After searching the mat, flowers, and all the rocks around my grandparents old Victorian home, it finally dawned on me that I had put the key over in the neighbors’ rocks. The fake rock that held the spare key fit perfectly with their rocks and since the home had been empty for at least five years, it seemed like a good place to hide the house key. Now if only I could remember which rock I was looking for…at two o’clock in the morning, it was amazing how every single rock looked exactly the same.
Well this was just perfect. On my hands and knees in the grass was not how I wanted to be spending my Saturday night. I was crawling around in the wet grass and looking for the key to my dead parent’s home. Well, the house was actually my grandparent’s home, and then they passed it to my parents and finally on to me.
Why couldn’t I just have a normal life? Like those girls at the bar tonight. They had the kind of busy lives with friends and parties all the time. But no, I had by far the most boring life in the history of Bain. Fixing up my grandparents’ house was the only thing interesting on my calendar for the next three weeks. Oh, how I longed for some excitement, but instead I was here digging through rocks and grass in the middle of the night.
The rock that held my house key eluded me. I screamed out in frustration and threw a rock from the neighbor’s yard to my own.
“Can I help you?”
My breath caught as I looked up to see a strongly built man standing at the corner of the house. He looked to have been just woken up and stood there with sweatpants and no shirt.
The no shirt part is what had me so distracted. Even in the moonlight I could see more muscles on his stomach than I probably had in my entire body.
“Um. Well, I uh…I’m looking for my house key.”
“And you keep it in my flower bed?”
The way he stood there looking at me, it was like I amused him. He watched as I struggled to stand up and then fidgeted with my dress. As much as I tried to hide the level of my intoxication, I’m pretty sure there was no hiding it. The look on his face showed enough pity toward me that I knew he could tell I was drunk.
“I’m uh, yes I did hide it here. It’s a rock. Well, it looks like a rock. It’s a fake rock with a key in it. But I can’t find it because they all look the same.”
I watched as the mystery man walked closer to me and looked at the rocks surrounding the house.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
“I’m Katelyn. Katelyn Peterson.”
I waited for him to respond with his name, but he did not. Instead, he reached down and grabbed a rock from the back of the pile of rocks. He handed it to me and I instantly knew that it was the rock I had been looking for. It was light and I could hear the jingle of the key as I moved the rock in my hand.
“There you go Katelyn.”
His voice was smooth, seductive and sexy, which was hard to pair up with the body that stood in front of me. The man in front of me looked more like a killer than a seducer. The muscles in his arms bulged with definition. Not bulk, but a refined sense of power. Even the way he clenched his jaw made me think of someone who was hiding something and wasn’t going to let you find out.
“Wow, thank you. That was pretty amazing. How did you know which one it was?”
“Just luck I guess,” he said as he looked me over.
I dropped the rock as I tried to get the key out and he quickly retrieved the key from the grass. I’m not sure if he was so helpful because I was annoying him by waking him up in the middle of the night or if he was just a nice person.
He took the key and walked over to my front door. I tried to keep up, but my short legs and high-heels were no match.
By the time I got to my door, he had it opened and stood there with the key in his hand.
“Goodnight Katelyn.”
His hand touched mine as he passed me the key and instantly my body reacted with a surge of energy. I didn’t know who he was, or why he was living in the old abandoned neighbor’s house, but he could touch me with those hands any time he wanted.
Chapter 2
“So how long have you lived here? I didn’t know anyone had moved in,” I asked the gorgeous mystery man.
“I just moved in.”
“Ahh, so you’re new to town? How’s that going for you? Wait, why did you come to Bain? It’s not like we are a happening town.”
As I kept talking I tried to force myself to be quiet but I just couldn’t stop. The more I looked at him, the worse my tongue-tied condition got. The light of my porch intensified his muscles and I’m pretty sure my brain actually stopped working.
I tried not to make a fool of myself, but his body was just too much for my brain to comprehend. He had muscles so defined he looked like he could be one of those Navy Seals or something. I fixated on his naked chest with the desire to feel it against my body. Every impulse jetting through me said not to touch his chest. Yet my hand had a mind of its own.