Page 31 of The Huckleberry Bookshop

“Hey! It’s Dylan’s girl,” Chad said from the kitchen doorway.

She turned bright red. “Uh. No, we’re not—”

“He talks about you.”

“Oh, well. Um.”

“Dylan O’Neill? From the Dragons?” Athena asked, staring at Jenny. She’d heard all about how the two had bickered and butted heads at Thanksgiving. She’d figured they’d burned that potential relationship bridge, then bulldozed the surrounding land for good measure.

“Maybe I’m mistaken.” Chad came closer, bringing the delicious scents of candied fruit and his aftershave with him. “I’m Mullens.”

“Right. I’m Jenny Oliver.”

“So you’re not seeing anyone?” Chad asked. They shook hands, and pink splotches appeared on Jenny’s cheeks when he held hers a beat too long. His smile was kind and so sincere that Athena wanted to throttle him for being such an incurable flirt.

“Oh, uh, not really.”

“What do you look for in a man?”

“Chadwick, leave her alone.”

Wait. Was she feeling jealous of Jenny or protective? It was protectiveness, right? It had to be. Because jealousy would be the height of stupidity and Athena had promised herself she’d left stupid behind when she’d packed up and left Lonnie.

But she couldn’t help noticing that her friend, who was normally pretty feisty around the opposite sex, seemed a bit awed by Chad.

Yeah, she got it. He had this way of turning women into gooey puddles—all women. So fight it, girl. The man was such a player.

“Seriously, Chad, boundaries,” Athena scolded. “Not every woman wants to be another conquest. Do you not have a sister? What if Jenny is someone’s sister? Would you want some playboy macking on her?”

Chad’s expression went blank, his mouth a stony line. Athena sighed. Seriously, of all the things she rode him about, he was going to get butt-hurt over his very public flirtatious reputation?

“Come on,” she said, battling her rising guilt over his sudden drop in mood. “You have a new woman on your arm in every photo.”

“I’m not dating them,” he said moodily.

“Exactly!”

“Or…that.”

“You’re not sleeping with them? Just snapping pics for social media?” She’d heard that one before.

“That’s right,” he said, his tone suggesting she was dense to have assumed otherwise.

She rolled her eyes and turned to Jenny.

“Speaking of seeing someone,” her friend said, her starry-eyed Chadwick spell broken. “Karen got you a date.”

“What? She did?” Athena clapped a hand over her mouth and stilled her dancing feet. “I totally forgot I’d asked! Is he a professor type?”

“He’s an actual professor!”

“No. Way. January is totally looking up!” A date with a bookworm would be the perfect distraction from this silly thing she had going on between herself and Chad. Not that she likely even registered on his sliding scale of women. “What’s he a professor of?”

“Literature, I think.”

Athena grinned.

“Perfect, right?” Jenny said.

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