Page 325 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
Off to the left and up the mountainside a ways, a bush shakes and then settles.
I narrow my eyes and step closer.
Suddenly, everything becomes clear.
The bush isn’t a bush at all. It’s a person disguised as a bush. Afamiliarperson disguised as a bush.
I fold my arms across my chest, my lips twitching into a smile. “Hello, again,” I say dryly.
Audrey doesn’t move, but she’s absolutely close enough to hear me. Does she think I’ll just leave her alone if she doesn’t respond?
“You can’t sit there all day, Audrey,” I say. “Iknowyou’re there. You might as well come out now.”
The bush shakes one more time, and Audrey stands up.
I can’t help it. I burst out laughing.
Her get-up is absolutely ridiculous. It’s also kind of ingenious. Leaves are sewn down the sleeves of her shirt and across thetop of her hat, and her camouflage shirt and pants blend into the woods around her. Had she not made a noise, I probably wouldn’t have seen her at all.
But shedidmake a noise, and I’m pretty sure she made it when I lifted my shirt to wipe my face. Is it possible she was actually checking me out? After the way she dismissed me at the Feed ’n Seed, she was more likely startled by a chipmunk or suddenly surrounded by a swarm of mosquitos. She definitely wasn’t impacted by the sight of my abs.Was she?
Audrey slowly moves down the mountainside, her camera in hand, and stops on the trail behind me. She doesn’t look even a little bit repentant even though she’s obviously trespassing.Again.
I nod toward her clothing. “That’s an awful lot of trouble to go to just to hide from me.”
“I’m not hiding fromyou,” she says, like that’s the most absurd thing she’s ever heard. “I’m hiding from the squirrels.”
“Oh, right. The squirrels.” Her expression is so serious, I hate to keep smiling. But this woman clearly has no idea how adorable she looks with leaves sewn onto her hat. Ican’ttake her seriously. Not really. I scratch my jaw. “Tell me again why the squirrels at your house aren’t good enough. Why is it you have to risk going to jail to see the squirrels over here?”
She winces the slightest bit when I say jail, but she quickly regains her composure. “The squirrels at my house are just regular eastern gray squirrels,” she says, her words measured and slow like she’s trying to explain trigonometry to a six-year-old. Or maybe like I’m a guy who just doesn’t understand squirrels. “But the squirrels over here are white.” She takes her hat off and tucks it under her arm while she pulls out her ponytail and shakes out her hair. It’s long—longer than I expect—cascading over her shoulders in dark waves.
I swallow.Focus on the squirrels, man. Squirrels.
I clear my throat. “I remember you mentioning that. But why does that matter? Are they albino?”
She shakes her head as she regathers her ponytail, talking around the hairband she’s holding with her teeth. “It’s called leucism.” She pauses long enough to grab the hairband and secure it. “It’s a condition characterized by reduced pigmentation linked to a recessive allele. You can tell them from albino squirrels because they still have dark eyes and skin. Just white fur.”
I study Audrey closely, noting the way her eyes brighten as she talks. Her posture is confident, her tone steady, her words punctuated with an air of certainty. I’m positive, even just from those few sentences, there isn’t anything I could ask about squirrels, probably about these woods in general, that she wouldn’t know. It’s a weird thought, considering she’s dressed like a bushandshe’s trespassing on my land, but her confidence, her knowledge—it’s kinda sexy.
I take a step toward her, but she immediately steps backward, and I lose the ground I gained.
Okay.Sexy and still entirely uninterested.
If onlyIhad white hair and a little brown nose.
“I think I saw one of those the other day,” I say.
If Nate were listening, he would not be happy. Mentioning the squirrels I saw outside my kitchen window is only going to make Audrey want to see them. And that’s going to make her ask me if shecan,and then I’m going to have to say yes. Becauseof courseI’m saying yes.
Her expression visibly brightens. “Just one? Or more than one? Where? Were you near your house?”
I chuckle at her enthusiasm. “There were two. And I wasinmy house. They were on the lawn beside the pool.”
“That’s the first time you’ve seen them?” she asks.
“First time. Though it’s possible I saw them and just didn’t notice until you showed up and told me it was a big deal.”
“Right. That makes sense.” She lifts a hand to the back of her neck, her eyes glazing over the same way Brody’s do when he’s doing high-level math in his head. “There were two of them?” she finally asks.
