When I finally get to the table’s end, another snore rends the quiet, and I come to a dead stop.
First, I see brown boots leading to legs crossed at the ankle. Not boots like the city guys around here wear, polished and fancy, worn purely for style. These boots are scuffed and creased, the laces weathered and tugged tight, clearly worn for practicality. The jeans stemming from them follow suit, roughed up and threadbare at the knee, as if they’ve been bent in and worn countless times—working jeans. My eyes trail up the weathered denim—long calves, longer, thicker thighs. A sun-bleached olive green tee, two arms folded across it.
I gulp.
This dude’s body is entirely relaxed in sleep and yet his arms are ripped. His muscles have muscles. Veins and ropy tendons weave up his arms. Two bulky biceps peek out from the edge of his T-shirt sleeves. All across his skin are freckles.
Swallowing roughly, I clutch the shovel tighter. I’m such a sucker for freckles.
I shake my head to snap out of it. I am not eroticizing this intruder who, for all I know, could be an axe murderer.
Albeit a sleepy axe murderer. So probably not a very good one, but still.
I tip my head, trying to see his face, but his head’s bent, as if his chin’s tucked to his chest. I can’t see past the ripped brim of his ball cap that looks like it might have once been white but has faded to dingy oatmeal.
His leg twitches as another snore leaves him, and he’s either a hell of an actor or he’s out cold. I’m mid mental debate about which is the case when my quandary is solved for me.
A loud boom of thunder shakes the greenhouse and he jolts, as if startling awake. So he was asleep. Which means, most likely, he’s not an actual threat. Maybe he’s just some down-on-his-luck guy who crashed here to catch a few winks and ride out the storm before he goes on his way.
We don’t do that anymore, Juliet. We don’t give people the benefit of the doubt. We don’t assume the best of them. That’s what bit us in the ass last time. That’s what broke our heart.
Right. Time to brace for an attack. I lift the shovel higher, standing out of his reach but not so far that I can’t swing and hit him with the shovel, if needed.
I watch his ankles uncross, his ball cap shift as he sits straighter, then he freezes. The ball cap lifts a little, then a little more, as if his gaze is trailing upward. Up me.
Finally, his ball cap’s brim lifts enough to reveal his face, for his eyes to meet mine. A face that I recognize, eyes that I’ve seen before. Just once, across a bar in a small Scottish pub, seven and a half months ago.
Wide, catlike green eyes—sage, flecked with silver, fringed by auburn lashes. Long, straight nose. Two sharp cheekbones. The rest of his face hides beneath a thick, unkempt beard and similarly unkempt hair that peeks out beneath the ball cap.
It can’t be him.
But it could only be him.
I remember those striking eyes and that unforgettable hair, its color like nothing I have ever seen before or since—burnished penny copper, cinnamon fire. When I saw him that night at the pub, all I could think was he looked like a Highlander romance hero ripped out of the past, wrapped in modern clothes.
Highlander romances are my weakness.
As are redheads.
And I was not in Scotland to fall head over heels for a hot Scot. I was there to lick my wounds and heal from a horrible breakup. So I tore my gaze away, ordered a double pour of whiskey, knocked it back, then turned right around, headed for my Airbnb cottage, before I could act on the tug I felt right beneath my ribs, like a hook had sunk in, reeling me toward him.
What the hell is the hot Scottish stranger from the pub doing here? In my mom’s greenhouse?
There is no good explanation. So much for him being some innocent, sleeping guy. This man followed me from Scotland! He’s been here, biding his time, pretending to be asleep—
That’s when it hits me, the danger I’m in. And that’s when I lift the shovel over my head and scream.
The man ducks my swing, then rolls away and springs upright in a display of athleticism that has me deeply concerned for my odds against him. “Wait!” he yells. “Hold on!”
I’m just processing that his accent is American, not Scottish, as I swing at him again and miss, knocking over a damask rosebush. He lunges and successfully catches the rosebush, which, come to think of it, is odd for an assailant to do, but I’m already swinging at him again as I process that thought, too. I miss him entirely, losing my balance as the shovel whips out of my hands, then crashes into the table. Thrown off by the momentum of my forceful swing, I stumble back, straight into potted gardenia that wobble, then start to tip off the table’s edge behind me.
The man lunges again, catches my hand before I fall, and yanks me toward him, almost like a swing dance move that swaps our places, before he somehow also catches the gardenia plant and rights it on the table. When I try to yank my hand away, he turns suddenly, which pulls me with him, and, in a chaotic tangle of feet and pinwheeling hands, we crash to the floor, him on his back, me sprawled on top of him.
In an uncharacteristic feat of agility and speed that I can only attribute to the power of adrenaline, I lunge for a trowel that’s resting on the table beside me, then bring it to his throat, staring down at him, breathing heavily. “What,” I gasp, “the hell are you doing here?”
The man’s breathing heavily, too, eyes wide, hands back in surrender. “I . . .” He shakes his head. “What are you doing here?”
“Nuh-uh, you don’t get to ask questions.” With my free hand, I shove back the drenched hair that’s fallen into my face, trowel still at his throat. “You’re in my mom’s greenhouse—”
“Your mom’s?” he croaks.
“—and the last time I saw you, you were in the same Scottish pub as me seven and a half months ago, sitting at the bar, so you’re the one who’s going to do the explaining. Now tell me why you’re here.”
He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple roll beneath the trowel’s tip. His mouth parts, working silently, until finally, he says, “I’m staying next door, with Christopher. I went for a walk and stopped in here.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Prove it.”
“Call Christopher right now; he’ll vouch for me.”
The man reaches for his phone in his pocket. I slap my free hand down on his wrist and pin it there, searching his eyes. “I’ll get your phone, thank you.”
I tug his phone from his pocket, swipe it to open, then spin it so it uses facial recognition to unlock. Straight to his contacts, I scroll down and find . . . Christopher’s name, and his cell phone number.
My jaw drops. Then the trowel follows suit, landing with a clatter on the tiles. Oh my god. The pieces fall into place. He’s here for the party, the one that I now remember Christopher saying was a birthday bash slash reunion for his friends from college—friends I’ve never met because Christopher kept to himself in his college years, while he was in the city. Christopher is my next door neighbor, has been my whole life; he’s like a brother to me. And I just tried to bludgeon his college friend with a short handle shovel.
Then I held him at trowel point.
Heat floods my face as I stare down at the man beneath me. I am mortified. And confused. Why, when he’s here for a party at Christopher’s, is he in the greenhouse?
“What are you doing in here, then?” I ask.
He swallows again and his hands start to lower to his sides. “Would you mind . . . if I answered you . . . while you’re not on my lap?”