Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 103119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Although, some stubborn part of her brain refused to accept that he was flat-out stodgy with a side of arrogance. There was a reason she’d crushed so hard on him during freshman year of high school, right? Yes. As a senior, he’d been nothing short of brilliant. A shoo-in for valedictorian. A track-and-field star. A local celebrity, by virtue of his last name. But those weren’t the only qualities that had attracted Hallie.
No, on more than one occasion, she’d witnessed him being good.
At the one and only track meet she’d ever attended, he’d stopped running during a four-hundred-meter dash to help up an opponent who’d fallen and twisted his ankle, thus sacrificing his own opportunity to win. As she’d held her breath in the stands, he’d done it the same way she’d observed him doing everything else. With quiet intensity. Practical movements.
That was Julian’s way. He broke up fights with a simple line of logic. He’d have his head buried in a book while the senior girls swooned over him from a distance.
Hallie had traveled all over the West Coast by that point. On the road, traveling from gig to gig with her mother. She’d met thousands of strangers, and she’d never encountered anyone like Julian Vos. So at ease in his good looks and rich with character. Unless her fourteen-year-old mind had truly embellished the finer points of his personality? If she was asking herself that question, it was probably time to let the crush go.
Later tonight, she’d remove the bookmark of his YouTube lectures. She’d smooth out the dog-eared page containing his senior yearbook photo. In order to blot out the memory of their almost-kiss, she’d probably require hypnosis, but the recollection of his head dipping toward her, the fiery sky blazing all around them, had already begun receding at the edges. Her chest hurt over the loss of something that had been her companion for so long. The only constant besides her grandmother. But feeling stupid for nursing a crush on someone who didn’t even remember her?
Yeah, that stung a lot worse.
She knelt down and admired a flock of honeydew-green zinnias. No way she could pass them up. Later today—she couldn’t remember what time—she was landscaping the front yard of a summer home, preparing it for the arrival of the owners who lived in Los Angeles the rest of the year. They’d requested lots of unique colors—and that was an ask she didn’t mind in the slightest—
“Well, if it isn’t the talented Hallie Welch.”
The familiar voice brought Hallie to her feet, and she smiled warmly at the young man with ginger hair approaching her from the opposite direction. “Owen Stark. What on earth are you doing in the nursery buying flowers out from under me? It’s like you own a competing landscaping business or something.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard? So sorry you have to find out this way. I am your competition. We are mortal enemies.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Pistols at dawn, Stark!”
He slapped a hand across his chest. “I’ll alert my second.”
They broke into mutual laughter and traded places so they could see what the other had picked up. “Oooh, I’ll have to grab some of those succulents. Their popularity refuses to wane, doesn’t it? I like them for window boxes.”
“I’ve got a client requesting them along his walkway. White stone.”
“Low-maintenance special. Table for one.”
Owen chuckled and fell silent. Hallie gave him a smile on her way back to her own cart, trying not to notice the way he catalogued her features, the piercing blue of his eyes softening along with his expression. She liked Owen, a lot.
Surely a better match for Hallie didn’t exist anywhere in the world. On paper, at least. They were both gardeners. They could talk flora and fauna until they were blue in the face. He was kind, the same age, good-looking.
There was nothing not to like.
But she might as well admit that Owen Stark had fallen victim to the Julian Vos barometer. That and . . . Owen would fit into her life seamlessly. He’d make perfect sense in a way that was too perfect. A relationship with Owen would be natural. Expected. The person who coined the term “settling down” probably had this exact kind of partnership in mind. And settling down meant . . . this was it.
She’d be a gardener from St. Helena and would remain one for the rest of her life.
Did she want that? Her heart said yes. But could she trust that feeling?
When Hallie came to live with Rebecca, she had taken a deep breath for the first time ever, her grandmother’s routine grounding her. Giving her a firm place to settle her feet. To stop spinning like a top. Without Rebecca’s anchoring presence, though, she was picking up speed again. Whirling. Worrying she’d only belonged in St. Helena because of Rebecca and now . . .