Page 2 of Stay for Forever

I scan the crowd and flaming ducks! I blink my eyes hoping I’m in the midst of some type of hallucination, but when my vision clears the scene in front of me hasn’t changed. Maverick Langston is here. In my sister’s backyard. Love a duck.

Aspen stares at him with her mouth hanging open as he stalks across the lawn toward us. I can’t blame her for staring. My reaction the first time I met the owner of the Wildlife Refuge I manage wasn’t much different.

You don’t expect a Hollywood movie star to own a Wildlife Refuge in Winter Falls, Colorado – the town that defines the word quirky. Seriously. Our claim to fame is being the first carbon neutral town in the world, but the quirkiness doesn’t stop there. Not even close.

But Maverick Langston is indeed the owner of the Wildlife Refuge. He’s also a gorgeous movie star. Duh. Movie stars in general are gorgeous. He could have stepped directly off the silver screen with his thick brown hair, high cheekbones, and smoldering blue eyes.

Dang him. Why can’t he have a big, fat hairy mole on his crooked nose? Probably because he’s not a witch, but you get what I’m saying.

“You knew about him?” Aspen asks Ashlyn before he reaches us.

“Of course. Juniper and I don’t have secrets.”

I snort. “She means she followed me to work and spied on me.” As I said, Ashlyn’s a troublemaker.

“Same thing.”

“June Bug,” Mav greets in his deep voice, and I nearly forget why I’ve been ignoring the man. He smirks and I remember. He’s a movie star who’s playing at being with me. He’s not really interested in me as a person. Hell, he’s not interested in the Wildlife Refuge except as a tax write-off.

I tag his hand and drag him toward the furthest edge of the yard.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss at him. “You’ve blown your cover.”

I don’t actually care if the whole town knows the movie star has a house here and owns the place where I work, but if he’s worried about everyone knowing about him, maybe he’ll go away and never come back. My heart squeezes at the thought. No, heart. Stop it! We don’t care about him!

“No, he hasn’t,” Sage says before he can respond. “We’ve known Rickie owned the Wildlife Refuge since he bought it.”

“Nothing is sacred in this town,” I grumble despite not being surprised at Sage’s declaration. The woman’s ability to ferret out secrets is refined to an art form.

“Sacred refers to—”

I shove my palm in Lilac’s direction. Lilac is Ms. Literal. Words should be used in their most basic sense without any form of exaggeration according to her. And if you don’t follow her rules, she makes her disapproval known. Not now, sis. The last thing I need at this very moment is a lecture on the proper use of the word sacred.

“Can’t you give us some space to have a private conversation?” I ask when I notice everyone has followed us.

“Why?” Aspen questions, her brow wrinkled in confusion.

“I’ve never met a movie star before. I want an autograph,” Ashlyn adds.

I roll my eyes at her. “You’re a big fat liar. Half of your college graduating class became movie stars.”

I’m not exaggerating. Ashlyn studied drama in college. While she didn’t run off to try her hand at being an actor in Hollywood, many of her fellow students did. And they made it big.

“I wouldn’t say stars,” she mumbles.

“Who is this man?” Lilac asks. If I weren’t in the middle of freaking out, I’d laugh at her question. Naturally, my sister, who I worry is more robot than person, has no clue who this movie star is.

“It’s Maverick Langston. If you’d been to any of Juniper’s monthly movie nights, you’d recognize him,” Ashlyn explains.

“Enough!” I shout loud enough for the entire town to hear me. “Everyone needs to back off before the revealing of secrets begins.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” Sage, the leader of the town busybodies, claims.

I cock an eyebrow. “How about the time I saw you—”

“Let’s give Juniper and Rickie some space,” she says before I can finish tattling on her for the time I caught her spying on her friend Petal’s house with a pair of binoculars.

I wait until Sage has herded everyone toward the house before I turn my attention to Mav. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“You can stop running away.”

Me? I’m the one running away? He must be joking.

He reaches for me, but I bat his hands away. He sighs. “I’m done playing around Juniper. I want you. You want me. It’s time to figure out where this can go.”

I know exactly where it will go. It’s this place I refer to as heartbreak city. Been there. Done that. Have a broken heart as a souvenir. Do I plan to return? Not on your life.

“Not interested,” I tell him before marching away.

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