Page 3 of The Problem with Dating

I tossed on my slippers and hurried downstairs. After grabbing the box from Willow, I thanked her and returned to my building. As someone left the building, I slipped into the door they held open. When I reached the elevator, I struggled to push the button due to the box in my hand.

“I got it!” a voice said from behind. As a muscular arm reached across the box and me, I looked up to find the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes I’d seen in a very long time, paired with a breathtaking, welcoming smile. A smile with a perfectly trimmed beard wrapped around it. A smile I had never seen in the little town of Honey Creek.

My heart skipped a few beats.

Fresh. Meat. On. Deck!

“Hi there,” he said with his pearly whites fully displayed. With a British accent.Are you kidding me?!Um, how dare he? What was a British accent doing in Honey Creek, Illinois? I tried to wrap my thoughts around the fact while my heart was doing cartwheels of excitement within my chest. What in the Bridgerton Experience was happening right now?

“Hi?” I replied. It came out as a question because I was caught off-guard. Who was this new person standing before me who decided to steal the air within my lungs? Not only with his looks but his vocals. Who was this Prince Charming, and why hadn’t I seen him in town?

Why hadn’t the women of Main Street mentioned him at all? Not even in passing? Gossiping was their favorite hobby, yet somehow, this man slipped through without a whisper.

Did he say something—his name, maybe? I wasn’t sure because not only did I mentally check out when I found new prospects with accents in town, I forgot how to use words and how to listen. Too much time had passed to ask him to repeat his comment, so I smiled and nodded.

He gestured for me to enter the elevator first, like a gentleman.

“Which floor?” he asked.

“Six.”

His smile stretched. “Same here. You must be one of my new neighbors.”

“Yeah, I’m Yara. I was born and raised in Honey Creek but moved into my apartment today. The last box of the unload,” I said, nodding toward the cardboard in my grip.

“Can I carry that for you?” he asked.

It was official.

I had a crush.

My first crush in decades!

The situation was worthy of a parade. Or at least a glass of cheap champagne from Jackie’s Beer & Spirits store around the corner.

I had an official crush on the elevator man, Jake. Or John?

No, no. It was Jake. It had to be Jake.

And Jake waschef’s kissattractive. Dirty-blond buzz cut with hazel eyes, built like a contestant onNinja Warrior, and a wicked smile that made my cheeks heat. And that accent!

People always say women will not meet a guy if they never leave their apartments, but the joke’s on them. It just so happened that men also lived in apartment buildings.

Some of them even had accents.

CHAPTER2

Yara

“Ihate you, I hate you, I hate you,” Avery complained as she collapsed dramatically against the bench in front of Peter’s Café. She dripped in a pool of sweat and regret as she panted and drained every drop left in her water bottle. Her ordinarily straight black hair was frizzy and drenched as she wore a backward baseball cap. And those brown eyes of hers shot daggers my way.

I snickered at my sister’s terrible morning attitude. “You’re grumpy.”

“We just went on a two-hour hike at six in the morning with three huskies,” she said, gesturing to the three large pups sitting before us on their leashes. “I told you repeatedly, I’m not a hiker.”

“You love our morning hikes,” I said. “It’s the highlight of your days!”

“That’s just because I live bleak days,” she dryly replied. “You know what my favorite part of the hike was?”

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