Page 13 of Lovewell Lane (Honeyfield Dreamers #1)

Margo

Minty toothpaste and orange juice were the worst flavor combination, and I never failed to forget it. My slight hangover made me cringe even harder than normal as I rushed to the fridge to take a big chug of water to wash the taste out of my mouth.

Despite not drinking much, I felt like I blacked out last night. Did Derek Weston really drive me home? The fact that he picked up my call in the middle of the night was enough to convince me it must have all been a fever dream.

My theory was majorly supported when I walked outside to find… My car?

But I left it at the bar last night. When it broke down. Holy shit, this must be some kind of groundhog day situation. This town was so cursed. I rushed back inside with my mug of orange juice in hand, careful not to spill it.

I opened my phone to look at the date and it just said January 18th. Groundhog Day theory debunked. Boring. So how the hell did my car get from Point A to Point B?

Derek and Tessa appeared on their back porch as I was just about ready to check into a psych ward.

“It should work just fine now,” Derek called. His gaze flicked to the car and back to me.

“How did it get here?” I asked.

“Fairies,” Derek answered. Tessa giggled and ran out into the backyard to chase one of her duck friends. I watched her catch one with astonishment.

“Fairies?”

“There are lots of fairies that do silly things,” Tessa explained. “A fairy brought me a birthday surprise last year with balloons and streamers and all my stuffies had party hats on.”

I gave Derek a look. What the hell was going on? He walked down the steps of his porch to stand beside me.

“The battery died, it’s fine now,” he said under his breath so that Tessa couldn’t hear.

“I need to pay you back for it. Did you fix it?” He shot me a look as my voice got louder. I lowered my voice to a whisper, “You can’t just do things like that. I promise I’m not some charity case, I have money.”

Derek’s brows scrunched into each other. “I don’t think you’re a charity case.”

“Okay, great. I’ll get cash when I go out today and bring it back for you, then.”

“Not nec—” I looked down to find him holding out my keys. Without another look at him, I swiped them out of his hand.

“Thank you,” I said aggressively. “I can take care of myself just fine though for future scenarios.”

“Future scenarios?”

I placed my mug of orange juice on the roof of my car. “Fairy kidnappings. Murder mysteries— if anything happens to me, the duck definitely did it by the way. Bank heists. Car chases. I’ve got it all covered.”

“Good to know.” Derek looked down and kicked at the gravel under his work boots. I thought I saw a hint of a smile there, but it was taken from me when he turned his head away to look at Tessa.

“Is today good for baking?” I asked.

He nodded. “We’re free all day.”

“Great. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” I waved to them both and grabbed my mug and opened the driver’s side door to sit in my car. Then stood back up unexpectedly with one foot still on solid ground and the other inside the car.

“Should I knock? Or call?”

“What?”

“When I’m ready to bake with Tessa for her bake sale. Do you want me to text you?”

Derek full-out smiled at that. The crow’s feet next to his eyes crinkled as he smiled down at me. My God, he was handsome. Even more handsome than usual when he was smiling. I felt my brain start to turn to mush.

Someone woke up on the right side of the bed this morning. My heart skipped a beat at the sight. He was totally warming up to me, and I found myself thinking that I’d do a lot more than bake cookies to see that smile again.

“You’re allowed to knock on my door, Margo. Yes,” he patronized.

Suddenly feeling like an idiot, I sat back in my Kia and fumbled with my seatbelt until it clicked into place.

The entire time I felt him watching me. The warmth in my face spread throughout the rest of my body when I realized he wasn’t looking away.

Tessa ran over to the side of the yard to wave with a duck still trapped in her arms. I waved through my windshield at them both before pulling off to put some distance between me and my suspiciously smiley new landlord.

-

I knocked on Derek’s door and waited. He swung it wide open without even looking at me and said, “Come in.”

Ordinarily, that was a friendly phrase, but coming from him it sounded like an order.

“How did you know it was me?” They didn’t have a peephole, and again, he hadn’t looked at me once.

Derek changed what he was wearing this morning.

Now, he wore an all-black Henley, and I couldn’t stop myself from doing a once over of him while he looked pointedly at the kitchen.

He always filled out every shirt he wore, but he filled out this one even better than usual.

His shoulders looked like they were stretching the fabric as far as it could go.

He wore a backward baseball cap that made him look more boyish than usual.

His smile from earlier was gone, leaving me with his clenched jaw to stare at. I must be ovulating.

“Only you would knock like that.”

“What the—” I stopped when I saw Tessa looking at me. “Hey, Tessa. Your dad told me you might be interested in baking. Wanna help me out?”

She nodded from where she sat at their giant dining table with a fancy marker in hand. Derek grabbed the majority of the grocery bags I held and carried them to the kitchen island while I followed.

I took a detour to walk over to Tessa. “Whatcha makin’?”

“I’m coloring a fish tank,” she said. I took that as an invitation to lean over her shoulder to see it.

“Wow. You’ve got so many colors in there,” I said. I’d never been so impressed by a coloring book before. Usually, staying in the lines was excellent in my book. Tessa had somehow made it into an art piece by adding her own textures and shading to the outlines the book gave her.

She didn’t respond, so I took that as a cue to move on. “I’m just going to set everything up. Why don’t you keep working on this, and you can join me when you’re ready?”

“Okay,” she said. Her nose was already back in the coloring book.

I returned to Derek over at the kitchen island. Making a point to not forget, I pulled my purse off of my shoulder and handed him a wad of cash. I purposefully got it all in tens. Five hundred dollars in ones felt cruel, but tens were just enough to be inconvenient.

“It’s five hundred,” I explained. He gave me a look after he saw what the bills were. “If it costs more than that, please let me know, but this is for the leak and the car.”

He split the bills in half and shoved one of the stacks at me. “You overpaid.”

“It’s for the lift home, too. I tip my Uber drivers well.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners again and he breathed out a heavy gust of air. Was this his version of a laugh? It was quiet and short-lived, but so adorable. I needed to see the full-fledged version.

“I’ll put the extra toward your counters,” he said gruffly.

“We’ll see. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I despise having financial talks in the kitchen, it’s sacrilege.”

Tessa finished her drawing and joined right as I was getting ready to add the eggs. I shifted the empty bowl to sit in front of Tessa’s seat at the bar top. “Do you know how to crack open eggs?”

Derek took a seat next to her at the bar, and with them both looking at me with those same inscrutable dark brown eyes, I felt like I was teaching a class on how to get away with murder.

“Yes, I do,” Tessa said with quiet confidence.

“Great, crack four into that bowl, please.” I pushed the egg carton toward her. “We’re making cookies. But I thought I’d let you pick the flavor.”

I stepped aside to grab our options to put in front of her. “We can make plain chocolate chip, walnut chocolate chip with sea salt, or sugar cookies with icing.”

“Chocolate chip!”

“Heard,” I said with a smile.

As we worked, I did my best to get to know Tessa. She seemed like a sweet girl, and I had a bad habit of talking through silence. Especially when Derek was in the room.

“So, you like coloring. Is art your favorite thing to do?”

Tessa nodded. “I like sea animals, too.”

“Ooo, what’s your favorite?”

“Otters.” The kid definitely took after her father with their one-word answers.

“Fun, have you ever seen one before?”

Her head shot up to look at me. She shook her head. “No, but they have them at the Georgia Aquarium.”

“Oh, I bet. Isn’t that the one that has the whale sharks? I’ve always wanted to see those.”

“Whale sharks?”

“Mhm.” I grabbed aluminum foil to line a pan. “They’re even bigger than you can imagine. Bigger than this whole house. I think they have a couple at that aquarium. I can Google it.”

Tessa looked over at Derek with an excited smile. Derek shot her back a small one of his own. “We want to go there at some point,” Derek added quietly.

“You definitely should. It sounds like your cup of tea. I once saw seals when I was doing my Route 66 road trip in California, and there were soooo many of them all on the same beach. They were so big, and there were even baby seals. It was great.”

“Maybe you can go too,” Tessa said quietly. “To the aquarium.”

“Oh,” I blurted. “Yeah, that could be fun.” There wasn’t a shot in hell Derek would be interested in me crashing his family trip, but I wasn’t going to be the jerk and tell a kid that. Plus, I was honored that she would want me there. I would break into the aquarium to keep that smile on her face.

Baking really seemed to be natural for Tessa. We whipped up two batches of chocolate chip cookies in no time. As we baked, her one-word answers got less and less common.

When the cookies were officially in the oven, she declared, “Let’s show Margo the farm!”

“Someone needs to watch the cookies, Tess.” Derek’s voice startled me. He’d been so quiet, I forgot he was even in the room.

“Can’t Grandad?” she whined.

Derek stood up from his bar stool. “You have to ask. He can’t say no to you.”