by Jacie Floyd
“Maybe.” Harper could be vague, too, when it suited her. “I imagine I’ll be busy trying to get the library open before the deadline.”
“Have you seen it yet? Or your new place?”
“Not yet, but a member of the town council is meeting me at the house at six to show me around.” As her stomach rumbled, she hoped the meet-and-greet with Malcolm Newcomb included a meal. Now she regretted skipping lunch, but on the drive down, she’d been too excited to stop.
The gas nozzle glugged to a halt, and Harper glanced around. No credit card slot, and no one to take her payment. Maybe in this part of the world the customer was expected to make the trip inside. Boy, no trust like that around Chicago. Gazing about, she couldn’t even spot a security camera to record drive-offs. She returned to her car to retrieve her wallet. “I’d better go.”
“Wait, sweetie!” India ordered. “What are you wearing?”
The question generated a reluctant smile. In her mother’s opinion, all would be right with the world if only everyone was always fashionably attired. But even the famous stylist would approve of her daughter’s fashion-forward choice for today. “That Belinda Diego dress you sent last week with the Pedro Garcia sandals.”
“Excellent. Colorful. You’ll be the envy of every woman in that backwater town.”
“Not really my goal.” But the kick-ass outfit went miles toward boosting her confidence.
“Hair up or down?”
“Down.”
India tsk-tsked her disappointment. “You’re in the Midwest. It’s July. It’s a sauna there. Did you use anti-frizz cream?”
“My hair looks fine.” Bending over, she checked in the side-view mirror to see how much damage the oppressive heat and humidity had caused. She smoothed the unruly strands with her palm. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Okay. Love you.” They exchanged their traditional air kisses along with promises to talk again soon.
A grizzled guy with sprinkles of gray in his flat-top stood in the station office door glaring at her while he wiped his hands on a rag. A blue work shirt displayed a gas company logo on the sleeve and the name “Al” was stitched over the chest pocket.
“Hey, you,” he barked as Harper tossed her iPhone into the car. “Gonna pay for that gas or gab on your cellular phone all night? It’s closing time.”
As if on cue from some invisible Our Town stage manager, joyful church bells chimed the hour.
“I’ll pay now.” Hoping to put her best Pedro Garcia-shod foot forward in this first encounter with a Sunnyside resident, she beamed a smile his way and reached into the Infiniti to grab her purse. “I didn’t realize you closed this early. There’s no sign posted with the hours.”
“Everybody knows what time we close.” He moved into the building and stood behind a well-worn counter with a punch-key cash register. Circa 1950, like almost everything else in the room. He accepted her credit card and ran it through a manual imprinter.
“Fair enough,” Harper said with a little laugh. “But I’m new here and not up to speed on the insider info yet.”
The small space reeked of dust and oil. Harper half-expected to spot a tattered Marilyn Monroe poster prominently tacked on the wall behind him. Instead, a framed family photo held the place of honor. A younger, sunburned Al, a sturdy woman with a wide smile, a freckle-faced boy, and a preteen girl with braces posed in front of a lake.
That kind of heartwarming family group was so outside Harper’s experience, it momentarily stabbed her with a twinge of longing.
The picture India displayed of her two daughters showed a gap-toothed and smiling Harper holding the angelic-looking Fiona’s hand on a runway in Milan. Gianni Versace stood behind them with his hands on their shoulders. Harper assumed India was more sentimental about her late mentor than she was about her daughters.
And as for Harper’s father—well, she couldn’t imagine he had any pictures of her tucked among the photos of his “real” family in his stuffy Baltimore office.
“You the owner here, Al?” She shoved aside her emotional baggage in favor of embracing her future.
“Yeah.” He squinted. “Why?”
“I’m Harper Simmons.” She extended her hand for him to shake. He looked at his own hands, grimy with the day’s work, and shook his head. Realizing her faux pas, she tapped the top of a Chicago Cubs bobble-head doll as if that had been her intention all along. “As the new library director, I hope to get to know everyone sooner or later.”
Shoving the credit card receipt toward her, he shifted the bobble-head out of her reach. “Well, Harpo, make it later for me. I gotta get home to dinner.”
“It’s Harper.” She cheerfully emphasized the second syllable and ended on an encouraging smile, more than a little used to people getting her name wrong on the first try.
When he just gazed at her blankly, she acknowledged the fact that she wasn’t receiving the warm welcome she’d anticipated.
It stood to reason that some people would take longer to warm up to her than others. Clearly, Al would take longer. Every community probably had a town crank. Just unlucky that Sunnyside’s official grump owned a gas station on the main street through town, and she happened to run into him before she met anyone else. He was probably a sweetheart under that Oscar-the-Grouch exterior.
“I’m from Chicago, and I’m a Cubs’ fan, too.” Giving it one more try, she nodded toward the bobble-head.
“Good for you.” He inched the figure even closer to his side of the counter.
“You and your family should stop by the library when it reopens,” she suggested.
“We ain’t much for reading.”
“We’ll have all kinds of new programs. For all ages. Maybe your kids—”
“They don’t have much spare time.” Standing by the door, he checked his watch again.
As a dismissal, the stance was pretty effective. Sensing any delay on her part would alienate him further, she shelved her campaign to be voted Friendliest Newcomer and headed back to her car.
Time to see her new house!
Following the GPS commands to turn here, here, and there, she arrived at Oakley.
At the first sight of her new street, she abandoned any pretense of worldly sophistication and giggled. Out loud.
Space. So much space. Especially after the skyscrapers of Chicago that blocked the sun and the sky and made her feel smothered and boxed in. Here on this street, in this town, she’d have plenty of breathing room.
Tall trees shaded wide sidewalks. Big yards swept in front of an eclectic mix of houses. As she crept along the street watching for her house number, she noticed a few lawns with “For Sale” signs. A bicycle rested on its side in a driveway. A child’s lemonade stand had closed up shop for the night. Oscillating sprinklers tic-ticked across dry lawns. Overflowing flower pots squatted on porches. A lawn mower roared to life nearby, although just thinking of mowing in this heat had Harper breaking out in a sweat.
She wanted to stop and snap pictures, but there’d be plenty of time for that later. Right now, she was on a mission to find the house she could turn into a home.
Searching for the house number on the right, she zeroed in on a sturdy Craftsman up ahead. The wide front porch, leaded glass transom window above the door, and dormer windows on the second level welcomed her to her new world, erasing and replacing her less than satisfactory encounter with Grumpy Al.
She rolled closer to a monster-sized red truck parked at the curb. A broad-shouldered male in a red baseball cap, blue T-shirt, and jeans rested on her front steps. Leaning back on his elbow, he took a bite out of a big red apple. Long legs stretched down three steps to the sidewalk, where they crossed at the ankles. All-in-all, he made a stunning porch ornament. But if she remembered correctly from her Skype interview with the town council, he wasn’t Malcolm Newcomb. In the history of the world, no one named Malcolm had ever looked like that.
Suddenly, as if a starting pistol only he could hear had been fired, he l
aunched himself off the porch and tossed the apple aside. Crossing the yard in a few long strides, he propelled himself into the street—right in front of her car! With his hands outstretched, he motioned for her to stop.
She stomped on her brakes.
The car jerked to a halt, sparing that outstanding body. Thank heavens. She’d been going so slowly that the tires didn’t squeal, skid, or swerve, but still… Shaken and stirred, she took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and leaped from the vehicle.
“What in the hell was that?” Shoving her sunglasses to the top of her head, anxiety burst from her mouth. “You ran right in front of me. You could’ve been killed!”
With barely a glance in her direction, he held up his index finger and moved toward the sidewalk. A shaggy puppy sat on its haunches, wagging its tail and lolling its tongue out of the side of its mouth. In one swoop, he scooped the critter up and settled it in the crook of his arm.
“Oooh, a dog, how cute.” Her pulse raced. “Where did he—she—it come from?”
“From the Dempsey house.” He nodded at a place behind her. “I couldn’t take the chance you wouldn’t see her.”
“Oh, my God, I didn’t. I’m so sorry.” Planting her palm on her forehead, she felt a little faint at how close she’d come to killing the tiny creature. She—the woman who believed in the sanctity of life in all forms, who didn’t eat meat, and couldn’t bring herself to kill spiders or snakes or even mosquitoes—had almost hit and killed a dog. Her empty stomach executed a triple somersault.
The man had lost his baseball cap when he’d charged in to save the shaggy blond puppy. The hero of the moment had the sort of honey-brown hair that streaked light in the summer but probably deepened to pecan in the winter. It had a natural tendency to curl around the edges and an obvious absence of styling products. Even two weeks on the wrong side of a mediocre haircut, something about the untended thickness made Harper itch to thread her fingers through it.
The dog rescuer towered a good half foot above her. She looked up, intending to thank him for his intervention, but an immediate zap of attraction sent shock waves zinging through her.
Really, he had the kind of face that grabbed hold of a girl’s attention and gave her naughty bits a good shake. Harper felt hot and cold and breathless, all at the same time. The moment hung suspended in the late afternoon sunlight, a moment that went on forever or flew by too fast, she wasn’t sure which. She tried to memorize the essence and texture and feel of it to hold it close and examine later.
The guy was handsome enough to look right at home in a Ralph Lauren print ad, but so much more... real. Genuine. Strong, but sensitive. Rugged, but brooding. Devastating, but wary.
Nothing about him signified artificial enhancement. Backlit by the setting sun, his profile as he bent his head to soothe the small animal revealed a scar that curved along his chin, smile lines at the corner of his eyes, and an honest-to-God tan—no bronze spray-on for this hunky hero.
Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have been susceptible to this unsophisticated variety of hot-hot-hot. After all, she’d spent most of her formative years sharing hair and facial tips with GQ male models. And Harper knew better than to be sucked in by a handsome face and killer body. Still, any girl would pause to appreciate natural beauty when she saw it.
And she’d never seen one of those too-gorgeous-for-his-own-good magazine models move that fast for anything less than free drugs, free sex, or free designer clothes. Certainly not to protect an innocent animal.
“I’m sorry.” She shook herself, trying to get a grip on her emotions and return to reality. “I didn’t see her at all. You prevented me from committing involuntary manslaughter—or in this case—dogslaughter.” She offered a small smile, but his expression revealed no appreciation for her attempted humor.
The dog’s protector looked up and perused her with eyes that flared with heated interest and desire before retreating into cool deliberation. To be fair, since she’d been within inches of turning him into road kill, the heat she’d detected could have been more annoyance than interest or desire. But she didn’t think so.
With the full force of his attention turned her way, his appraisal caressed her from the top of the new auburn highlights/mink lowlights she’d splurged on right down to her Pretty-In-Pink painted toenails and all points in between. She basked in another moment of clarity when everything seemed bright and shiny and new. With infinite possibility.
Right up until he shook his head in disgust.
Disgust? She straightened her shoulders indignantly. Really?
Okay, so maybe she’d glorified and magnified her reaction to him. Or his reaction to her. Or both. And even though her hair was frizzing up like a Brillo pad, she didn’t usually generate disgust. Disappointment or disinterest maybe, but not disgust.
But then he blinked and his expression transformed into cool neutrality. Hopefully, it was the disgust she’d imagined, not the interest or desire.
“I intentionally threw myself in front of your car, but here comes the person who’ll demand an apology.” He shrugged. “Brace yourself, this isn’t going to be pretty.”
Did you miss Everybody Knows, the first book in the Sunnyside Series?
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Thank you for reading, SUNNYSIDE CHRISTMAS, the second book in the Sunnyside Series! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed presenting it to you.
The first book in the series, EVERYBODY KNOWS, is also available at Amazon.com in print and digital.
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Books by Jacie Floyd
The Good Riders Series
MEET YOUR MATE
CURSED BY LOVE
MEANT FOR ME
HAPPY THIS YEAR: A Christmas Novella
FACE THE MUSIC
The Billionaire Brotherhood
WINNING WYATT
DARING DYLAN
REMAKING RYAN
The Sunnyside Series
EVERYBODY KNOWS
SUNNYSIDE CHRISTMAS
Acknowledgments
Thank you to RWA for providing writers with so many powerful learning experiences through the conferences, online classes, and local chapters.
Thank you to my local chapter, Southwest Florida Romance Writers (SWFRW), for your continual support and encouragement.
Much appreciation to mega-talented cover designer Kim Killion of The Killion Group. I highly recommend her.
Thank you to my friend and neighbor Charlie K., for the fun times and information regarding financial planning, the stock market, and penalties for stock fraud.
Thanks to friend and fellow writer Tara Septembre for sharing her knowledge of New York City restaurants and neighborhoods.
Thank you to my son Evan for keeping me humble and making everything fun.
To my daughter Sarah for knowing everything I need to know, for the great technical support, and for being a spectacular traveling companion.
Thank you to my sister Debbie K. for tirelessly and cheerfully promoting my writing to friends and strangers around the world. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
And thank you to Goble, my love, my husband, my hero, and the absolute best partner imaginable for my life’s journey.
About the Author
Jacie Floyd writes contempora
ry romance, romantic comedy, and emotionally-rich stories with heart, heat, hope, and humor.
From the time she read her first Nancy Drew mystery, she's been an avid reader and writer in a variety of genres. After many years as a wife and mother with a nine-to-five job, the desire to create her own stories became an obsession. While polishing her craft as an unpublished author, she was honored to be named a six-time Golden Heart Finalist and two-time Golden Heart winner by the Romance Writers of America. After moving from Ohio to the Land of Perpetual Sunshine, she abandoned her day job along with her snow shovel in order to self-publish the kind of stories she likes to read and write. She hopes you like them, too.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Sunnyside Christmas: ©2018 by Jacqueline Floyd.
Cover Design: Kim Killion, The Killion Group
Digital Edition 1.0
All rights reserved. Where such permission is sufficient, the author grants the right to strip any DRM which may be applied to this work.