What the hell is wrong with me? This is the first guy to cast a look anywhere close to resembling interest and I’m behaving like an idiot.
“New neighbors,” a woman says in a sultry voice.
Startled, I turn around to face a woman with dark hair and blue eyes whose feature are strikingly similar to Josh and Cole’s. As she walks up the path leading to our house, she freezes mid step and pales as her gaze meets my dad’s. My father stiffens and I swear I hear him gasp, but I might be wrong. My father never gasps. Nothing fazes him. Nothing ever shakes the almighty Lieutenant Blake.
But this woman’s voice did.
His shoulders lift as he takes a deep breath, recollecting himself one piece at a time, before turning to face the newcomer.
“Stephen?” Her voice is almost a whisper as she utters that name.
They know each other?
“Maggie,” my father says her name with familiarity. Reverence. The hard, dominant edge of his voice gone. “How have you been?”
He doesn’t sound surprised at all to see her. Maggie, on the other hand, looks like she’s about to faint.
“You moved. . .here?”
He straightens, his lips pulling into an easy smile. The look is so alien on his face, it’s disturbing. “We just got here.” He turns to look at me and clears his throat. I’ve never seen him nervous. A red flag is waving madly inside my head.
Who is Maggie to him?
“Eleanor, go inside. I’ll be there in a second.” The hard edge in his voice returns, and with it, the coldness that always sends me running. The faded scar running diagonally across his right cheek tightens as he narrows his eyes at me in warning when I fail to follow his orders.
My curiosity prompts me to swivel on my heel and directly face Maggie, momentarily ignoring my father. It’s a stupid move and I might pay for this later, given the muscle twitching on my father’s hard jaw. I’m too intrigued to care about the repercussions. Maggie eyes me warily, clutching her heaving chest with one hand. Her fingers fiddling with the silver necklace around her neck with the other.
I retrace my steps down the path and stop in front of Maggie. “I’m Nor.” I stick my hand out to her in greeting.
She hesitates at first, her gaze shifting briefly to my dad and then back to me, nervously. “Margaret Holloway.”
I step aside when Mom joins us. They shake hands, but I don’t miss the tension, which has heightened rather quickly in the past five seconds.
Turning away, my thoughts spinning, I head back to the porch then grab the two boxes and straighten.
“Oomph!” A set of hands grab my shoulders to stop my backward descent. “Watch where you’re—” I manage to utter the words, but my body does that annoying shivering thing again, making me aware of the body plastered to the front of me.
“Sorry. Are you okay?”
The shock of hearing him speak jolts me upright, bringing me face to chest with him. His voice has a somewhat husky, breathy quality to it, and it softly curls around some consonants. I can’t really describe it, but I can definitely say it needs a little getting used to.
God. He is tall. And his gaze is completely focused on my mouth.
“Eleanor?” Cole says.
I look away, flustered by his attention and mumble, “I’m good.”
I feel his hand on my cheek, turning me to face him, the entire span of his palm covering the left side of my face and right there, I decide I love his hands. Big and strong and calloused. Those hands are made for doing things like carrying heavy stuff and gently cupping faces.
“I need to see your lips to understand what you’re saying. Are you okay?”
Oh crap.
“Sorry. Yes, I am.” I quickly take a step back, moving away from his space so I can bring my racing heart under control. “Thanks for . . .um. . .breaking my fall.”
He nods and drops his hands before spinning around and striding purposefully down the porch, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He leaps over the little fence that separates our houses and disappears through his front door.
I NEED TO GET MY shit together. How can a girl I’ve never met before shake me to my very core like Nor does?
I take off toward the little white fence which separates our houses and hop over it, leaving Mom, Josh and Nick to get acquainted with our new neighbors. Besides, I’m not sure what to think of the way Nor’s dad, Stephen, was staring at me. Scary as shit. I wonder what he said to Nor’s mom. She clearly seems afraid of him.
Right off the bat, I don’t like him. But that doesn’t stop my fascination with his daughter.
Nor.
Other than their height, she resembles her mother right down to the freckles on her nose and the red hair. It’s jarring how similar they look. She’s the shortest of the three sisters.
Once I’m inside my room, I shuffle to the window and just stand there, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.