it.
With a huff, I replied, “No.”
“Taking a break?”
Instead of a response, I narrowed my eyes at Colton expecting him to take the hint.
“Hiding out from a sexy hockey player that bought your house?”
Mumbling under my breath, I adjusted from my crouched position, taking Colton’s offered hand to assist me in standing up.
My palms felt like they’d been submerged in water as I wiped them off on my jeans, and I could only hope that Colton hadn’t noticed. “You’re not a hockey player any longer. You retired.”
I expected the dig to cause him to wince, but I was quickly learning that Colton was full of surprises. Instead, he took a step closer to me and leaned against the side of Alex’s truck, folding his arms against his chest. Of course, that move showcased his biceps that threatened to tear his shirt into shreds.
“But you agree, I’m sexy.”
There was no point in denying it. The man was damn sexy. The entire country knew that.
“And you bought the house that I wanted,” I reminded him, not going into more details about how that house had been my dream. Somehow, the night before I was able to skirt around that topic and focus on the plans to have it approved by the historical society.
“I did,” he said sheepishly as he uncrossed his arms and ran one of his large hands across the back of his neck. “But in my defense, I didn’t know at the time of the auction.”
“Then why did you drop a million dollars on it? It’s not worth that amount, you know.” That was the part I still hadn’t figured out. He had talked about his previous foster mom, but that was it. Either he knew something none of us did regarding the property or he was working with someone else on it. It would devastate my family if he restored the house, only to sell it to a developer.
Colton reached out and swirled a piece of hair that had escaped my ponytail around his finger before tucking it behind my ear. “I don’t know. Seems pretty worth it to me.”
If I wasn’t so angry at the man for the house problem and the kiss at The Purple Goat, I’d probably have melted into a puddle at his feet. Incidentally, my pulse may have picked up when his finger had caressed the side of my cheek.
“We, uh, probably need to talk about the kiss yesterday.” I hadn’t planned on discussing it at all, but the way Colton was staring at me made me think the kiss hadn’t been such a poor decision after all.
“Yeah?” he said with a cocky grin that released a slew of butterflies in my stomach. This man needed to keep his arsenal of sexiness in check. “What about it?”
“There is already talk swirling around here and it won’t take long for people to realize it is more than a rumor.”
“Really?” he said nonchalantly, as if this was a miniscule problem.
