He tucked the phone back into his pocket, looking up just in time to see Lex handing a couple of to-go cups and a paper bag over the top of the bakery case. His friend’s grin widened and he flicked a glance over to the brunette in line. “It seems you have an admirer. She took care of your bill.”
Well, that was an interesting role reversal. Steve arched a brow in her direction, catching another one of her high voltage smiles. “Thank you,” he mouthed from across the room.
When he lifted the bag, he saw a phone number and the name Sophy scribbled onto it with black sharpie.
“Maybe today won’t be as bad as I thought, after all.” Steve tossed one more wink toward the brunette and shouldered the bakery door open with a nod goodbye to Lex. Crossing the street, he shuffled over to his veterinary practice.
Pushing through his own front door, he smiled at Amanda and set her iced coffee down on the front desk. He eyed the handful of mail she had left in his tray for him and debated leaving it until after lunch. “Good morning, how are you today?”
He looked up to catch her wobbly expression. Eyes turned down, she swallowed hard and gestured to the back corner of their waiting area.
Steve pivoted slowly. The first thing to catch his eyes was an older yellow lab laying on the tiled floor. As he rose his gaze, he met the wet eyes of Yvonne. His high school sweetheart; his first love; and the girl he’d nearly killed almost a decade earlier.
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Meeting You
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Looking for more Maple Grove to get you in the holiday spirit?
Keep reading for an excerpt of HOLIDAY INTERCEPTED!
Chapter One
Paige
I stood in the hallway of Maple Grove High School, staring into the glass case that houses dozens of trophies throughout the years. Pictures of team after team lined the case, behind each of their trophies. Our little school seemed to be a hotbed for several now-famous sports stars.
To a passerby, it would look like I was just admiring the school’s athletic prowess. And I’d utterly die if anyone found out what I was actually looking at.
Taylor Wilson. He was taking a knee in the 16x20 glossy picture, his helmet on the ground just beside his leg and he looked straight at the camera with a small smile. One might even call it a smirk. A banner stretched over top of his image, saying:
Maple Grove High School, Maple Grove, NH – Home of the New England Patriots Tight End Taylor Wilson.
Tight end. I snickered to myself because there couldn’t be a more appropriate position for our sexy alumnus. I hadn’t seen him in person in twelve years. Not since high school our high school graduation when he packed up his life and stormed out of mine.
I rolled my eyes in spite of myself and with a sigh, forced myself to look away from his image. He didn’t storm out of my life. He left the town. Because a lot of understandably bad memories had collected here for him. I didn’t know many people who would have stayed around after the senior year he had. He most certainly didn’t leave me. Because if I was being honest, he probably barely even remembered I existed. Sure, we’d known each other since we were children. He was my brother’s best friend since they were learning how to walk. Taylor, Cam & Steve Tripp, and my little brother, Scott were inseparable, despite the fact that Steve and Scott were a year younger than the rest of us. But he never saw me as anything more than the annoying, tag-along sister.
I gulped. At least, he didn’t until we shared a kiss our senior year when we were both starring in the musical, Guys and Dolls. It had shocked about everyone when he showed up at auditions. But teachers were doing everything they could to keep him from suspension, which would have resulted in losing his scholarship to Boston University—and that involved extra credit for auditioning to be in the school musical.
But other than that magical stage kiss we shared, he only had eyes for Tiffany. At least he did until she cheated on him with half the football team. I, on the other hand, never stopped thinking about Taylor. Not for the four years we were in high school together when I’d daydream about him while staring at his profile in class, or not even now as an adult. It didn’t help that I had to pass by his freaking 16x20 picture every day on my way to class.
A sigh slipped past my tight lips. How pathetic was I?
Though he only moved to Boston—about an hour away from our small New Hampshire town, he never came back. Not once. And while I knew there were a lot of reasons for this—the death of his mother, Tiffany cheating on him, his amazing scholarship to BU… I also knew the number one reason he never returned home was because of my mother.
Until now. Rumor had it, he was on his way back right this very second.
The buzz around Maple Grove was that he was arriving today and staying for one weekend just to go to Cam and Lydia’s engagement party tonight. He’d likely leave tomorrow.
I felt a light pinch on my upper arm and spun to find Kyra standing behind me, her brows arched intuitively. Dammit. I knew from the heat spreading to my cheeks and across my nose that I was blushing. She was the only person in the world who knew me well enough to know I was definitely not staring at our sports trophies. Not only were sports never my thing, but I’d been fighting tooth and nail to get our non-sport related trophies shown off in the same idolatrous fashion that the school tended to revere its football, cheerleading, and baseball teams.
Now that I was a teacher at Maple Grove High, my theater kids had placed first at state competitions three years in a row. But were our trophies in that case? Nope.
“Hey, you,” Kyra said, her eyes flitting from mine to the glass case, then back again.
I sighed and hugged my folders tighter against my chest as I tore my eyes away from Taylor’s picture. “Hey.”
But I wasn’t fooling anyone. Kyra’s gaze knowingly landed on the image of Taylor. “You ready for the final staff meeting of the year?”
I groaned. “The calendar year,” I corrected her and turned toward the library. We still had months to go until the actual school year was over.
“Even still,” Kyra said, her tight pencil skirt, high heels, and leopard print sweater making it so she had to take twice as many tiny, quick steps as I did. “After this, we have ten whole days off!” she squealed. “Vacation begins in roughly ninety minutes, starting tonight with Cam and Lydia’s party.”
Ninety minutes. I just needed to get through this staff meeting, and then I could relax.
Kyra leaned in, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Yvonne told me that Steve said he only finally RSVP’d ‘yes’ two days ago, and that was after Steve let him have it about what a shitty friend he’s been the last few years.”
I cleared my throat, looking through my notes for my trophy speech at today’s meeting. “Who?”
Kyra looked up at me through thickly painted lashes and rolled her eyes. “The man whose portrait you pretend not to stare at every time you pass it.”
“I don’t stare every time—”
“Aha!” Kyra pointed a white tipped fingernail in my face and I swatted at it. “So you admit you were staring?”
Damn. Note to self: espionage is not a good backup career to teaching theater. I wasn’t so good at the keeping secrets thing.
“Apparently,” Kyra continued, still whispering, “Taylor made Steve promise that Tiffany and Scott weren’t going to be anywhere near the party tonight.”
I cringed, pausing just outside the library where most of the teachers were milling about. “Well, I don’t know about Tiffany,” I whispered her name because out of the corner of my eye, I could see her standing on the other side of the library. She was just as beautiful now as she was back in high school. Sleek, dark brown hair with ends that always seemed to curl perfectly under, no
matter if she was wearing it down or up in a ponytail. Razor sharp cheekbones, green wide-set eyes and a pouty, petal-pink mouth. “But Scott is definitely going to be around… even if he’s not at the party. His hotel is practically hosting the whole weekend for free.” My brother turned the Maple Grove Inn completely around when he bought it from the original owners. He hired Cam Tripp’s construction company to renovate it and gave it a much-needed facelift, then rebranded the Victorian hotel into one of Trip Advisor’s most sought out inns in New England. It helped revive our little town by bringing tourism back. “He even gave Cam and Lydia’s local friends a huge discount if they stay the night so that no one has to drive home after drinking.”
Kyra pointed at me. “You know that. And I know that… but Taylor doesn’t know that.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Oh no. “Please don’t tell me Cam and Steve have some stupid plan to get Taylor and Scott to talk—”
Kyra shrugged, cutting me off. “I can’t say for sure. All I know is that he specifically stated he wouldn’t come if either of them arrived. I also know he said nothing about not wanting to see you.”
“That just means he didn’t think enough of me to put me in the mix of his enemies.” I rolled my eyes. All I heard from that statement was that he didn’t mention me at all. “He probably doesn’t even remember me.”
She snorted. “You’re Scott’s half-sister. And you two shared the hottest stage kiss this school has ever seen. Of course he remembers you.”
I glanced again at the portrait and swallowed hard, remembering our intense kiss. And the fact that he left town without even a goodbye. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
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Capturing You (Maple Grove Romance Book 1) Page 26