Page 1 of Small Town Secrets

One

Laila killed the engine to her car, her eyelids heavy and her limbs aching from another overnight shift at Marston’s 24-hour grocery store. The time on her dash said 7:07am and a pale morning light crested the roof of her modest two-bedroom rental up ahead. Meanwhile, her heart lurched because she had less than a few hours to catch a nap, then study, before her mother came by with Whitney, Laila’s daughter.

She reached for the door handle and a dash of white caught her eye through her side mirror, a moving van slowing to a stop in the driveway next door. Two men jumped out and a midnight blue SUV pulled over at the sidewalk.

“Now, who’s this?” she whispered to herself, her voice croaky from her hours at work.

She pushed her door open and slid out of her old Suzuki sedan, standing still amidst the chilled air and simply observing as the door to the SUV cracked open.

That’s when he stepped out. Her new neighbor. At least that’s what the moving van strongly suggested. Tall and handsome, with dark hair, and equally swarthy features. He held a neutral expression that was mostly unreadable. His shuttered air made him seem instantly too worldly for a place like Harlow, Minnesota. A place where most failed to hold any secret close.

Including her.

If I had more money, I’d be outta this town like a shot…

Any outsider would describe this small town as sweet and idyllic. Any outsider who didn’t know that a crime syndicate fast made its mark on every resident here. Heck, just six weeks ago her own sister, Ally, had been taken hostage amidst a bloody showdown in some nearby empty field. There’d been gunshots and henchmen, and there was no telling if or when the syndicate would be back. Soon, her new neighbor here would know all this too.

Her mind cleared enough to register her mysterious stranger staring back at her, his dark eyes narrowing slightly and sending a sharp jolt through her body. Though she’d been looking less at him, more through him—her thoughts pinging between who he might be and whether he actually knew what he was getting into moving in here—none of that mattered now. She’d been caught staring.

She chastised herself for being so careless, not a trait she indulged in all that often. Especially when it came to who she looked at in public, where usually, she didn’t “look” at all.

Through the loud thrum of her heartbeat, she tried to play casual by focusing on the men unloading the van, as if they were far more interesting than the dusky guy she hadn’t been half-checking out. The men moved efficiently, rolling a modest white couch on its side on a hand dolly, the wheels rattling from the truck bed and down the uneven ramp to the ground. An awful lot of noise for a woman who just wanted to catch some sleep.

This could take a while…

The men entered the house, and she shook her head. For some inexplicable reason she sensed her neighbor’s attention still on her and she glanced at him strolling past the truck and toward his house. The entire time, she tried not to think too much about why she found this newcomer so intriguing, pinning her interest on his newness and the fact that he seemed so out of place. Either way, her opinion on this man didn’t matter. Before long Whitney would be back and Laila would have more than enough to keep her busy.

Wanting to avoid any connection, she snapped her gaze away and pretended not to care about her new neighbor’s actions. Instead, she hurried over her aged porch steps and inside the house she worked so endlessly to afford. Speaking of endless work, she was still exhausted and needed to rest, at least for a little while before she dug into her homework for the extra summer classes she had to pass in the next month if she wanted to graduate her sonography degree early.

She needed to graduate. And she needed to do it by year’s end. So, she could have more money and more hours to spend with her kid, a kid growing up way too fast. Time was not Laila’s friend here, but at the age of twenty-six, she’d eventually dig herself out of the hole she’d fallen into four years ago. Things would start to look up. They had to.

Whitney would get her mom back.

Laila could lose her guilt.

She’d finally give her child the stability she always dreamed of providing, before misplaced trust and single motherhood left her minus any money or bankable skills.

The front door now open, she trekked across her living room’s aged, beige carpet, her faded brown couch with cushions that sagged situated on her left. She dumped her purse on a matching worn armchair and pushed on down the hall and into her bedroom. There, she changed into some comfortable cotton loungewear and then threw herself onto her queen-sized mattress with a humph.

Not much more than a few minutes passed before her eyelids fluttered closed and she drifted to sleep. Though the delirium of dreamland made nailing down any real clear thought impossible, images of the mystery man next door played on her mind and startled her awake.

Or maybe it was the remnants of a loud knock at her front door lingering on her brain. She couldn’t quite delineate what was real and what wasn’t, but she jolted to sitting either way. Maybe all the weird desperation and fatigue of recent years had her wishful thinking…

The discordant colors between her aqua blue clock on her lemon-yellow wall spoke of the “joys” of renting. She had little say on wall color or aged carpet, but at least the clock worked, and little more than forty-five minutes had passed during her nap. Now that she was awake, she might as well hit the books. Aside from Whitney returning soon, Emilia Bonacci’s and Blaine Callaghan’s wedding was happening tomorrow, which just added more tasks to Laila’s list of things to do today. Though at least the wedding would be a rare day out for her and Whitney. They don’t get enough of those.

Before she could even stand, another knockcame, and this time, definitely real and from her front door.

“Shit.” She ground the expletive under her breath and ran a palm over her hair, still tied in her work ponytail and likely a mess. After a few seconds, she strode across her house and tried to fully awaken from her insufficient sleep, even as she wrenched the front door open, falling short of barking out an abrasive, “What do you want?”

And the reason she fell short?

He stood there.

All tall, dark, and handsome, in a beaten-up-and-rugged sort of way. As much as she tried not to, she once more couldn’t hold back from staring. This time, the slight pull of his black t-shirt over visibly strong and broad chest muscles caught her, along with the indisputably beautiful golden glow of his thick arms peeking out from that shirt. Latino. He must be Latino. In a town that failed at diversity, he most definitely would stand out!

At least, he does to me. And in all the ways I wish he didn’t….

Catching her mental lapse on his beauty, she jerked her attention up to his face and the mild imperfection of shallow lines scoring his forehead. Even the slight flaws in his skin somehow added character and damning appeal.

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