luscious, mouthwatering…uh…where was he? Oh, yeah. Especially when there was a woman like Autumn at the heart of it. And especially when that woman’s eyes told him she was every bit as aware as he was of the strange fire burning between them.
So she’d said she wouldn’t go out with him on Wednesday, had she? Well, then. Sean would just have to go back and ask her what she was doing on Tuesday instead. Then he remembered what he would be doing Tuesday. What the whole town of Marigold, Indiana, would be doing on Tuesday. What Autumn Pulaski would no doubt be doing on Tuesday, too. Because Tuesday was the Fourth of July. And everybody who was anybody in Marigold would be at the Annual Independence Day Picnic in Gardencourt Park. It was practically a requirement of citizenship.
Throwing his truck back into gear, Sean smiled. Yep, Tuesday would be a very good day for seeing Autumn again. Somehow he could just feel it in his bones. Their destinies were about to collide, for sure. And he couldn’t help but thank his lucky stars for that.
Three
Sean found Autumn precisely where he’d known she would be on Tuesday, right smack in the middle of Gardencourt Park, at the Autumn’s Harvest bread booth, hawking her wares. The Fourth of July was a very big deal in Marigold, Indiana, and pretty much the entire town closed down and showed up to celebrate it. Many of the local retailers, however, opened booths at the picnic, alongside the local craftspeople and artisans, selling specialty items or products that commemorated the day. Autumn, for example, he noticed as he approached the booth, was offering cranberry scones, white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies, and blueberry muffins—presumably in honor of Old Glory.
And he was glad he’d dressed up for the occasion in unripped, only marginally faded blue jeans and navy polo shirt, because Autumn, looking quite fetching, was dressed in what he, with his very limited knowledge of history—Rory was, after all, the historian in the family—assumed must be Betsy Ross attire. Except that ol’ Betsy probably hadn’t filled out her Colonial garb quite the same way Autumn did. The full skirt of her multicolored, vertically striped gown flared nicely over her hips, and the top part hugged her generous breasts with much affection.
So affectionately, in fact, that had it not been for the white apron loosely covering her torso, the picnic would no doubt have had to be called on account of mass licentiousness. But the little mobcap perched atop Autumn’s head went a long way toward tempering what Sean had decided was just her naturally sexy state.
Well, to the casual observer, the mobcap tempered her sexuality, anyway. Sean himself found the lacy little ruffled number to be surprisingly arousing. Then again, Autumn could be dressed up as George Washington’s faithful springer spaniel, Buddy, and Sean would still find her attractive. Then again, maybe that wasn’t an admission he should be owning up to. Still, she did look extremely delicious—or, rather, her baked goods looked extremely delicious—so what else could Sean do but step up to the booth and ask to sample her—or, rather, them?
“Excuse me, miss? I’ll have one of those plump, luscious-looking scones, please,” he announced, proud of himself for completing the request without a trace of suggestiveness.
Autumn’s head had been bent when he approached, but she snapped it up quickly at the sound of his voice. Immediately she blushed, something Sean considered to be a very good sign, then her lips parted fractionally in clear surprise. “I…what?” she asked.
He jabbed a finger toward the rich bounty of baked goods before him. “I’d like a scone, please,” he said, reading the hand-lettered sign in front of the selection. Otherwise he would have had to call it “one of those big lumpy things with the red spots,” because he had no idea what a scone actually was. He just hoped the letter c in the word was a hard c and not a soft c, otherwise, he’d just made a fool of himself. Then again, maybe that was why she was looking at him the way she was looking at him—as if she weren’t sure what language he was speaking.
He was about to correct himself—he hoped—and repeat his request, asking for a “sone” this time—or, at the very least, a “big, lumpy thing with red spots”—when Autumn blinked twice, something that seemed to break whatever spell she’d fallen under.
“Right,” she said. “A scone.”
Sean breathed a silent sigh of relief when she pronounced it the same way he had. Then he expelled a soft groan of frustration as he watched her lean forward to collect a particularly fat one from the front of the pile—because when she did so, her apron fell forward a bit, offering him a view he was certain Betsy Ross never would have offered, even for the sake of her country. Then, as quickly as it had been given, that view disappeared, because Autumn straightened to drop the scone into a small paper bag.
When she extended it toward him, Sean was reminded of the last time he’d seen her, three mornings ago, when she’d thrust forward the cup of coffee he’d requested. This was becoming a habit, he thought, her pushing something his way in a silent sort of “Beat it.”
“Here you go,” she said brightly. A little too brightly, Sean thought. Translated, her words almost certainly meant, “Beat it.” Especially since she punctuated the statement with, “That’ll be $1.50, please.”
He held her gaze steadily as he tugged his wallet from the back pocket of his blue jeans and withdrew two faded bills, trading them for the little paper sack. When she turned to make his change, Sean allowed his gaze to rove over the back of her, finding it every bit as enticing as the front. The flair of her hips and the dip of her waist gave new definition to the phrase hourglass figure, because he realized he wanted to take a whole lot of time exploring that part of her anatomy. Unfortunately, she chose that moment to spin back around with his change, and it was only at the last possible moment that Sean managed to drag his gaze back up again.
Oops. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t dragged it back up quite soon enough, he was forced to concede when he saw Autumn scowling at him. But she was blushing again, too, and that made him smile. If she was blushing, it must mean she was uneasy, and if she was uneasy, it must mean she was having a reaction to him. He still wasn’t entirely sure what kind of reaction she might be having, but at this point any reaction—short of throwing things—was welcome. And he was reasonably optimistic that her reaction now was something in the good family. After all, she hadn’t thrown anything, had she?
“Have lunch with me,” he said suddenly, impulsively, even though he had approached the booth with the express purpose of asking her to join him in that very activity. But he’d planned to go about it a bit less impulsively and a bit more smoothly. He hadn’t meant to just blurt it out that way. He’d intended to work up to it gradually, because Autumn seemed like the kind of woman who needed a lot of buttering up.
Immediately Sean wished he’d come up with another way to put that. Because the thought of buttering up Autumn Pulaski—or whip creaming her up or chocolate saucing her up or maple syruping her up or honeying her up—just roused images that were far too graphic for a public, family-oriented place. Much better to entertain ideas like that later, when the two of them were alone together somewhere. Preferably somewhere that was close to a kitchen.
“Thank you, Mr. Monahan,” she said as she handed him his change, sounding a bit breathless for some reason, “but I’m much too busy to be able to break for lunch. As you can see, I’m womaning the booth all by myself.”
As if cued by her announcement, two teenage girls dressed in huge khaki shorts and even larger white T-shirts bearing the Autumn’s Harvest logo approached the table and ducked behind it. Each donned an apron identical to Autumn’s, then each positioned herself at opposite sides of the booth.
“Thanks for the break, Autumn,” said
