Page 10 of The Woman in the Hollow
“How did you get home?”
“My friends shoved me into a wheelbarrow and rolled me home after dark, then quietly dragged me through the house on a sleeping blanket, and tossed me into my bed.”
“Good friends.”
They had been. Until some silly boy drama rocked our group in our senior year and sent us all splintering off in different directions. Then again, college would have ripped us apart anyway, since they’d all gone off and I’d stayed local to try out some different passions at the local community college.
“Yeah. Today has been great, lewd sex acts aside.”
“Yeah, guess I got my new operations manager to thank for that,” he said with a wink before walking away.
I stumbled home hours later, every muscle aching, with a pizza in my hand and a sense of pride in my soul.
Which was exactly what I should have been focusing on—a job well done.
So tell me why, instead, all I could focus on was a set of dark eyes and a velvety soft voice?
CHAPTER FOUR
Hazel
The opening week honestly went better than I could have ever imagined.
We’d been packed all day and night. The reviews started to get posted. We were tagged all over social media.
I went ahead and patted myself on the back a little bit even as I worked harder than ever to keep supplies stocked as demand exceeded our expectations. I’d bought a big ledger to keep notes in for the future seasons, jotting down that we would need to amp up hay and pumpkin planting if we wanted not to have to buy external supplies.
The only real disappointment from my standpoint was the fact that I hadn’t seen Dante since opening day.
Though why I was letting myself think about that at all was beyond me. I’d never wondered about the owners of previous companies I worked for before. And I was sure one or two of them were attractive.
God, I couldn’t even stop thinking about him on my one day off.
What was wrong with me?
Maybe I needed to do some late-night perusal of toy websites and buy myself something to ease the tension I was clearly dealing with if I kept fantasizing about a man I’d interacted with once.
I had to get a grip.
Maybe he was just on my mind because I was making my way down the street toward the pizza place owned by his cousin.
Did I just have pizza a week ago? Yes. Had I been craving it ever since? Absolutely. Though this time, I was dreaming of one of those baked ziti pizza slices. And maybe a buffalo chicken slice. Or a chicken parm slice.
I was so distracted by the menu on my phone that I didn’t see him until he saw me.
“Hazel,” a newly familiar voice called, making my belly wobble as my step faltered.
My head snapped up.
And there he was.
In another perfectly tailored suit.
Standing beside a table in the outdoor seating area.
“Oh, hey,” I said, giving him a smile that I hoped hid the way desire started to ping off every nerve ending.
“Couldn’t get enough, huh?” he asked.
