Page 107 of Four Dates and A Forever
Palms sweaty, heart racing, she glanced right, then left, then up at the security camera overhead. Crossing her fingers that a security guard wasn’t zeroed in on her aisle, she snatched the box and shoved it into the cart, sure to hide it beneath thehappy birthdayconfetti.
She was reaching for another box and that’s when she saw him. The one man she’d come to Portland to meet and had spent the past month avoiding.
Owen Easton. The biggest wrong she had to right. And the biggest flirt on the western seaboard. Dressed in faded jeans and a navy peacoat, he looked like an underwear model and an MMA champion collided, making him one hell of a sexy bad boy. And his smile–oh lordy—that smile, which was impossible to ignore, did things to her insides. Dangerous things that worried her.
He glanced her way, making direct eye contact.
Pretending she didn’t see him, which only made his smile bigger, she crouched down low like a soldier crossing through enemy territory and dashed toward the cash register—the six birthday balloons floating overhead acting as a homing beacon that followed her every move.
She considered ditching the cart and running for the hills, but then she’d blow her first chance to make a real difference. A chance to help a stranger in need and, hopefully, bring some much-needed balance to her out-of-control world and prove that she was moving in the right direction so Karma would get off her back.
Telling herself to pull up those big-girl panties and there was nothing to be embarrassed about, she loaded up the conveyor belt. Tossing in a king-sized Snickers for strength, she kept her eyes glued to the person in front of her. When it was her turn, she waited impatiently for the cashier to scan each item. Then it happened, the moment she’d spent the past ten minutes obsessing over and stressing about. The cashier stopped when she got to the box of condoms and glanced up when she saw the second.
Abi flashed a bright smile. The cashier lifted a judgy brow, holding Abi hostage with a single look. The woman wore her silver hair in a twist, a Food Hub and Grub apron withpatriceembroidered across the top, a magenta tracksuit that was bright enough to be seen from the Ozarks, and an expression that had Abi shifting in her shoes.
“You looking to get lucky?” Patrice asked.
Abi felt her face heat. “Excuse me?”
“The lottery’s up to thirty million.” She scanned the condoms. “You going to buy a lotto ticket?”
“No, ma’am. Just the items in my cart.”
“You sure?”
Abi craned her neck, looking forhim, relieved when he was nowhere in sight. “I’m sure.”
“You got thirty million dollars?” Before Abi could answer, the clerk said, “Didn’t think so. How many tickets?”
Abi shifted her weight from foot to foot. She had been short on patience her entire adult life, a sentiment she shared with her pint-sized students. Her need to be in constant motion stemmed from a childhood of waiting on everyone else and going nowhere fast. Today’s impatience was more of a desperation born from an innate, life-or-death need to escape before Owen located her.
“I’ll take one,” she said, and then because she was Southern born and bred, she added a honey-sweet, “please.”
This seemed to pacify Patrice. “What numbers, missy?”
“Whatever numbers the machine spits out will be fine, ma’am.”
Patrice gasped, a horrified hand clutching her chest. “You can’t live your life by chance. You’ve gotta take charge.”
Something Abi was quickly learning. There were a lot of missed meant-to-bes in Abi’s life. In fact, her life was apparently one big missed meant-to-be.
She rattled off her best friend’s birthday, the day they met, and the number of words from the title of her favorite NSYNC song, which was the number three for “Bye, Bye, Bye”—but Patrice wasn’t listening. She was too busy turning over the lip gloss tube, which Abi had bought as a special treat to herself for her upcoming do-gooder deeds.
The cashier read the color posted on the bottom. “Cream puff. My favorite pastry.”
Abi sighed. Cream puff was also the name of Jenny’s cat—a reminder so painful it made Abi want to cry, then devour the entire king-sized Snickers in one sitting.
“I hear you loud and clear, Jens,”she whispered to her best friend, who Abi imagined was giving her two thumbs up from the big playground in the sky.“I hope you’re happy because I love that color and it’s the last one.”
Patrice handed Abi the lip gloss and instead of bagging it, like she had the rest of her items, Abi held it out to the clerk. “It’s for you. I think the shade would look great with your complexion,” she said, doing her best Jenny impersonation. This immediately brought on a wave of guilt because Jenny was the real deal, a from-the-heart, shirt-off-her-back kind of do-gooder, which was not Abby’s first instinct, nor was it her second or third.
Patrice placed a hand over her mouth and her eyes went misty in a way that had Abi’s heart growing just a tiny bit. “Oh my. Aren’t you an angel?”
She didn’t know about that, but the genuine appreciation in the older woman’s expression ignited some feeling Abi had thought shattered in the accident.
“Champagne, lipstick, and condoms,” a very sexy and unwelcomed voice said from behind. “You must be throwing one hell of a party.”
Abi looked up and nearly swallowed her tongue whole. Because there he stood, her reason of reasons looking like sex on a stick. She’d caught glimpses of him over the past month, but always from a distance. A purposeful choice. Now she was close enough to smell his body wash and she realized just how big he was. Tall, broad shouldered, and I-bench-press-kegs-for-fun fit. And he was staring at her with amusement in those heart-stopping blue eyes.
