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CHAPTER 3

JILL

I f I believed in karma, I’d be convinced I’d done something horrible in a past life.

That was the only explanation for why the universe had matched me up with my teenage crush for a program that was literally make-or-break for my job.

“He’s so much taller in real life,” my coworker, Lis, was saying, for the fourth time. She had peppered me with questions since Grady had floated out of the library, a trail of women gawking after him, their drool practically slicking the floor he glided across.

It made me sick.

Not because I disagreed with any of them. Even I wasn’t that delusional. Grady was as fine a male specimen as they came. Tall, but sturdy. Wide biceps and round shoulders. A trim waist and thick thighs that made it abundantly clear how hard he must work in the gym. And then that face.

God help me he’d only gotten better with age.

Sparkling baby blue eyes, thick eyebrows, and a jaw cut with the kind of harsh edge you wanted to rub your palms against. Or your thighs.

Stop it.

That kind of fantasizing had been banned a long time ago.

Grady had been one of my brother’s best friends, so it felt like I’d always known him. But he was the one who teased me the least. Not that Joey ever let any of his friends really give me a hard time. But little quips and remarks were to be expected when a girl as lanky and awkward as I was back then would stumble around while they played basketball in the driveway or hockey on the lake.

“For real though, he’s got to be packing some serious heat inside those pa?—”

“Enough,” I snapped, giving Lis a stern glance. “I have to work with the guy. Stay professional, will you?”

Lis refused to let me tamp down her fun. “Look who’s worried about keeping her eyes to herself.”

“That is not what I’m worried about.”

“Then what? You’ve been uptight since he left.”

I wouldn’t have called it uptight. I’d have called it aggressively displeased. Emphasis on the aggressive part.

“He’s just a stupid jock we’re using to get more kids to show up for our reading programs. There’s nothing special about him.”

Lies. On both counts. Grady was smart. Definitely smarter than my brother, and maybe even smarter than me. He’d gotten scholarship offers to Ivy League schools, but went to Michigan for their hockey program. And no matter how many times I tried to convince myself, or Lis, that he wasn’t special, the opposite would always be true. Because you never forget your first real crush. And Grady was mine.

That was why I felt sick.

When I was younger I’d foolishly tried to measure every man against my Grady-yardstick. I found out pretty quickly they’d all fall short. Eventually I’d outgrown my crush and thought I’d found something real with Adam.

He was an upperclassman studying philosophy when I met him. A thinker who read poets like Rumi and Hafiz at night in dimly lit coffee shops. If there was a polar opposite to the larger-than-life Grady Holloway, I’d found him and I’d thought that was a good thing. A firmly rooted reality. Something with a foundation that would last beyond any version of my childhood fantasy.

But it turned out I was being a fool about that too.

Adam had left. He’d left me, and Holden Cove, and all the plans we’d made. I wish I could say I handled it better, but he’d been the one person who seemed to steady me in my shakiest moments and then he was just gone. This thing with my job was the exact kind of situation he’d work his magic on, calming me down and giving me hope when I’d otherwise be devoid of both.

Most days, I was back in that void. And being around Grady again felt like rubbing salt in the wound. Mr. Perfect. Mr. All-American. Mr. NHL Superstar. He’d always been primed for success and here I was as far from where I wanted to be as I could get.

Thanks to this reading program I was going to be given a front row seat to who he’d grown up to be. And even though I was going to fight it, I knew I’d be wrecked for him all over again. I wasn’t even considering dating, but witnessing the Grady Holloway effect in real-time was guaranteed to ruin my chance at finding any mortal man to be good enough for years to come. Again .

Or, maybe even worse, I’d discover he wasn’t the knight in shining armor I’d let myself imagine all these years. That I hadn’t just wasted my time looking for someone as good as Grady, but that I’d been a fool leading my own heart astray after a man who never even existed in the first place.

Clearly, neither option was appealing.

Every childhood emotion I’d felt for Grady over the years was lifting to the surface like a polaroid, the picture of our past filling me up no matter how hard I was trying to stomp it down.

Lis clucked her tongue. “I think we both know that man is far from average. But for your sake I will keep my intrusive thoughts to myself.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, coming to sit in the chair beside my desk, leaning over conspiratorially. “Because if I’m right, and this guy is as smooth an operator as I think, I want you to promise to tell me the second he makes a move. I need to know what those hands feel like when he?—”

“Lis!” As if I needed any help conjuring inappropriate visions of the man.

“What? We both know his reputation. He’s a charmer. A hockey Casanova, as they say.” She winked at me, waggling her eyebrows with a Cheshire grin. “And you, my lucky friend, are about to be the main woman in his orbit. There’s no way he doesn’t take a swing at a ticket as hot as you.”

Her compliment should have made me feel better. But all it did was remind me of the few photos I’d been too slow to avoid over the years of Grady out in the city with some model on his arm.

“I’m pretty sure the small town librarian type is not what he goes for.”

“Your ignorance to how much you’re a living, breathing male fantasy is adorable. Tall, sexy, smart?—”

“Stop. Please. I’m begging.”

She barked out a laugh that filled the room. I ducked my head, glancing around and sighing with relief when I didn’t see my boss, Cleo, or any of the others around.

“Please just drop it.”

“Fine. Ruin my hopes and dreams,” she pouted, shoving up and going back to the cart of returns she was sorting. “I think you could have a lot of fun with this, Jill. But you’d have to pull that stick out of your ass first.”

There was no stick up my ass. There was, however, a pounding in my head. Between Lis, this program, and now Grady, this was going to be a long summer.