Dreaming Of You: Bachelor Dad on Her Doorstep / Outback Bachelor / The Hometown Hero Returns

She stopped by the ladder and glanced up. Then took an involuntary step backwards at the sudden clench of familiarity. The sign-writer’s blond-tipped hair…

It fell in the exact same waves as—

Her heart lodged in her throat, leaving an abyss in her chest. Get a grip. Don’t lose it now. The familiarity had to be a trick of the light.

Ha! More like a trick of the mind. Planted there by memories she’d done her best to bury.

She swallowed and her heart settled—sort of—in her chest again. ‘Excuse me,’ she managed to force out of an uncooperative throat, ‘but I’d like to know who gave you the authority to change that sign.’

The sign-writer stilled, laid his brush down on the top of the ladder and wiped his hands across that denim-encased butt with agonising slowness. Jaz couldn’t help wondering how it would feel to follow that action with her own hands. Gooseflesh broke out on her arms.

Slowly, oh-so-slowly, the sign-writer turned around…and Jaz froze.

‘Hello, Jaz.’

The familiarity, the sudden sense of rightness at seeing him here like this, reached right inside her chest to twist her heart until she couldn’t breathe.

No!

He took one step down the ladder. ‘You’re looking…well.’

He didn’t smile. His gaze travelled over her face, down the long line of her body and back again and, although half of his face was in shadow, she could see that she left him unmoved.

Connor Reed!

She sucked in a breath, took another involuntary step back. It took every ounce of strength she could marshal to not turn around and run.

Do something. Say something, she ordered.

Her heart pounded in her throat. Sharp breaths stung her lungs. Connor Reed. She’d known they’d run into each other eventually, but not here. Not at the bookshop.

Not on her first day.

Stop staring. Don’t you dare run!

‘I…um…’ She had to clear her throat. She didn’t run. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d stop working on that.’ She pointed to the sign and, by some freak or miracle or because some deity was smiling down on her, her hand didn’t shake. It gave her the confidence to lift her chin and throw her shoulders back again.

He glanced at the sign, then back at her, a frown in his eyes. ‘You don’t like it?’

‘I loathe it. But I’d prefer not to discuss it on the street.’

Oh, dear Lord. She had to set some ground rules. Fast. Ground rule number one was that Connor Reed stay as far away from her as humanly possible.

Ground rule number two—don’t look him directly in the eye.

She swung away, meaning to find refuge in the one place in this town she could safely call home… and found the bookshop closed.

The sign on the door read ‘Closed’ in big black letters. The darkened interior mocked her. She reached out and tested the door. It didn’t budge.

Somebody nearby sniggered. ‘That’s taken the wind out of your sails, nicely. Good!’

Jaz glanced around to find a middle-aged woman glaring at her. She kept her voice cool. ‘Excuse me, but do I know you?’

The woman ignored Jaz’s words and pushed her face in close. ‘We don’t need your kind in a nice place like this.’

A disturbance in the air, some super-sense on her personal radar, told her Connor had descended the ladder to stand directly behind her. He still smelt like the mountains in autumn.

She pulled a packet of gum from her pocket and shoved a long spearmint-flavoured stick into her mouth. It immediately overpowered all other scents in her near vicinity.

‘My kind?’ she enquired as pleasantly as she could.

If these people couldn’t get past the memory of her as a teenage Goth with attitude, if they couldn’t see that she’d grown up, then…then they needed to open their eyes wider.

Something told her it was their minds that needed opening up and not their eyes.

‘A tattoo artist!’ the woman spat. ‘What do we want with one of those? You’re probably a member of a bike gang and…and do drugs!’

Jaz almost laughed at the absurdity. Almost. She lifted her arms, looked down at herself, then back at the other woman. For a moment the other woman looked discomfited.

‘That’s enough, Dianne.’

That was from Connor. Jaz almost turned around but common sense kicked in—don’t look himdirectly in the eye.

‘Don’t you go letting her get her hooks into you again, Connor. She did what she could to lead you astray when you were teenagers and don’t you forget it!’

Jaz snorted. She couldn’t help herself. The woman—Dianne—swung back to her. ‘You probably think this is going to be a nice little money spinner.’ She nodded to the bookshop.

Not at the moment. Not after reviewing the sales figures Richard had sent her.

‘You didn’t come near your mother for years and now, when her body is barely cold in the ground, you descend on her shop like a vulture. Like a greedy, grasping—’

‘That’s enough, Dianne!’

Connor again. Jaz didn’t want him fighting her battles—she wanted him to stay as far from her as possible. He wasn’t getting a second chance to break her heart. Not in this lifetime! But she could barely breathe, let alone talk.

Didn’t come near your mother for years…barelycold in the ground…

The weight pressed down so hard on Jaz’s chest that she wanted nothing more than to lie down on the ground and let it crush her.

‘You have the gall to say that after the number of weekends Frieda spent in Sydney with Jaz, living the high life? Jaz didn’t need to come home and you bloody well know it!’

Home.

Jaz started. She couldn’t lie down on the ground. Not out the front of her mother’s bookshop.

‘Now clear off, Dianne Keith. You’re nothing but a troublemaking busybody with a streak of spite in you a mile wide.’

With the loudest intake of breath Jaz had ever heard anyone huff, Dianne stormed off.