Page 18 of Tempting the Heart

Not that he invited me to, but I mean… this!

This was my problem. I got into my own brain and played all these imaginary scenarios in my head. I itched a gnat away from my nose and let out a sigh.

“Hey, Mayflower.”

And now I’d started hearing voices. Great!

I anchored a hot pink geranium into the planter and tapped the soil around the stems when I heard it again.

That sexy, gruff voice, which I liked to call my imaginary friend, just came out of nowhere and gave me all the feels merely by thinking of him.

It was like the ghost of a man I’d never had and couldn’t get over had manifested himself deep in my cells.

This was why I couldn’t move on. I let his crooked smiles and intense eyes knot me up inside. I chuckled to myself, thinking I’d made those feelings up from when I was a teenager. But I hadn’t.

Last night made it abundantly clear that I was still all wrapped up in a man I couldn’t have.

“Mayflower, you okay?”

I gasped, still on all fours with my rear sticking up and out, and clenched my eyes closed.

“Yeah, totally fine,” I muttered, realizing I hadn’t imagined a darn thing.

“Okay. Well, I heard you giggling and…” He cleared his throat and glanced around my yard. “There’s no one else around, so…”

My eyes sprang open, and I circled like a cat to face him. “Is laughing against the law?”

A playfulness edged behind his piercing blue eyes as he rocked back on his heels. “Nope. Not at all.” He smiled wider, and I didn’t know whether I wanted to get up off all fours or pretend that I was comfortable this way.

He took a couple of steps forward, narrowing the gap between us. The tops of his boots touched the edge of the lawn.

Tilting my head up, I squinted to get a better look at his features.

Mistake.

He was gorgeous, and my tummy tangled in knots just having him a few feet away from me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, finally raising my palms from the dirt and falling back onto my knees, sitting up.

“Honestly, I needed a breather from my parents and thought it would be nice to take a drive around the island. I saw your bicycle parked in front of this place and thought it was unusual enough that it had to be yours.”

I scowled, thinking about Olga. “What do you mean,unusual?”

“That bike is ancient. Plus, there’s a white basket with strawberries anchored to the handlebars. It’s… memorable.”

I shook my head, rubbing my gloved hand across my nose. “How did you even know that bike is mine?”

“I saw it outside the coffee shop yesterday and figured I’d try my luck. It made an impression.”

“I see,” I said, pushing away the rush of hormones washing through me. My mind tried so hard to be logical about this, but my heart screamed questions likewhy did he notice anything about me, or did he have a crush on me all those years ago too?I wished with everything that my mind would just be… calm.

Rational.

But it wasn’t. That wasn’t how I was built. My mind just kept churning and churning with delusional fantasies.

“It’s a beautiful day for a drive,” I said, agreeing about his choice of activities while ignoring his attention to details about me. Today was the day I was going to take control of both my heart and mind. No more silly visions about Tyler.

“I stopped by for coffee this morning, and you weren’t there.” His eyes fastened on mine, and a familiar spark shocked me to my toes.

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