“So McDaniel still trying to set you up with Jasper?” Jazz asked, as she flicked the pages over. “You do need to have a date now and again you know ... stay in practice for when the real deal comes along.” She winked.

“God, Jazz!” I quickly glanced at Pastor McDaniel to make sure he hadn’t heard me taking the Lord’s name in vain again. Oops. “You know I have too much on my plate to date right now. And who would be the real deal around here for God’s sake?” Wow, I was on a roll tonight. Luckily the good pastor was getting ready to head on out. I returned his wave as he left. It was a good thing he was walking home, I would have had to lift his keys otherwise.

“You won’t believe it,” Jazz exclaimed, totally dropping our topic and staring at the magazine in her hands. “Audrey Lane had an affair with her married director! That cow. I can’t believe it. She’s supposed to be dating Jack Eversea.” Jazz looked horrified. She idolized Jack Eversea, along with possibly every girl in America.

I laughed at her. “Jazz, you do realize most of that stuff is made up, right?” I leaned over to look at the dubious and grainy photos she was tapping a lime green fingernail at, and then stopped at the abrupt sound of a stool scraping back.

We both looked over to see Hoodie Guy stand up and angle his back to us. He fished a wad of cash out of his jeans pocket, and peeling off a bill, placed it on the bar next to his unfinished drink.

I noticed Jazz’s eyes roam down to rest on his extremely nice rear-end, encased in trendy denim.

I smacked her on the hand once, hard.

“Ow!” she yelped and I grinned.

Hoodie Guy tucked his chin down and walked out of the front door.

I met Jazz’s eyes as she glared at me in mock outrage. “What? He had a nice ass,” she humphed and went back to her tabloid. She wasn’t wrong, I was just more concerned with his weird behavior.

“Order’s up,” Hector barked from the kitchen pass through, passing out a Styrofoam box. Great. Oh well, on the bright side, if he didn’t return in five minutes, I was taking a burger home tonight. He better have left enough to cover his tab, I thought to myself. I walked down and grabbed the money off the bar. A hundred. Huh. I rang it up and pulled out the change from the register.

“Hector,” I called back through the pass through. “It was a good tip night.” I passed eighty dollars in cash over the counter and into the kitchen. As much as I needed the money, Hector needed it more.

“Madre.” I heard Hector chuckle.

“Shoot, I gotta scoot.” Jazz hopped down from her stool and quickly came around to embrace me. “I’m opening up the shop tomorrow, I hate getting up early. See ya.” And with that, my bubbly friend flew out the door.

Jazz and I had been best friends since Butler Cove Elementary when my family moved here to live in the family home and look after my grandmother. Making friends halfway through a school year in a new place was not high up on my list of skills. I wasn’t sure how I lucked into Jazz, but somehow this blonde ball of energy with a round face of sunshine had turned her light on me one day in the fifth grade hallway, and I had been basking in the warm glow ever since. Even during the toughest moments of my life.

I turned the music down and followed in her wake to lock up.

It was a gorgeous night. Although the humidity still had a way to go, the heat had finally broken, and the stars were out in full. Standing in the doorway, I looked up and breathed in the fresh air. The cicadas were busy, the sound comforting in it’s endless and predictable rhythm. I knew a part of this place would always be in my soul. It was hard-wired in. As much as this town annoyed me at times, there was really nothing quite like this part of the world. I wanted to leave at some point in the future, I knew, I was just waiting for Joey to get done with school and trade places with me. That was the deal. That was one reason I didn’t date. I really didn’t want it to be harder than it had to be to leave. Another reason was I knew almost everyone in the eligible dating pool, and I was a choosy beggar.

My feet hurt. Tonight, I would probably sleep the sleep of a well–worked day and tomorrow, since I only worked dinner, I planned to continue the painting of the porch. Since funds were tight, I had to prioritize, and with Pastor McDaniel’s less than subtle comments about the house’s condition, I figured I better continue work on the outside.

Stepping into the restaurant’s dimly lit courtyard to straighten some of the furniture, a movement in my periphery almost gave me a heart attack.

Shit!

Standing up from one of the tables in the shadows, like he’d been waiting for me, was Hoodie Guy. I slapped my hand on my chest, expelling a rush of air.

I judged the distance from where he stood to the door. Could I make it back inside before he got to me? How could I have been so careless? Joey was always telling me to have Hector do the lock up, and here I was not even knowing if Hector was still in the restaurant.

I stood still and tried to make out the guy’s face under his hat. He was tall and looked strong, his dark jeans molding to his long straight legs. If he was going to attack me, at least I should try and remember what he looked like. Or wait—maybe that was worse. If I saw him, did that mean he would have to kill me?

I was aware I was frozen like a stunned rabbit, but it dawned on me slowly that he hadn’t moved either, and I wasn’t sensing anything menacing from him. Not that I was psychic. Unless you counted the times I was convinced Nana showed back up at the house to poke around and check on me. If anything, his stance and the way he hesitantly raised his hands, caused me to stay put. Fear eased into curiosity. I still couldn’t see his face. Why did the courtyard have to be so flipping dark?

I was about to speak when his long-fingers reached up to his head, pausing for just a moment, like he was having second thoughts. Then he quickly grabbed his cap and whipped it and his dark hood off.

I found myself not being able to breathe for the second time in as many minutes. Standing in front of me was the most beautiful man I had seen in all of my twenty-two years on this planet. His rich dark brown hair, mussed up from the hat, stood up in a few places and framed a hard-planed face set with eyes the color of ...

Well, I really couldn’t tell the color of his eyes in the shadows, but I knew exactly what color they were, a deep grey-green. I hadn’t been hiding under a rock for the last five years. And I certainly didn’t need to double check the tabloid magazine Jazz had been reading, which definitely did not do him justice, to know that standing in front of me, Keri Ann Butler, outside the Snapper Grill in Butler Cove, population nine thousand, and hundreds of miles away from his expected location in Hollywood, was none other than Jack Eversea.

T W O

To my credit, I only gaped like a goldfish for a few moments before my prickly nature—always my ‘go to’ when I am nervous or caught off guard—made its presence known. I seriously cannot control myself sometimes.

“I suppose you want your burger now?” I’m sure that wasn’t the first thing he expected me to say. Frankly, I surprised myself, too. It didn’t seem to stop me from going on though. “First of all, don’t lurk in the shadows, it’s creepy. And second of all, you were so rude, give me one good reason I should let you in after closing?” Seriously. I said all that. To Jack Eversea.