Page 6 of Love at First Slice
Our shy, sweet friend had sent a text to us a little over an hour ago that Brew had asked her to move in, and she had said yes. After less than a month of dating, she was moving in. With a boy! If it weren’t for the way Brewster looked at her and took care of her, I would have been worried.
But I found myself surprisingly happy for her.
I parked my car and balanced the two heavy trays of food in my hands as I made my trek up to the cabin but stopped at the door. The sounds inside made me want to smile, but it also clenched something in my heart. It sounded like everyone was having a good time. I could make out Rosie and Ember’s voices and Tabby’s laugh.
Maybe with everything changing, they don’t need me anymore?
The hand I had raised, about to knock on the door, dropped as I held the two trays closer to my chest.
Will this new chapter be like when they left for college all over again?
This new chapter in our lives that Rosie had kicked off at the start of the season. She kept saying how our twenties were flying past us, our thirties knocking on the door, and how she felt like she hadn’t done much.Her.Rosie, who had traveled the world. Literally. If she felt like that, I wondered what she thought about my life. How I lived. I hadn’t even left Moonlit Pines to go to college like Ember and Tabby.
I’d stayed behind.
I never regretted it. I loved our small mountain town.
I’d worked a million different jobs trying to figure out what I liked and didn’t until I landed at the ski resort. And then, when it had been bought the last time and the brothers who owned it started to revitalize it and bring it back to life, I had found my place there as their new event coordinator.
I loved my job, but it wasn’t like I had any kind of crazy ambition to go do that in, say, Paris one day.
Are our twenties flying by us?
I didn’t feel old by any means. Maybe sometimes, I looked at people in town who I’d gone to school with and see how they had found their person and started whole families already.Am I behind in the whole game of life thing?
Connie’s suggestions about dating popped into my head. Me, date?
Maybe it was seeing Brew with Tabby so happy together, working and meshing their lives so easily, that made me wonder what that would be like. Having someone at your side who had your back no matter what. To be held and loved and seen.
Jesus, I was getting sappy. I shook my head. I was not that girl. I’d never been the boy crazy one.
Someone cleared their throat behind me, and I jumped, almost tripping over my own feet. Thankfully, big warm hands steadied me and pulled me closer to a warm muscular body. My eyes rose and rose and then widened when I looked at the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen.
Even under just moonlight overhead and a small streetlight glowing behind us, I knew those dark eyes were beautiful. Like soft, melted, luxurious pools of chocolate. I blinked and took in the rest of the man who was holding me to him.
He was beautiful.
Handsome in a way that should have been illegal. With brown hair, longer on top and slightly overgrown on the sides, almost like it was time for him to get a cut, and a soft, dark beard that made him look even more masculine.
Wow,I thought to myself. I had no idea who he was, which was weird considering I’d lived my entire twenty-eight years in Moonlit. I had always thought I knew everyone. Maybe not by name, but at least their face.
This man, though? I had never seen him in my life. I would know if I had. My body weirdly agreed with me, too. He looked like he could have easily walked off the cover of a magazine or romance novel. And when he smiled at me, the lines at the corners of his beautiful eyes crinkled, making something inside of me go as warm and mushy as the overcooked pasta I’d had to toss earlier.
“Can I give you a hand?” he asked, his voice deep and rich as his eyes dipped down to the trays in my hands.
But I couldn’t answer.
My throat was suddenly bone dry, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to speak. I was speechless. That had never happened to me in my life.
“Please? I insist.” His smile was warm and genuine as he reached over and took the trays into his own hold easily.
“Thanks,” I squeaked, completely mesmerized by the man next to me, who was suddenly holding the two trays of food I’d brought and two bags. Of wine? I tried to remember who Tabby said was bringing what, but when I looked back up and our eyes connected, I couldn’t think.
All I could do was stare at him.
He was so beautiful. Masculinity personified.
Tanned skin from the sun or his background, I wasn’t sure. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself,” he spoke, breaking the weirdly exhilarating yet comfortable silence that had fallen between us.
