Hope Falls: Wildest Dreams (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

  “So you’re staying with your parents?”

  He nodded. “What about you? Are you going to be staying at your dad’s place?”

  She nodded. “Only temporarily. It’s convenient for right now because he’s not there and it will give me time to get settled and figure out what I want. He’s already left me Lauren Harrison’s—or is she Lauren Stevens now?—number for when I’m ready to start house hunting. Honestly, I can’t even think that far ahead. The store is pretty much overwhelming me right now.”

  “I bet it is. It’s kind of a lot to take on on such short notice.”

  Rather than respond, Alesha looked at him and smiled—and not the shy one she’d been giving him, but a genuine smile. Reece couldn’t help but react the same way.

  Finally he asked, “What? Why are you smiling?”

  If anything, her smile grew. “I just can’t believe that it’s you. I’m really sitting here with you.” Then she blushed. “I mean…I remember you from when I used to live here. And then I saw you in the park this morning but I didn’t realize...”

  He nodded. “I saw you too. But I had no idea…no one mentioned that you were back in town.”

  “I’m not that newsworthy. People who came in were more concerned about Dad’s health and making sure he was okay. And I was normally tucked away in the office going over the financials and whatnot to help me learn about the business. I wanted people to come and visit with him without me interrupting or being a distraction.”

  They sat in companionable silence until they turned at the sound of footsteps coming from the Two Scoops side of the wall. “Reece? Sweetheart, where are you?”

  “In here, Mom!” he called out.

  “In…?” Marlene Brooks came through the doorway just as Reece helped Alesha to her feet. “Oh my. What happened?”

  “Mom, this is…”

  “You’re Martin’s daughter? Alesha, right?” Marlene asked, a smile blossoming on her face.

  Alesha nodded.

  “Oh, it’s so good to meet you!” She stepped closer and hugged Alesha and then stepped back to look at her, grinning the entire time.

  Alesha looked like she didn’t know what she should do or say. She glanced over at Reece and then back to Marlene. “So…um…hi.”

  “Mom, Alesha is taking over the bookstore for her dad while he undergoes…” He instantly stopped and looked over at Alesha apologetically.

  “It’s okay, Reece. You can tell her.”

  “Martin’s undergoing cancer treatment in San Francisco. He signed the store over to Alesha.”

  “Oh my goodness! He never said a word to us about it!” Marlene gasped and then took both of Alesha’s hands in hers. “You poor thing. That’s a lot on your plate.” Then she looked around the room and noticed the fallen ladder and boxes.

  “I was trying to sort through some things so I could renovate the space and I fell off the ladder. Reece heard me scream and pretty much knocked the door down.”

  Marlene looked over her shoulder and smiled at her son before returning her attention to Alesha. “Are you hurt? Do we need to call a doctor?”

  “Oh, no. I’m fine. Really,” Alesha assured her.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing by yourself,” Marlene said. “It’s too much for one person.”

  “Mom…” Reece began, hoping his mother would take the hint and not try and butt in on how Alesha was doing things.

  “And you,” she quickly turned toward her son. “Did you get her any ice? Or maybe something to drink? Why were you just sitting here on the floor with her? Where are you manners?” Her tone was supposed to be firm but Reece knew his mother well enough to know she was merely concerned for Alesha.

  “I was giving her time to sit up and make sure she was okay. If you would have given us five minutes we probably would have come downstairs for something to eat.”

  “Oh,” Marlene said and seemed pleased. “Okay then. I’ll go and make up some fresh sandwiches for you.” And she quickly left the room on a mission.

  “Sorry about that,” Reece said. “She can be a little overwhelming.”

  “She was fine. I’m sure it must have been weird for her to walk in and see the door off its hinges and me in here instead of my dad.”

  “And if you don’t want to go for lunch, I can just tell her…”

  “Actually, I was planning on grabbing something to eat as soon as I finished moving that stack of boxes,” Alesha said. “But I was going to just go home and make something. Your mother doesn’t need to…”

  Reece quickly interrupted her. “Are you kidding me? She loves to do this sort of thing and I know she’s going to want to hear all about your plans for the bookstore.”

  Actually, so was Reece. Plus, he wasn’t ready for her to leave yet. Back when they were kids, they had been friends. It seemed crazy even to remember such a thing because they had been so young, but Alesha had meant a lot to him. He had never forgotten her and the fact that she was back in Hope Falls made his own stay here much more appealing.

  “If you’re sure,” Alesha was saying. “I don’t want to intrude on anything.”

  Reaching for her hand, Reece wrapped his own around it. “You’re not intruding.” He gave a gentle tug so that she had no choice but to move in closer. “Besides, if we’re lucky, she’ll also let us have some of her famous chocolate macadamia cookies for dessert.”

  Alesha’s eyes went wide. “Oh my gosh! I can’t believe you remember that!”

  He had a feeling Alesha would be surprised at just how much he remembered. “Are you kidding me? How many times did we sit on the swings at school and share them?”

  “I think it was every day,” she replied with a smile. Then she surprised him by pulling her hand free and hugging him. “Thank you.”

  For a minute he was too stunned to speak. “Um…” he began gruffly, “for what?”

  “For coming to my rescue and for reminding me of a great memory.”

  He could have been completely happy to stand there holding her all day. His arms tightened around her just as his mother called up for the two of them to say that their lunch was ready.

  Great. He finally found Alesha Reed again—this time as an adult—and his mother was already making him feel as if they were still kids.

  Chapter Three

  Lunch had been the perfect distraction as far as Alesha was concerned.

  Realizing that the guy she had openly stared at in the park was Reece was a bit of a shock. Back when they were little, they had been inseparable. Once she’d moved away, however, they hadn’t kept in touch. Having him come to her rescue after her fall had been embarrassing and yet as soon as she had gotten her wits back about her and started talking with him, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, like it hadn’t been twenty years since they’d last seen each other.

  Marlene and Harry Brooks hadn’t given them more than a minute to themselves all through lunch and she had spent more time getting reacquainted with them and talking about her plans for the bookstore than she had intended. Every time she looked over at Reece he had been smiling and that smile made Alesha feel a little tingly.

  And now that they were back up in her storage room—alone—and he was still smiling at her? Tingly didn’t even begin to describe how she was feeling. Nope. Right now she was imagining how his hands would feel on her and her fingers twitched with the need to reach out and touch his strong stubbled jaw. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel it. Then he would start kissing her and…

  “So…where would you like me to start?”

  Alesha jumped at the sound of his voice and knew that she must have turned several shades of red. Turning away so he couldn’t see her blush, she began scanning the space. “Oh…um…you don’t have to help me with this, Reece. I know you have a lot to do next door. I’ll look into hiring some college kids or something to come and help.” She started to walk toward the box she had dropped earlier when she felt Reece gently gra
b her hand.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “I thought we talked about this downstairs. I was going to give you a hand up here today. I had to put a call in to see about getting an engineer out here to see if these upper rooms can be used for commercial space. I’ll have him look at yours too. So until he comes, there isn’t much for me to do.” He tugged her to bring her a little closer again, grinning the entire time. “Besides, I’m enjoying catching up with you.”

  Alesha swallowed hard. He was probably just saying that to be nice. “Oh. Okay.” She paused. “I…I guess we can start with carting some of these boxes down to the dumpster. I went through a bunch of them earlier and have them over by the stairs.”

  For a minute, Reece didn’t say anything. He simply studied her. Then he squeezed her hand. “Look,” he began softly, “I have to come clean here.”

  Her heart seemed to stop and then kick hard in her chest as she mentally cursed herself. Of course he didn’t really want to help with this mess. Who would? “Okay,” she said quietly.

  “I want to help you get this done—I really do—but I’d much rather spend time with you outside of here. Can I take you to dinner tonight?”

  Alesha blinked a few times, not certain she’d heard him correctly. “You want to take me out? Like on a date?” And then she really did curse herself. That was not the kind of thing she should have asked out loud. Ever.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, like on a date.” His smile grew. “You have no idea how happy I am that you’re here. I would ask your dad about you all the time and I used to hope that you would come back to visit.” He shrugged. “But you never did.”

  Her shoulders sagged a little. “Yeah…my mom was kind of bitter about the divorce and insisted that my dad come to Oregon to see me. I always wanted to come back here and see everyone.”

  “After a while I started wondering if I had exaggerated things in my mind. I mean, we were little kids back then but…” he shrugged, “but I always thought you were the prettiest girl I had ever known.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

  Reece nodded. “Yeah. Really.”

  For a moment she questioned whether or not she should tell him how she spent years comparing every boy in school to him.

  Maybe.

  Just not right now.

  Nope, right now she was feeling anything but pretty. She was fairly dirty from her earlier stint of cleaning and moving boxes, sweating and falling. She seriously wished for a magic wand to wave over herself to clean up both herself and the space.

  As if reading her mind, Reece reached up with his other hand and gently wiped her cheek. “You had a little smudge there.”

  She groaned. Great. All through lunch she’d had dirt on her face and no one told her. Self-consciously, she reached up and rubbed at the spot. “Um…”

  Then, without warning, Reece pulled her in close and hugged her. It was over before it began and he stepped back. “Come on. Let’s make a dent in this mess so we can call it a day and do something fun tonight.”

  Alesha looked up and if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a bit of a wicked gleam in his eyes.

  Talk about motivation.

  ****

  Reece stood in Martin Reed’s driveway and felt like he was a teenager going on his first date. Well, technically this was a first date just not a first first date. It didn’t matter because he was still nervous as hell. Even after spending most of the day together, he was having a hard time dealing with his attraction to Alesha. From the moment he’d seen her in the park, all he could think about was how much he wanted her—and that was before he knew who she was.

  He looked up and saw Alesha standing on the front porch warily watching him. Uh-oh. She was wearing a pair of black skinny jeans and a red sweater. Her hair was long, loose and wavy and her lips looked glossy even from where he stood.

  He was in serious trouble.

  Stepping away from his truck, he walked toward her. Her smile was shy—almost hesitant—probably because he’d been standing in the driveway like a creepy stalker or something.

  “I was beginning to think you had changed your mind,” she said, interrupting his thoughts.

  Reece couldn’t help but chuckle. “Why?”

  “You were standing there for a while and so I thought…you know, that you were trying to come up with an excuse to cancel.”

  “Alesha…”

  “It’s okay. Really,” she said quickly. Almost too quickly. “We spent all day together and you probably would just prefer to have some peace and quiet since we talked the entire time so…”

  “Alesha,” he said a little more firmly until she stopped talking and looked at him. “I’m not looking for an excuse to cancel our date.”

  “Oh. Then why were you just standing there? Why didn’t you just come up to the door?”

  How was he supposed to explain to her how he was feeling? She didn’t really know him—not anymore. Not as an adult. Hell, he could barely understand it himself. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off or overwhelm her.

  “I was nervous,” he finally said.

  She looked at him with disbelief. “Seriously?”

  He nodded.

  “About what?”

  He almost wanted to laugh out loud. As strange as it sounded, this was typical Alesha. Back when they were kids she never beat around the bush about anything. If she wanted an answer, she’d just come out and ask. It made him feel good to know that she was still the same. She was still the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and still someone he wanted to be with all of the time.

  “So…” she began, “do you want to come in?”

  “Sure,” Reece nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he stood and watched her walk into the house. Earlier, when they had been working at the bookstore, she had been wearing yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt. Her hair had been up in a ponytail and she had on very little makeup. And she’d been beautiful. But in those skinny jeans and her hair down, she took his breath away. He’d never considered himself to be an ass man, but one look at Alesha’s perfect one and he considered himself converted.

  Yeah, serious trouble and it was only getting worse.

  He blinked and followed her inside. She closed the door behind him and gave him another wary look. “You okay?” she asked. “You’ve got a funny look on your face again.”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah, like you zoned out or something or were completely lost in thought.”

  Dirty thoughts, he mentally corrected.

  “Sorry. I’m fine,” he said. “Ready to go?”

  She nodded. “Where to?”

  “Well,” he began, “I have to admit I’m feeling a little nostalgic and thought that hanging around town could be a lot of fun…”

  “Definitely!”

  “But,” he quickly interrupted, “then I figured we wouldn’t get a whole lot of time to ourselves, sort of like lunch today.”

  Alesha chuckled. “Your mom was just being friendly.”

  “The whole town is like that,” Reece commented. “Trust me. I come back to visit often and yet no matter where I go around here, there is never a shortage of people looking to catch up and hear about my life.”

  “Well, maybe for you but I highly doubt anyone would even remember me.” Her tone was light but Reece could tell that it was something that bothered her.

  He turned to face her, tucking a finger under her chin and gently forced her to look at him. “Hey,” he said softly. “I remembered you.”

  A slight blush colored her cheeks.

  “Alesha, you may not believe this but people do remember you. I think everyone’s giving you a little space because of the situation with your dad and they don’t want to overwhelm you.” He chuckled. “If you want, we can go and grab a bite to eat at Sue Ann’s and then we could either bowl a couple of games at Lone Pines or go and hang out, maybe play a couple of games of pool at JT’s. Whatever you want.”

  She visibly rela
xed as she smiled up at him. “Where were you planning on us going for dinner?”

  “Actually, I was planning on us driving in to Tahoe and seeing what you were in the mood for. I didn’t want to just assume what you’d like and I thought the drive would be nice. What do you think?”

  When Alesha gently chewed her bottom lip as she thought about his question, Reece had to fight the urge to lean in and offer to do that for her. Taste her. Kiss her.

  His first instinct when he’d asked her out was to take her to the Cove for dinner. Then he realized it was a pretty upscale place and didn’t want to seem like he was trying so hard. Unfortunately there weren’t a lot of options here in Hope Falls other than staying in and, as appealing as that option was, he didn’t think it was appropriate to suggest it.

  They were still standing in her living room and it occurred to Reece that she still hadn’t responded. “Or…we could go see a movie,” he suggested.

  Finally, she shook her head. “No. Definitely not a movie,” she replied.

  “Okay, well then…I guess we’ll just get in the car and see where we end up. How does that sound?” He turned to open the door but noticed Alesha hadn’t moved.

  She let out a loud breath. “I…I don’t really want to go anywhere.”

  Everything in him stilled and an overwhelming sense of disappointment filled him. “Oh.”

  Alesha let out a loud laugh and then reached for his hand. “Oh my goodness! I’m sorry! That didn’t come out right!”

  He looked at her oddly.

  “What I meant was…I had so much fun just hanging out with you and talking that…it’s sort of what I’d prefer to do tonight.” She shrugged. “I’m sure I’ve got the makings for some kind of dinner here so maybe we can just stay in. Is that weird? It’s weird, right?”

  She wanted to stay in with him and thought it was weird? Hell, it was an answer to a prayer! He thought.

  “It’s okay,” she said when he didn’t immediately respond. “It was just a thought and I…”

  She never got to finish because Reece closed the distance between them, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.