SunnyWithAChanceofTrueLove

by Jessie Evans

  “Oh, bug.” Tulsi stroked her daughter’s hair and pulled her in for a hug. “You’re right. I wish you hadn’t learned that lesson so soon, but…you’re right.”

  “So how long do we have to wait for Adolf before we meet everyone else for breakfast?” Ross asked, squinting up at the butte where a golden glow signaled the sun’s imminent appearance. “My stomach is about ready for something more than coffee.”

  “As long as it takes.” Clementine focused her attention on the entrance to Adolf’s burrow. “You can’t rush armadillos.”

  “Fifteen more minutes,” Tulsi whispered. “Then we’re out of here. I need bacon and from what I read online, armadillos are nocturnal. It seems like the chamber of commerce would have kept that in mind when they decided to substitute an armadillo for a groundhog.”

  “But they’re active around sunrise, too,” Clementine said. “Y’all just need to be patient and quit having such a bad attitude.”

  “I don’t have a bad attitude,” Ross said. “I have realistic expectations of armadillos.”

  Clementine’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I have no expectations. They’re animals, and they’re going to do as they please, no matter what the chamber of commerce or the armadillo whisperers have to say about it.”

  Clementine propped her hands on her hips, shooting him a glare that would have been scary on a larger, less adorable person.

  “Clementine Rae, you stop that. I swear, if looks could kill…” Tulsi took Clem by the shoulders and shifted her daughter to her other side. “I’m sorry, Ross. We didn’t get much sleep last night. By the time we got back from Reece’s engagement party, it was after midnight and you-know-who gets cranky when she hasn’t slept well.”

  “I heard that,” Clementine grumbled from her mother’s side. “I’m not cranky; I’m hopeful. There’s nothing wrong with being hopeful.”

  “Of course not,” Ross said, wanting to make amends. He didn’t get to see Clem as much since she and Tulsi had moved to Montana and he didn’t want her to go home angry. “I should have kept my mouth shut. Who knows, maybe there will be a miracle.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a high pitched humming noise filled the air, coming from the dusty road leading back to town. Ross turned toward the sound, watching a solitary figure on a scooter buzz toward the Armadillo Day gathering as the first sliver of sun peeked over the butte. The golden rays glinted off the rider’s magenta helmet and the long, golden braids swinging behind her in the breeze.

  Even from a quarter mile away, Ross could tell this woman wasn’t from around here—no one in Lonesome Point rode a baby blue Vespa or wore helmets that looked like they could double as psychedelic bowling balls. The rider’s tourist status was confirmed long before she pulled to a stop in the makeshift parking lot beside the road and swung a leg over her bike, but there was still something about her that was strangely familiar.

  Familiar, and so compelling Ross couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from her slim form. Instead, he watched as the woman in the hot pink sweater and blue jean overalls hurried toward the group gathered beside the armadillo’s burrow with a burgeoning feeling of excitement. It felt like something big was about to happen, something he’d been hoping for for a long time, though he couldn’t put his finger on what it was until the woman came to a stop beside Clementine, whipped off her helmet, and asked in a breathless whisper—

  “Did I miss it?” Her hand danced through the air as she gestured toward the burrow. “Am I too late?”

  Her princess face had filled out since they were kids, but the big blue eyes and long blond braids were exactly the same. So was the way that looking at Elodie Prince made him feel—happy, excited, and certain something magical was about to happen.

  “Elodie?” Ross grinned so hard his cheeks started to hurt. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked up, and after a beat, her eyes softened with recognition. “Ross.” She laughed. “You grew up!”

  “So did you. But you still look the same, braids and all,” he said, fighting to get control of his goofy grin as he remembered he had an audience. “You remember Tulsi from back in school.”

  “I do!” Elodie clasped the hand Tulsi offered and gave it a firm shake, proving she wasn’t the shy girl she used to be. “So good to see you, Tulsi.”

  “You too,” Tulsi said with a smile.

  Elodie’s gaze shifted to Clementine. “And I assume this brilliant child is your daughter?”

  “How did you know that I’m brilliant?” Clementine asked, wonder in her tone, summoning a laugh from her mama.

  “It’s in the eyes,” Elodie said with a wink as she set her helmet on the ground by her feet. “They’ve got a brilliant kind of sparkle.”

  “Yours, too.” Clem grinned, obviously approving of the newcomer. “And don’t worry, you’re not too late. Adolf’s coming out any second. I can feel it.”

  “Oh, good!” Elodie pulled off her leather gloves and stuffed them in one pocket of her overalls before pulling a notepad and pen from another. “I promised my friend Remi I’d cover the Armadillo Day story for her while she’s down with the flu. I’m glad I haven’t missed any of the action.”

  “Remi Wheeler?” Tulsi asked.

  “Yeah, we met in drawing class when we were in grad school,” Elodie said. “I’m renting her spare room while I get my parents’ old place fixed up.”

  “You’re moving back?” Suddenly Ross felt like someone had taken a deep breath and blown away all the rain clouds that had been hovering over his head for the past few days. It was silly—he didn’t even know Elodie anymore—but he couldn’t deny he was happy to have her back in Lonesome Point.

  “Already moved. Been here almost a week.” Elodie smiled up at him and his heart did a spinner dolphin flip in his chest.

  Stupid heart. He wasn’t twelve years old anymore, but apparently it didn’t matter. He was still as much of a sucker for Elodie’s crooked grin as he’d been when they were kids. But thankfully, for once his nearly non-existent brain-to-mouth filter stepped in and stopped him from saying something embarrassing like, “That’s the best news I’ve heard all year.”

  Or, “I always hoped you’d come back, Elodie.”

  Or, worst of all, “Would you have dinner with me tonight?”

  Instead, he nodded and mumbled, “That’s great,” before taking a sip of his coffee and shifting his gaze back to Adolf’s burrow.

  Elodie had grown into a beautiful, confident woman. She might not even be single, and even if she were, he’d have to be in top pretending-to-be-normal form to have a chance in hell with a girl like her. He’d learned a long time ago that “just be yourself” was advice for people who fit the mold better than he did. For people who knew when to keep their mouths shut and their sometimes odd opinions to themselves. For people who understood there might be challenges in going straight from working for the highway department collecting dead animals to opening a restaurant with their meager savings. People who would have anticipated the “Roadkill Café” jokes that would be bantered about town and known how to banish mean gossip with a wink and a smile.

  Ross was none of those things, but he’d been able to convince Meg he was for a while. Maybe he could convince Elodie, too, though he didn’t like the idea of putting on an act with her. With anyone, really.

  He was twenty-six years old and tired of pretending to be something he was not. Tired of pretending he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. Tired of playing hard to get, playing games, and playing the fool when yet another relationship failed to launch. Most of all, he was tired of being alone. Even with his best friends, a part of him had always felt alone, a part that had found kinship only once, all those years ago, when he sat in the dirt with Elodie Prince and twisted pipe cleaners into monster shapes while she told him stories.

  And if that wasn’t reason enough to man up and ask her out, he didn’t know what was. Some
times you have to take a risk, no matter how slim your chances of success. Some things—like beautiful girls with magical smiles—are worth it.

  He pulled in a breath and turned to Elodie, a question about her dinner plans forming on his lips, when a collective gasp rippled through the sleepy crowd. Ross turned back to the burrow in time to see a massive armadillo barrel out of his burrow and make a run for the bluffs in the distance, waddling at a surprisingly brisk clip straight into the sun, casting a long, lumpy shadow behind him.

  After a moment of stunned silence, the small gathering of Armadillo Day spectators broke into applause.

  “Yes!” Clementine pumped her fist in the air. “Winter is over! Call Grandpa and tell him we’re going on a trail ride tomorrow, Mama!”

  “How about we go eat breakfast and check the weather, first,” Tulsi said with a laugh. “If, by some miracle, the rain has vanished from the forecast, I’ll call Grandpa as soon as we’re done eating.” Tulsi reached out, touching Elodie’s elbow. “It was nice seeing you Elodie.”

  “You too,” Elodie said, glancing up briefly from her notepad. “Have a great rest of your Armadillo Day.”

  “We will.” Tulsi took a step toward the parking area. “You coming, Ross?”

  “I’ll be there in just a second,” he said, turning back to Elodie, who was busy filling a second page in her notebook with tiny, narrow handwriting.

  Tulsi and Clem moved toward the car, and Ross’s heart began to beat faster. The rational part of him knew it was just a dinner invitation, but his crazier half insisted this was a do-or-die moment, one of a very few that would impact the entire course of his life. If Elodie said no, then the part of his heart that had been hers—and remained hers, because he wasn’t the kind of person to forget his first love—would go dark and never light up again.

  But if she said yes…

  “Please say yes,” Ross mumbled, tongue slipping out to dampen his lips as he waited for Elodie to finish her notes.

  “Yes,” she said, looking up at him with a serious expression.

  He smiled. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

  “I don’t care.” She lifted one slim shoulder and let it fall. “Whatever it is, the answer is yes. Ride on my scooter, yes. Kidney, yes. Special place in my heart…always.”

  Ross’s smile faltered, her answer so unexpected it knocked the wind out of him. He met her gaze and watched a hopeful light creep into her eyes. It was the light he remembered from that day he’d wanted to kiss her when they were kids, because a kiss had seemed like the only way to show her all the confusing, wonderful, breath-stealing things she made him feel.

  “Sometimes it just takes one person, you know?” she said softly. “To make the world seem like a better place. You were mine. Gram too, but you were the first.”

  “I’m so glad,” he said, chest tight with unexpected emotion.

  “Me too.” She stuffed her hands into her deep pockets with a laugh. “So what did I say yes to? I hope it’s not a kidney because I’d kind of like to hang on to both of them for a while.”

  “I’d like to make you dinner,” he said, nerves melting away in the honesty of the moment. “Tonight, and any other night you have free this week.”

  Her answering smile was dazzling. “Yes. And yes. But first, I was hoping you might be able to help me with something.”

  “Anything,” he said, knowing he’d give her a kidney, too, if she asked for it, even though they’d only been reacquainted for a few minutes.

  “I was hoping you’d introduce me to your friends at the highway department,” she said. “I need an in, and when I was asking Remi about you, she said you used to work there.”

  “You were asking about me?” Ross took a step closer, wonder and disbelief mixing inside of him, making the moment feel even more dreamlike.

  “I was. And call me crazy, but I think it was destiny that you were waiting here for me this morning.” She paused, biting her lip as a teasing twinkle crept into her eyes. “You were waiting for me, right? Not the armadillo?”

  “Absolutely,” Ross confirmed. “And assuming two can fit on your scooter, I’ll cancel my breakfast plans and we can head over to the highway department right now.”

  She grinned. “Sounds perfect.”

  And it did, Ross thought. He didn’t know if Adolf’s break for the sunrise meant an early end to winter, but he knew that his life was certainly looking a lot sunnier now that Elodie was back in town.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Elodie

  In the fourteen years since she’d left Lonesome Point, Elodie had come to terms with the fact that most people thought she was a little crazy. Or a lot crazy—depending on the person and how grossed out they were by dead animals, taxidermy, unconventional career choices, and women whose insides didn’t match their outsides.

  In those fourteen years, Elodie had also realized that she wasn’t a smelly, ugly, contemptible troll of a person. She was, in fact, very pretty, in a soft, delicate way that made some men want to protect her, some want to control her, and a good deal more want to take her home and show her who was the boss in the bedroom. All of the above were eventually disappointed when they realized that Elodie was about as delicate as a chunk of titanium, and only showed her soft side to the people she treasured the most.

  People like Ross Dyer.

  Ross Dyer, who had his strong arms wrapped around her waist as she steered her Vespa toward the highway department office, making her nerve-endings hum with giddy pleasure. Ross, who hadn’t hesitated to climb on the back of the bike and let her drive, who had barely blinked an eye when she’d confessed that he owned a special corner of her heart, and who had asked to make her dinner every night she was free this week.

  Every night she was free!

  It made her romantic soul hope that maybe he felt the same way she did—that it didn’t matter that it had been fourteen years since they’d seen each other or that they’d been kids when they’d started to fall in love. There was still something there, something special and undeniable.

  Her gram had insisted that she was crazy to move back to a town that had brought her nothing but pain, even if the parents who had neglected her were dead and gone, but Elodie knew better. Lonesome Point had been a painful place to grow up, true, but it was also the place where she’d met the kindest, funniest, bravest boy in the whole world.

  She’d never forgotten the moment Ross had told her that she was the most interesting person he’d ever met. Because he was the most interesting person she’d ever met, too—before or since. He always spoke his mind, never apologized for who he was, and had a quietly confident way of carrying himself that was more attractive than any amount of alpha male swagger.

  Even when he was a skinny little boy whose jeans were always two inches too short, he’d made her blood feel bubbly. Now, she was fizzing all over, just from the pressure of his arms wrapped lightly around her waist and his thighs resting close to her own. She’d been keeping a sharp eye out for Ross since the moment she set foot in Lonesome Point, but it had still taken her a moment to see the boy she’d known in the man he’d become. Ross had always had beautiful eyes and a smile that made her heart want to get up and dance, but now he also had a boyishly handsome face, broad shoulders, and a lean, muscled body that made her intensely aware of every place they touched.

  By the time she parked at the highway department office—a squat, concrete building near the last exit before the highway veered south—all she wanted to do was hurl herself into his arms and hug him breathless, but she managed to restrain herself. She was hopeful that Ross felt the pull between them, but she wasn’t sure yet. And until she was sure, she didn’t want to do anything to screw this up.

  People could call her crazy all they wanted; it didn’t change the way she felt. And she felt like this was it—the day she’d been waiting for. If she played her cards right, this might be the last day of her single life, the day she started down the road to forever
with the sweet, wonderful person who had captured her heart before she’d been old enough to realize how odd a critter that particular organ was. Now she knew that she and her heart were both a little strange, odd ducks in a world that preferred lightly-seasoned chicken.

  She’d had lovers and boyfriends in the past, but none of them had made her feel as special or understood as one little boy had years ago. And once a heart has been understood—every dark corner seen, every shadow embraced—it’s impossible to settle for a softer shade of love. Elodie didn’t want pastels; she wanted vibrant, light-up-the-world color and only this man, in the ancient jean jacket and jeans with holes in the knees, would do.

  As Ross slid off the bike, exchanging her spare helmet for the cowboy hat he’d stored beneath the seat, she let her eyes play up and down his long frame, amazed all over again that her brown-eyed boy had grown into this gorgeous man.

  “Sorry about the holes,” Ross said, gesturing down to his jeans. “I was half-asleep when I got dressed this morning.”

  “No need to apologize.” Elodie blushed, torn between confessing that she thought he looked delicious and embarrassment over having been caught staring.

  In the end, she let embarrassment win, wanting to get her meeting with the highway department people out of the way before she confessed any more of her secrets. She had to focus and make sure this meeting went well. If she couldn’t get on the department’s good side, it was going to make keeping her shop in Austin stocked that much harder. She was already running low on inventory after taking a week off to move and get settled in Lonesome Point.

  “So who’s the softest touch in there?” Elodie asked, motioning toward the door to the office. “The person most likely to do a girl a favor in exchange for donuts once or twice a week?”

  Ross’s brow furrowed. “Well, I think just about any of the boys would sell you his soul for donuts, but probably Blake is the soft touch. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s always listening and ready to step in when people need help.”