Page 42 of Your Place or Mine

He tried to hold in a grin and failed. “She called you a grumpy woolly mammoth, by the way.”

I choked on my beer.

“She what?”

“Yeah,” he said, far too gleeful. “I was picking up some groceries and ran into Melanie and Lydia.”

“I am not a woolly mammoth.”

“I don’t know. You kind of stomp around like one. And you make the same face when someone says the wordrenovation.”

I glared at him.

He waggled his eyebrows. “She’s not wrong, is all I’m saying.”

“She doesn’t even know me,” I snapped.

“But she saw you. That’s the difference.”

I didn’t respond.

Because what was I supposed to say? That I couldn’t stop seeing her?

That every time I closed my eyes, I saw her walking down Main Street in a floral skirt and easy smile, or hunched over a table laughing like she belonged here already?

Hell no.

“I’m miserable,” I said instead, which was safer.

Drew grinned. “Right. Miserable and definitely not checking the sidewalk when you lock up, just in case she walks by.”

I flipped him off.

“Adorable,” he said.

“You’re insufferable.”

He leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “Okay, fine. Let’s pretend you don’t like her. But can you admit she’s not trying to destroy your world?”

“We don’t know that.”

“She offered Riley help with the coffee shop.”

“That fridge hums like it’s possessed.”

“And she said she might replace it since it came with the building. The horror.”

I grumbled into my beer.

“She’s not trying to erase the town, Callum,” he said, softer now. “She just wants to live in it. Maybe improve a few things. Doesn’t mean she’s planting a Starbucks in the cemetery.”

“She better not.”

“She’s not your enemy.”

“She’s a distraction.” My stomach tensed as nausea rolled through me. I’d had everything just the way I wanted it. Boundaries in place. Expectations set.

And then Lydia rolled into town, shifting my off balance.

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