Page 2 of Small Town Secrets

And he hasn’t even spoken one word yet….

Oh, get your brain together!

Right, she, of all people, understood the pitfalls of impulse and hormones. Especially with a man such as this. The amused glimmer in his eye said he likely had far too much good fortune with women. That glimmer said she’d already given away too much of her inner thoughts.

Though her cheeks burned with embarrassment, she conjured the reminder that she was a realist. She had to be. Her child’s well-being relied on her mother’s clear thought and careful planning. As did Laila’s battered heart. So, being realistic, she thought about how she had every reason to stay away from any man of dating age. How she’d just come off a long shift at her cruddy job. How she’d just woken and probably looked like a flaming hot mess. How this man would never give her a second thought if not for whatever reason that brought him to her doorstep now.

“Hi”—she cleared the gravelly tone from her throat and swept another hand over her frazzled hair—“what do you need?”

“I’m sorry to bother you.” Adrian Ramos extended a hand to his new neighbor, her striking cornflower blue stare skating over him, while she failed to take hold of his hand. “My name’s Adrian, but most people call me by my last name, Ramos. I’m moving in next door and…”

He nodded down to his hand, reminding her that she should shake it. Her gaze dropped, acknowledging his hint and still failing to act on the offer, her attention bouncing up again, while her eyes narrowed in on him. “Ramos? As in, Dean’s friend who kidnapped Sarah?”

His heart sank from disappointment that his reputation preceded him. Though she was technically correct about him kidnapping Sarah Overton, this woman omitted the huge detail of why he’d done that.

“I was doing Dean a favor, infiltrating the syndicate.” He took his hand back and shifted his focus from the purple shadows under this woman’s eyes to the overgrown lawn gracing her front yard. She seemed overwhelmed and maybe coming over to introduce himself had been a mistake. “I likely saved her life.”

“Right.”

He turned back at the sound of her flat tone, yet another thing to leave him wondering if he’d imagined the burst of chemistry they’d exchanged across driveways just an hour earlier. “That’s also why I’m back in town. To help with curtailing the syndicate once again.”

And even as doubt brought heaviness to his stomach, a light tingling within his chest said he wasn’t wrong about that earlier spark and that he still liked what he saw.

Trying to decipher the emotions dancing across her face, he paused to inspect her some more. From a distance, and before coming to this door, he’d thought she might offer the potential for some light fun during his stay in town. Someone to keep him company, since his whole schtick of being an investigator for hire meant never staying still or in one job for too long. But her gaze no longer skittered away like before, so perhaps this nameless woman wasn’t the sort to toy with, after all…

She lifted her lips into an all-too-perceptive smile, a dimple on her left cheek seeming to suggest that she sensed a shift in power here. “So, again, did you need something, or are you just stopping by to say, ‘Hi’?”

Her direct question warned him not to do his usual act of flirting his way into a woman’s world, but more the fool to her, because he was used to risk and liked a challenge. Even if the odds were stacked firmly on him losing.

“I do need something.” He shifted his gaze past her and into her house, to the worn-but-homely carpet and furnishings, to a kitchen table stacked with a basket of unfolded laundry on one end and a backpack next to a pile of books on the other.

A student, maybe?

She looked to be in her mid-twenties, a little older than the usual college age, but then, maybe that explained why she’d hauled out of her car earlier wearing some kind of retail worker’s uniform under her jacket.

A student and a night shift worker.

“I’ve come a long way and was hoping to buy some groceries soon.” He blinked and then re-focused on her, making sure to flash a smile and lean in a little closer. “Only, my power is off until this afternoon and I was hoping to run an extension cord from your house to my fridge?”

She dipped her chin, already hinting that he asked too much. “And you can’t wait a few hours ‘til the power’s on?”

He shrugged. “A man’s gotta eat.”

He took in her slow and pensive breaths, not sure why he stuck on talking to her. It wasn’t like he needed the distraction, or anymore ties to this place, or anyone the syndicate might connect to him as leverage. He’d come here to protect his friends and could already feel the syndicate closing in. And still...

Maybe this fish out of water life is taking its toll…

Right. He’d lived in all sorts of places: army barracks, deserts, foreign villages, and bustling cities like L.A. where he’d grown up. But never an endearing little town such as Harlow. He didn’t belong here. In a community cozier than anything he was used to. Maybe that explained the tight skepticism across this woman’s face, even as she released the tension from her shoulders and spoke, “I mean, it’s probably not all that safe to string up cords across houses, what if it rains and—”

“It’s mid-summer. There’s no rain forecast for today.” He gave another easy shrug, though his shallow breaths showed that ease to be a lie. “I checked.”

The woman’s expression remained firm and unconvinced, especially as she gave her eyes a quick roll to the heavens. “I’m not letting you into my house.”

Now it was his turn to unleash a deadpan tone. “Scared I’ll kidnap you too?”

“And take me away from all this?” She gestured to her house, granted, a bit more than rundown. “Oh, please, do.”

Though her lips pressed into a thin and sarcastic line, a short and buried laugh jolted the space just below his ribcage. Still, he found a new way to use the quip about her house to motivate her toward enduring his presence for a few minutes more. “I’ll pay you for your trouble.”

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