Page 82 of Not Exactly a Small-Town Romance

“It could be all right,” Jack says. “Depending on how things go, and if you don’t mind people being downstairs one of the mornings while you’re here. We don’t book it since most people don’t want a bunch of strangers tromping through.”

“The event will be here?” I ask.

“They’ll be all over town, but we host the Christmas tea here, both in the normal season and now for this.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Although I guess it’ll be iced tea this time around. I’ll have to check with Mom.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine for us to be here for the tea, don’t you think, Kelsey?” Zachery asks. “You wanted to meet the locals and do the festival. You’ll be right in the middle of it here.”

“Sure,” I say. “And there’s other events, right?”

“Absolutely,” Jack says. “The hayride is going to be a lot more pleasant in summer than when it’s ten below.”

“I bet.” I look up the miles of stairs, wishing I hadn’t brought the big suitcase in after all.

“I’ll get your bag,” Jack says. “You have the run of the house, other than the storage areas.”

I follow him up the stairs, mourning that the picturesque butt rising ahead of me is already taken.

But if Jack is indicative of what I can find in Glass, Wyoming, I’m right where I ought to be.

Chapter 28

ZACHERYWITNESSES THEREALDEAL

Kelsey has those meet-cutes down. A knock into popcorn. An exploding suitcase.

Eventually one of them is going to stick.

Jack filled us in on the places to eat nearby. I take Kelsey to one of them, a homespun café with checkered tablecloths and only four items on the menu.

We assess the other customers, almost entirely couples over fifty.

“Where’s the young people?” Kelsey whispers. “The families with kids? The hot young Jack look-alikes?”

I shrug. “They must go somewhere else.”

We stop into a supermarket and a sporting goods store to see who else we might find, but young single men are noticeably absent.

“There needs to be a sign-up sheet in the center of town,” Kelsey says. “City girls in search of small-town husbands.”

I chuckle. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

But with no luck on our first day, we retire to our rooms. We’re farther apart this time, with no bathroom connecting us. I lie in bed, thinking about how close Kelsey is, and yet how impossibly far.

I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

I wake the next morning to a sound I can’t quite identify. It’s regular, spaced apart by about twenty seconds.Whack, thud, scrape. Whack, thud, scrape.

The side window tells me nothing, only an empty yard to the tree line.

I move to the back window. There it is again.Whack, thud, scrape.

I shift the curtains. Behind the house, a young man who resembles Jack, but isn’t Jack, cuts firewood on the stump of a tree.

He lifts the axe, thenwhack, it comes down, andthud, the fat log separates and falls. He adjusts the new piece with ascrapeacross the stump and does it again.

He’s the right age for Kelsey, late twenties, strong and self-assured. He wears gray shorts, a white T-shirt, and a ball cap. Casual, but normal. I’m guessing she’ll assess his outfit at about $120, mostly due to the tennis shoes.

I step back. She’ll probably burst in any second to brainstorm a meet-cute.

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