chance at serenity had passed.
* * *
AS SOON AS Will turned off the spray of hot water, he became aware of the discordant blast of a car alarm and pounding on his front door. Had he been the victim of attempted theft? He tied a bath sheet around his waist and strode toward the front of the house with his car keys in hand. When he opened the door, pointing the key ring at his car to stop the alarm, he was startled to find Megan Rivers on his porch.
Her aloof manner sometimes gave him the impression she wouldn’t voluntarily talk to him even if her roof was on fire and he was standing ten feet away with a hose. But she didn’t look aloof now. Her face was contorted in fury, her posture battle-ready and her eyes narrowed. Yet, as soon as she got a good look at him, she recoiled, those pale blue eyes widening.
“You... You’re not wearing any clothes!” Her gaze traveled down his damp abs to the top of his towel, then abruptly back to his face.
“Well, no. I usually don’t while I’m in the shower. Do you do it differently?” he teased, momentarily forgetting that humor bounced off this woman’s invisible force field.
“You were showering. So that’s why you let your car alarm go on so long?”
“Yeah. I didn’t hear it over the water.” Her oddly suspicious tone registered. “Why would you think I was deliberately letting it go off?”
Color stained her cheeks, rosy in the glow of the front porch light. “I, uh, thought perhaps you were choosing to ignore it because you were, um, otherwise occupied.”
It took a moment for her meaning to sink in. “Why, Ms. Rivers. You have a dirty mind.”
“I do not! But everyone in town— Never mind.” She shook her head, regaining her composure. “I apologize for storming over here. I worked hard to get my girls to sleep. Then when that stupid alarm startled them and wouldn’t stop... I’d better get back to them.” She held up the monitor in her hand, and he could hear distant sounds of a cartoon. “I left them with a movie on so that the alarm wouldn’t be so jarring in our quiet house, and now I have to redo an extensive tucking-in routine.”
He winced. He’d heard his brother complain about how hard it was to get the twins to bed more than once. Triplets had to be even more difficult. “I am truly sorry the alarm woke them. I don’t know why it went off, but—”
“I believe one of your lady friends was trying to surprise you with a gift and didn’t expect the car to be locked. Please ask her not to do it again—assuming you can figure out which one it was,” she said icily.
Will’s eyebrows shot up. Where did she get off being so judgmental about his private life?
“I’ll send out a group text,” he said, annoyed into uncharacteristic sarcasm. She gave him a look so withering he was half tempted to check beneath his towel and make sure nothing had permanently shriveled. Then she spun on her heel and descended the stairs. As she marched across her own lawn, it occurred to him that the exchange was the longest conversation they’d had since she moved in.
“Nice chatting with you, neighbor,” he muttered under his breath. “Let’s do this again real soon.” Like, maybe, the nineteenth of never.
Thank God for chocolate. As Megan taste-tested one of the brownie balls she’d made for the triplets’ day-care teachers, her mood lifted. But then it sank slightly under the weight of guilt as she stared out the kitchen window and recalled her shrewish behavior last night. She’d panicked at having her hard-won peace disturbed, but, after sleeping on it, she could admit that Will hadn’t technically done anything wrong. He wasn’t the one who’d set off the alarm.
His biggest crime seemed to be inspiring insanity in women—first in the locals who threw themselves at him and...for a few minutes last night, in Megan. She’d been flummoxed by the sight of him shirtless and had overcorrected with hostility. If any of her clients heard her use that bitchy tone, the flower shop would be in serious trouble. The Trents were well respected in this town, and several of Will’s family members were paying customers. She should apologize—not that he’d exactly been Prince Charming with his snarky boast about group texts.
But this was the season of goodwill. Perhaps she could take him a few holiday treats as a truce? Nothing so grandiose that he might mistake her for one of the women in town who swooned over sapphire eyes and sculpted biceps, just a token offering that said, “I’m not a complete harpy.”
Sure. She was a big enough person to manage that.
An hour later, after she and the girls had done some significant sampling of today’s holiday baking, she zipped them into their coats and herded them out to the van. She’d pulled aside a few treats for Will but faltered when she saw the strange car on his half of the driveway.
In the place of his usual vehicle sat a beat-up compact with mismatched doors and a dented bumper. Did he have company? Whatever the case, she should deliver this chocolate before she changed her mind.
She buckled the girls into their safety seats. “You three stay put a second. Mommy’s going to take these across the driveway to Mr. Trent.”
“Mr. Trent wif the noisy car?” Daisy screwed up her face, her expression a clear indictment of their neighbor.
“Yes. And then we’ll make our deliveries and visit the library. Okay?”
The triplets chorused their agreement, and she strode toward Will’s porch. A woman much slighter than Will’s alarm-triggering visitor last night sat huddled on the top step. As she got closer, Megan saw that this visitor was crying.
Megan hesitated. Now what? She didn’t want to embarrass the other woman by witnessing her vulnerable moment, but Megan had shed enough tears over a man that she felt a tug of sympathetic kinship.
“Hello?”
The woman raised her head, her freckled face much younger than Megan had been expecting. Even more disturbing than her youth was the baby sleeping in the car seat next to her. Was the girl even twenty? Surely, Will hadn’t...
“Hi,” the teary female said. “I’m Amy.”
“Megan.” She felt a surge of protectiveness toward the young mother. “I live next door.”
“Do you know...” Hiccuping, she brushed a tear away from her cheek. “Do you know when Will is coming back?”
“No. Sorry, I don’t.” Was he even now on a date somewhere while this girl sat here crying over him? “Are you going to be warm enough, waiting out here?”
“The cold is the least of my problems,” she said bleakly. But then she mustered a smile as she glanced toward the sleeping infant. “And he has all his cozy blankets and his little hat.” It was a fuzzy blue knit cap, embroidered with a smiling koala bear. “Baby clothes are so adorable, don’t you think? Adorable, but expensive.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes.
Was she here to ask Will for money? Did he bear financial responsibility for the baby? You shouldn’t rush to conclusions. Still, if it quacked like a womanizing duck and waddled like a womanizing duck...
