Page 6 of Once Smitten, Twice Shy

What the hell is the hot stranger from the Scottish pub doing in my mom’s greenhouse?

So much for his being some innocent sleeping guy. Has this man somehow tracked me from Scotland? Has he been here, biding his time, pretending to be asleep, and now he’s going to do—well, who the hell knows what, but it can’t be good!

Panicked but determined to defend myself, I lift the shovel over my head and scream as I swing at him.

Will ducks, then rolls away and springs upright in a display of athleticism that has me deeply concerned for my odds against him.

“Wait!” he yells. “Hold on!”

I swing at him again and miss, knocking over a damask rosebush. He lunges and successfully catches the rosebush, which, come to think of it, is odd for an assailant to do, but I’m already swinging at him again as I process that thought. I miss him entirely, losing my balance as the shovel whips out of my hands, then crashes into the table. Thrown off by the momentum of my forceful swing, I stumble back, straight into a potted gardenia that wobbles, then starts to tip off the table’s edge behind me.

Will lunges again, catches my hand before I fall, and yanks me toward him, like a swing-dance step that swaps our places, before he somehow also catches the gardenia plant and rights it on the table. I try to yank my hand away as he turns suddenly, which pulls me with him, and, in a chaotic tangle of feet and pinwheeling hands, we crash to the floor, Will on his back, me sprawled on top of him.

In an uncharacteristic feat of agility and speed that I can only attribute to the power of adrenaline, I lunge for a trowel that’s resting on the table beside me, then bring it to his throat. I stare down at him, breathing heavily. “What,” I gasp, “thehellare you doing here?”

He’s breathing heavily, too, eyes wide, hands lifted in surrender. “I…” He shakes his head. “What areyoudoing here?”

“Nuh-uh, you don’t get to ask questions.” With my free hand, I shove back the drenched hair that’s fallen into my face, trowel still at his throat. “You’re in my mom’s greenhouse—”

“Yourmom’s?” he croaks.

“—and the last time I saw you, seven months ago, you were in the same Scottish pub as me, soyou’rethe one who’s going to do the explaining. Now, tell me why you’re here.”

He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple roll beneath the trowel’s tip. His mouth parts, working silently, until finally, he says, “I’m staying next door, with Petruchio. I’m his friend, from college, I swear.”

I narrow my eyes at him. Christopher Petruchio is my next-door neighbor, has been my whole life—he’s like a brother to me. “I’ve never heard Christopher talk about a ‘Will.’ ”

“That’s because he calls me Orsino,” Will says, hands still raised. “Orsino is my last name. Everyone calls me that.”

I press the trowel against his throat. “Then why did you tell me to call you Will back in Scotland?”

Says the woman who told him your name was Viola. Maybe he did it for the same reason you did—self-protection.

I push away those sympathetic thoughts. No benefit of the doubt will be given! “How about I just call Christopher,” I tell him. “See if he’ll vouch for you.”

Will hesitates for a beat, then reaches for his phone in his pocket.

I slap my free hand down on his wrist and pin it there. “I’llget your phone, thank you.”

I tug the phone from his pocket, swipe it to open, then spin it so it uses his facial recognition to unlock. Straight to his contacts, I scroll down and find…Christopher’s name and his cell phone number.

My jaw drops. The trowel follows, landing with a clatter on the tiles. I was so sure he was lying, but…he’s not.

The pieces fall into place, as my anxiety clears enough for my memory to work properly. Christopher bustling around the past week, grocery shopping, cooking, stocking up on beer and wine.He’s been prepping for days for what I now remember him saying was a birthday bash for one of his college roommates and also a reunion for his friends from college—friends I’ve never met because Christopher kept to himself in his college years, while he was in the city, and none of them live here anymore, so they don’t see each other often.

The embarrassment that hits me is massive. I just tried to bludgeon Christopher’s college friend with a short-handled shovel. Then I held him at trowel point.

Heat floods my face as I stare down at Will pinned beneath me. I am mortified. And I’m even more mortified when I realize that I’m straddling Will’s waist. My thighs are pinned against his ribs. My pelvis rests on his, where I feel a solid, thick weight—oh myGod, I have to get off him.

I scramble off his lap in a very ungainly tumble of limbs, my embarrassment making me clumsy, my stiff joints resisting my sudden movement, and try to arrange myself in a dignified seated position on the floor. I’m not even going to try to stand yet.

Slowly, Will eases up, then scoots back to lean against the table’s end, how he was when he was asleep. He draws up his knees and rests his elbows on them as he rubs his hands down his face.

I stare at him, my mind spinning, my perspective rearranging. He’s not here with any malicious intent. He’s just the sweet guy who asked me to dance in Scotland, and he happens to be my surrogate brother’s dear friend. Of all the people I could have bumped into in Scotland last year, what are the chances it was him, a man I had no idea was already tied to someone so important in my life? It’s unbelievable.

Some might even call it…serendipitous.

I want to wipe that sentence from my brain as soon as I think it.

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