Page 5 of Dumbstruck
I mean, it’s not like there are any people to date in Laketown anyway. Hank is the only single man under the age of sixty, and while I love the guy, he’s too academic for my tastes. Plus, he never leaves his house. The fact that he came to town the other day to see Bonnie is still blowing my mind. Even more surprising is the fact that he agreed to be Bonnie’s fake boyfriend for publicity’s sake.
He came to Laketown to hide from the world, just like I did, which is a huge part of the reason we became friends. And now that he’s changing his tune, I’m left feeling unsettled. Unmoored. Which is ridiculous, because I could not possibly be more settled. I own a business and a house and a cat who may or may not hate me.
“Here, kitty,” I say as I crouch down low on my porch with a can of tuna. I caught sight of the beast when I went to close the blinds in the front room, and I’m not one to miss an opportunity. “Tonight’s the night you’re going to let me touch you, right?”
I don’t know why I bother. It’s been six months since Samson first showed up in my bushes, and he’s never once let me close enough to pet him.
“Come on, you fuzzball. It’s time.”
I can see him staring unblinkingly at me through the leaves, his squashed face catching the porch light. I have no idea what kind of cat he is other than orange and furry, but he keeps coming around, so I keep trying to turn him into a house pet so I can have some company after a long, quiet day at the store.
“I know you like tuna, big man,” I tell him. “And I will gladly give you this whole can if you ask me nicely.”
“Could Ipretty pleasehave the tuna?”
I shriek and scramble backward, realizing far later than I’d like that it wasn’t the cat who spoke to me but the shirtless man standing on the sidewalk.
Jonah.
“What are you doing here?” I gasp, pressing a hand to my heart as if that might calm it down.
Smirking in his annoyingly handsome way, Jonah glances around my quiet street. “I’m on a run,” he says, as if it should be obvious.
Maybe it would have been obvious if I’d gotten a chance to really study him. Tennis shoes, running shorts, and earbuds make up his entire ensemble, though I have no idea why he isn’t wearing a shirt when it’s maybe forty degrees out right now. I’m freezing just looking at him.
And look at him I do. I knew he was built, but Jonah James has some serious muscle definition. I shouldn’t be surprised, given his resume, but he has managed to find that perfect in-between, plenty strong but not burly like his friend. He could keep a girl safe if she needed him to.
A shiver runs through me. Because of the cold. Not because I’m imagining a guy like Jonah stepping between me and a ready fist.
Samson rustles in the bushes and pokes his head out, curious about the half-naked man standing on my sidewalk.
“Oh hello,” Jonah says, dropping into a low crouch. “I take it you’re the tuna lover.” To my surprise—and burning jealousy—Samson walks right up to Jonah and head butts his hand, leaning into his touch as Jonah scratches his back. “You’re an ugly thing, aren’t you?”
“How did you do that?” I gasp.
Jonah looks up. “Do what?”
“Samson has never once let me touch him.”
“Huh. Can’t imagine why not, with your friendly personality.”
Scoffing, I stand and take a single step toward the two of them. Samson immediately darts back into the bushes, and my eyes inexplicably sting with tears. It’s acat. I don’t even like cats! It shouldn’t matter that this one likes the smug, pretty-boy actor but not me.
To my relief—disappointment?—Jonah grabs his shirt, which he’d tucked into the back of his shorts, and pulls it over his head.Oh. Not a shirt. A tank top that still shows off his well-defined arms. “In my defense,” he says, “I’m a farm boy. The animals always tended to like me.”
Shoot. That shouldn’t make me like him more—I’m a city girl through and through—but it does. “Farm boy?” I ask, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.
He laughs, and the sound seems to warm the air around us. “Why the tone of surprise? Is it because you can’t read that on the internet?”
Oof, it’s like he has access to my search history. Yeah, I may have looked him up a little bit after talking to him on the set the other day, but he doesn’t have to be so cocky about being famous enough to have a Wikipedia page. Hank has one too, so it’s not like it makes Jonah special.
“As if I would bother looking you up,” I say.
Samson yowls in the bush like he’s calling out my lie.
Jonah’s smile shifts into a smirk again as his eyes flick to something behind me for half a second. He takes in the street once more and raises an eyebrow. “Quiet place.”
I fold my arms, suddenly defensive of my tiny neighborhood. “I happen to like it.”
