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“Brace yourself,” Blair said. She was standing next to the room where the cat was. Thankfully, the cat was no longer crying.
Ethan laughed and shook his head. “This cat must be something else.”
Slowly, Blair opened the door, and a large white cat strolled out. Based on the urgency of the cries, Ethan had expected the cat to fly out like a rock flung by a slingshot. Instead, she meandered along like royalty. When she was standing directly in front of Ethan, she looked at him and meowed. Loudly. Several times.
“Do you speak cat?” he asked Blair. “I think she’s mad at me.”
Blair walked over and picked up the cat. “It’s nothing personal. She doesn’t like meeting new people.”
He reached out and patted the cat’s head. Rather than pull away, Clementine turned in Blair’s arms until she was facing Ethan.
“Well, she doesn’t like most people, but I think she likes you,” Blair said.
Ethan reached out and took the cat. She immediately cuddled against him. “She’s just an old softy.”
Blair shook her head. “No. Not at all. She’s hated everyone who’s come over here. I had to wait two weeks before she’d let me pick her up.”
“Guess I have the magic touch,” he said with a chuckle.
“Horses. Cats. It looks like all animals love you,” Blair said.
“It’s my sparkling personality,” he teased.
Still holding the cat, he glanced around the living room. Blair was a woman surrounded by things. She didn’t have expensive things, just sentimental items. Lots of them.
He walked over to the fireplace and examined the little figurines lining the mantle. They were interspersed around pictures of Justin and an older couple, probably her parents. Ethan leaned closer to get a good look at the figurines. Leprechauns and unicorns. “These are interesting.”
She smiled. “I like whimsy in my life,” she said before she headed toward the kitchen.
Ethan set the cat down and followed Blair, studying the house as he went. She kept the rooms neat and organized, but it didn’t take an expert to see she had her work cut out for her. The house was indeed a fixer-upper, although once completed, it would be beautiful. Whoever built it had put a lot of thought into the details, especially the molding and trim.
“So tell me about this play,” Ethan said, joining Blair in the kitchen. He skidded to a stop when he caught sight of the lime-green and burnt-orange cabinets. Wow. He’d had nightmares that weren’t as disturbing as this kitchen.
Still, Blair had managed to soften the effect slightly with white appliances, and she’d given the room flair by placing more personal items around. Yep, Blair Collins was firmly planted in her home. This woman liked to nest.
“The play should be a lot of fun, and it won’t take up much of your time. We’re rehearsing every night this week, and our first performance is on Friday evening. Then we have another performance on Saturday afternoon, a couple more rehearsals next week to keep us fresh, and then the remaining two performances are on the following Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. I really appreciate you taking the part of Prince Charming,” Blair said. “It won’t be difficult.”
Ethan leaned against the doorway. “Except so far, the two guys who previously signed up to play Prince Charming both ended up getting hurt. This play sounds sort of dangerous.”
She laughed and shook her head. “It’s not dangerous if you’re a careful driver, and you don’t catch baseballs with your face.”
“No problem there.” His good intentions about squashing his attraction to Blair wavered when she opened the refrigerator door. The light from inside highlighted her profile, the classic lines of her face, the length of her throat. Resisting Blair was going to be difficult. She was not only pretty, she also had an appealing, warm personality.
Talk about a dangerous combination.
“What would you like for dinner?” Blair asked.
“Since you’re letting me stay here, I’ll fix dinner,” he said, anxious to do something other than stare at her.
He expected an argument, but Blair shrugged and moved away from the refrigerator. “Sounds good. I’m not much of a cook.”
Ethan washed his hands, then after stepping over the cat, rooted around the refrigerator until he found the makings for sandwiches and a salad. He and Blair worked together making the meal, but soon the conversation lagged, and Ethan sensed she was as jumpy as he was.
By the time they sat at the small kitchen table, attraction cracked between them like electricity.
“Do you mind satisfying my curiosity about something?” she asked.
Ethan swallowed a sip of his soda. “Guess not. What?”
“Why did you finally agree to help us with the play?” Blair had stopped eating and sat watching him closely.
Ethan saw no reason to pretend. “The bottom line is I owe your brother a lot, so I’m doing it for him.” He didn’t intend his words to sound harsh, but they did, and the faint smile on Blair’s face faded.
“You don’t have to help if you don’t want to. I can find someone else,” she said.
“If you could have, I’m sure you would have.” Leaning back in his chair, he studied her. When she met and held his gaze, he looked at her for a moment, then after drawing in a deep breath, he looked away.
“It’s no big deal. I don’t mind,” he finally said.
“Well, you’re a nice man to help.”
Nice? She thought he was nice? That was a first. He’d been rowdy as a kid, wild as a teen, and hardheaded in the Army. These days, he was good at his job, and he’d like to think most people respected him. But he doubted anyone called him nice. That word made him uncomfortable. Nice was settled. Nice was comfortable.
“No offense, but I’m not nice. Nice makes me feel like I’m your second cousin here to take you to the prom.” He leaned forward, wanting to stress the point. “A nice guy would have agreed to help without being shoved into it by his best friend.”
“Is that what Justin did? Shove you into agreeing?”
He took another sip of soda before answering. He wanted to make sure he didn’t make her feel bad. “In his own way, yeah. Justin shoved me. But like I said, I owe him, and he knows it.”
“Does that bother you?”
Ethan smiled at her question. “No. I admire his resourcefulness.”
Blair laughed softly, and the sound tensed every muscle in his body. This woman had the uncanny ability to get under his skin. Until tonight, he hadn’t thought that was possible, but something about Blair pulled at him, and he knew if he didn’t watch out, he could end up in real trouble.
Blair struck him as the marriage-and-children type. That wasn’t his style. He came from a family where divorce was common, so he avoided women who were interested in forever. He didn’t want to end up like his parents, both of whom had left a trail of broken marriages behind.
“Well, despite what you’ve said, I still think you’re nice.” After a slight pause, she added, “But I should probably warn you that not everyone in the play is . . . nice.”
He didn’t really care if the people were nice or not, but his gut told him this play definitely had the chance of turning into a royal mistake.
“I’ll keep my guard up.” He studied Blair. Now she really was nice. All she’d done tonight was worry about others—about the play and the hospital that would profit from it. And she’d worried about him. Ethan couldn’t remember the last time someone had worried about him. It felt . . . odd.
Pushing the unwanted feeling aside, he deliberately changed the subject. “Do you like living in Falling Star?”
An almost blissful look crossed her face. “I absolutely love it.”
“You and Justin grew up here, right?”
She nodded, her brown hair brushing her shoulders. “Yes. We both had lots of friends and had so much fun.”
He set his sandwich down. “Justin told me that you’d moved back recently.”
“Yes,” she said. “I moved away to go to college, and then my father retired to Florida. Since Justin had also left town, when I graduated, I went to work in Fort Worth. I lived there for a few years, but when a position in the bank opened here, I jumped at it. I’m so happy to be back home.”
In a way, Ethan understood. When he’d been a kid, he’d loved his small town. He’d known everyone, had friends from birth, felt like the place was his. Then after his parents’ divorce, everything had changed, and he no longer felt wanted in the place he’d once loved.
“What’s so special about Falling Star?” he asked.
The smile she gave him lit up the room. “It’s a wonderful place. Lots of great people, lots of friends.” She leaned forward just a little and softened her voice. “Besides, local superstition says that Falling Star is magical.”
Ethan laughed. “What?”
“It’s true. Local superstition says that when you see a falling star and make a wish on it, your wish will come true,” she explained.
“Um, I believe that superstition applies wherever you see a falling star,” Ethan pointed out.
“But it’s supposed to be even more likely to come true when you make the wish in the town of Falling Star.” When he laughed again, she joined in. “I know it sounds crazy. When I was a kid, I thought the whole falling star thing was dumb. But now that I’m an adult, I find the idea charming.”
For a moment, Ethan just looked at Blair. She was so pretty, and he loved the sound of her laughter.
“So is it magical? Have the wishes you’ve made on falling stars come true?” he asked.
“Oddly enough, yes.” She paused for so long, he thought she wasn’t going to add anything else. But eventually, she said, “When I was young, I didn’t think so, but now I realize my wishes really have come true.”
Ethan wanted to ask her what her wishes had been, but he didn’t. Life had taught him to respect the privacy of others, so he backed off.
“These days, I really do feel Falling Star is magical,” she said. “At least it is for me. I never want to live anyplace else.”
For a moment, he simply looked at her. Then he picked up the dirty dishes and carried them to the sink.
Blair trailed behind him, carrying more dishes. “I know you said you live in hotels and motels when working, but where do you live when you’re not working?”
He shrugged. “No place. When I have time off, I travel.”
“You don’t have a permanent home?” she asked.
He ran warm water in the sink. “Nope. Just a mailbox in Oklahoma.”
“But there must be someplace you’d like to live.”
“Nope.” He didn’t want to discuss his lifestyle. No way a woman who collected figurines of leprechauns could understand how he felt. She’d just told him how much she loved living in a small town, while he’d spent years getting away from one.
“No small town or big city?” she prompted.
“No place.” When he did turn around, she stood a couple of feet from him, her gaze sympathetic.
“Look, Blair,” he said. “I’m not the settling down type. I like to move around. Discover new places.” He smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “Some of us don’t plan to put roots down until we’re buried six feet under.”
Blair returned his smile. “My folks were like that. But they still always had houses. And they had a family. Even now, with Mom gone, Dad still bought a house when he moved to Florida. Don’t you want those things? Don’t you want to find some place you can live permanently?”
He could tell she wasn’t going to drop this. Obviously, Justin hadn’t told her anything about his past, and Ethan knew he could leave it that way. He could give her a flippant answer like he gave everyone else, but somehow, he couldn’t do that to Blair. Maybe it was the concern in her eyes, or the fact that he was tired, but whatever it was, he told her the truth.
“Forever isn’t in my blood, Blair. Some of us like moving around. If I made a wish on a falling star, it would be that I never have to live in a town like this for long.”
**
BLAIR’S EYES WERE GRITTY with fatigue the next morning. After showering and dressing for work, she headed downstairs for some much-needed coffee. As she looked out her kitchen window, she couldn’t help wondering if Ethan was still asleep. Probably not. He wouldn’t have spent half the night awake wondering about her the way she had about him.
The man was a puzzle to her. After his pronouncement that forever wasn’t in his blood, their conversation had dwindled to almost nothing. He’d made it clear he considered the subject closed. Respecting his privacy, she’d let the matter drop, but she couldn’t help wondering what had happened to him in the past. Justin probably knew the answer, but she wouldn’t ask her brother. No, if she wanted to understand Ethan better, she had to find the answers herself.
But she wouldn’t go looking for them. Last night had shown her how different their beliefs were, not to mention their future plans. Blair now understood that the less she knew about Ethan, the better off she would be. He could stay in Justin’s apartment, and she’d be friendly to him, but that was it. She definitely was going to ignore the attraction between them because the last thing she wanted to do was fall for Ethan.
Plus, she already had more than enough to think about. First, she was busy at work. Then there was the house. Ethan had been very polite last night, but Blair knew she had a ton of work to do. Finally, there was the play. She’d made a commitment to help, and she’d do everything she could to make it a success.
No sense getting distracted at this point by a handsome man—she’d fallen into that trap before. Her last boyfriend, Marshall, had seemed perfect for her, and she’d mistakenly believed he wanted the same things out of life she did. But he hadn’t understood how much she needed to settle in this particular place.
Funny, even though they’d dated for over two years, the thought of him no longer made her sad. Time really did heal all wounds. When Marshall had texted her goodbye, she’d been caught completely off guard. She’d honestly believed that Marshall wanted to settle down and start a family just like she did. Instead, when she’d been offered the job in Falling Star, he’d broken up with her. He worked from home and could have worked anywhere, but he didn’t want to live in a small town, so that had been that.
But she was smarter now, so she’d steer a wide detour around Ethan Wilson and save herself some heartache in the process. He might be handsome, but he also was heartbreak in blue jeans.
Before leaving the house, Blair dug out an old clock radio from the hall closet. The idea might be crazy, but it was worth a shot. She took the clock radio into the guest bedroom and under the watchful gaze of Clementine, plugged it in, set the time, then turned on the radio. After some searching, she found a classical station.
Then she checked Clementine’s food, water, and litter box. She also had a small pile of toys. The cat was all set.
“I’ve got to go,” she told Clementine as she headed out of the room. Tara would be here in a few moments to give her a ride to work. Thankfully, this would be the last ride Blair would need. This afternoon she was leaving work early to buy a new car.
She took a step out the front door and immediately stumbled over something. Looking down, she discovered the newspaper sitting on her front porch.
How had that happened? Wayne, the man who delivered her paper, never hit the porch. The sidewalk, the driveway, the boxwood shrubs by the front door. But never the front porch.
Baffled, she tossed the paper inside the house, locked the front door, and wandered down to the sidewalk, still pondering the paper. Maybe Earl had been practicing. She knew only a few houses on her street still got the newspaper, but she liked the old-fashioned feel of a paper. She liked learning the news by reading the paper each evening, and she loved the Sunday paper.
She just didn’t like hunting for it every morning.
Blair was looking at her house when the answer came to her. Ethan must have put the paper on the front porch. A quick glance showed no sign of him, and his truck sat where he’d parked it last night.
So where was he? Blair looked up and down the block. Finally, she spotted him in the distance. He was jogging down the street wearing shorts and a T-shirt. As he got closer, Blair realized he was a sight to make a woman’s heart beat faster.
Blair couldn’t stop herself from watching him run and was so caught up in the sight that it took her a minute to notice when he stopped briefly at a house. Smiling, she realized what he was doing. As she’d guessed, Ethan was picking the papers up in front of the houses, and with a skilled arm, tossing them lightly onto the front porch. She’d give him this—he had great aim.
Tara pulled up just as Ethan was almost back to the house. Blair walked over to Tara’s car, but before she could get in, her friend climbed out and turned to watch Ethan.
“Now that’s what I call an early morning vision,” Tara said, shading her eyes against the sun. “And look—he’s such a nice guy. He’s throwing the papers up to the houses. This man definitely has Prince Charming written all over him.”
Blair didn’t answer. Instead, she watched Ethan approach the front of her house.
“Morning, ladies.” Ethan walked over to where they stood.
Tara took two steps forward, stopping to block his path. “Where’d you learn to toss a paper like that?”
Ethan shrugged. “I used to play football in high school.”
“A quarterback,” Tara said with a wink to Blair. “I should have guessed it. You have the look of a hometown hero.”
Ethan extended his hand and started to introduce himself.
“Oh, sugar, I remember you from last night.” Tara shot another quick glance at Blair, then returned her attention to Ethan. “I’m Tara Adams. So are you joining our little play?”
“Yes. I’ve been persuaded.” He looked at Blair, his blue eyes intense in the early morning sun. “Do you need a ride to work?”
“Thank you, but I’m going with Tara this morning.”
“After work then?” he said. “I can pick you up.”
“This afternoon I’m going to buy a car,” Blair said, happy she’d soon have her own transportation again.
Tara had been listening to them, but now she suddenly held up both hands. “Wait. I have an idea. Ethan, why don’t you go with her when she gets off work?” Tara shot a conspiratorial look at Blair. “She’ll need a ride, and I’m sure she’d appreciate your input on the car.”
Blair frowned at her friend. Why was it that people always felt they had to fix up their friends? She turned to Ethan. “I already know what kind of car I want, and I know you have things to do.”
“Like what?” Tara asked. “He can’t look at Justin all day. The man is a mess.”
“I have time,” Ethan said.
Holding back a sigh, Blair said, “Thank you, Ethan, but I’m fine.”
“But he’s bored, and he might have fun helping.” When Tara finished speaking, she flashed a triumphant grin at Blair. “It’s a win-win situation.”
Blair looked at Ethan, then at Tara. She wished she knew what Ethan was thinking. She didn’t need help, but if he really was bored, he was welcome to come with her.
“It’s up to you,” she said to Ethan.
“Don’t be silly.” Tara’s grin widened. “You’d love the company.”
No two ways about it, Blair really needed to have a heart-to-heart with Tara. Although her friend meant well, backing Ethan into a corner like this wasn’t nice. But since Tara and Ethan seemed fine with the plan, Blair didn’t really have a choice.
“You can come with me if you want to,” Blair said half-heartedly. Spending time with Ethan wasn’t wise—the attraction between them was simply too strong. So strong that she tended to act like a goof around him.
“How can you turn down Blair’s gracious invitation?” Tara asked, her smile smug.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Ethan said.
Blair had no idea if he meant that or not, but if they both didn’t agree to this plan, Tara would probably devise a new argument. Blair really didn’t want to stand in her driveway arguing all morning with her friend.
“Well, Blair and I need to get to work,” Tara said. “See you later, Ethan.”
Ethan nodded at Tara, but his attention was on Blair.
“My phone number at work is on Justin’s refrigerator,” Blair said, finding it difficult to concentrate when he looked at her with those intense blue eyes of his. “So is my cell number. Plus, the key to the garage apartment also opens the back door of the house. You’re welcome to go in. There’s lots of food.”
“Thanks, but I’m sure I won’t need to call. I’ll probably head over to the hospital in a while and visit Justin.” He flashed a crooked grin at Blair. “If I get bored, I’ll come home and keep the cat company.”
Blair tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, ignoring the little flip-flop her heart did around Ethan. “I’m sure Clementine would like that.”
“Great.” With a quick goodbye, Ethan headed toward the garage.
“Yeow. That man is good-looking,” Tara said.
Blair didn’t even pretend not to agree. Ethan was incredibly handsome, with his classic features and deep blue eyes. When he disappeared inside, Blair headed toward Tara’s car, making a mental note to tell Tara to stop matchmaking.
No matter how much her friend tried, it simply wasn’t going to work.
“You like him,” Tara teased once they were in her car.
Snapping out of her reverie, Blair glanced at her friend. “Not the way you mean, but I will admit he’s attractive.”
“Attractive? Right, in the way that Bill Gates is comfortable financially. Come on, Blair. Ethan is gorgeous.”
“But he’s all wrong for me,” Blair said, considering the subject closed. She had nothing in common with Ethan; they wanted different things in life. If her experience with Marshall had taught her nothing else, she had learned that to make a relationship last, you had to find someone similar to you. She had no interest in falling for a man guaranteed to break her heart.
Opposites might attract, but they didn’t stay together long.