The Wedding Audition by Catherine Mann, Joanne Rock Page A

alive, electric intensity around him.
    “Exactly. We all have secrets. You keep yours. I’ll keep mine. But the only reason I’m letting you stay here is because you said you wanted to keep a low profile. If that’s not still the case, I’d suggest you keep driving. There’s a bigger town south of Beulah where it will be easier to find a place—.”
    “I’m staying.” She dug in her purse to find her wallet again.
    “Then come to the house and I’ll find you some clean sheets and towels.” He turned on his heel and headed in the direction of the big house. His house.
    Bagel took off after him, yipping happily.
    It was a nice offer. A thoughtful gesture, even, since she didn’t have much of anything with her besides a few bargain store dresses. But she couldn’t deny that his offer to share sheets with her had led her thoughts in an interesting direction for a few breathless seconds.
    She was making a lie of her “good girl” role more with each passing second.
    Hurrying to catch up with his long strides, she wondered if it was foolish of her not to quiz him more about the nature of his “enemies.” He didn’t seem like a paranoid farmer stockpiling weapons for a zombie apocalypse, but then again, who knew? Maybe she’d been too distracted by the way his low-slung jeans hugged his lean hips to ask the right questions.
    Tonight, she was too weary from this day to even care. She hadn’t known how much stress the last few years had piled on her shoulders until she’d crossed the Georgia State line.
    Now, Heath held the screen door open for her while two cats and Bagel darted in ahead of her.
    She stepped into a large farmhouse kitchen with old wooden cabinets and a big white sink under a faucet that looked like an old well spout. The appliances were all new though. The outside of the Lambert farm might look run down, but someone had put money into upgrading the kitchen. Wrought iron pendant lamps hung over an island where a handful of old farming books sat open to diagrams of trees and how to graft branches.
    Heath closed the volumes when he saw her looking at them.
    “Can I get you something to eat?”
    “No thank you.” She was starving, actually, but she didn’t want to spend any more time here with him than she needed to.
    Her emotions were all over the place and the rogue attraction was seriously unwelcome. Maybe she just needed a good night’s rest to put this day—and memories of Heath’s abs—well behind her.
    “I’ll box up a few staples for you to take to the carriage house.” He pulled open the door to a huge walk-in pantry and gestured toward the island. “Have a seat while you wait and we’ll talk.”
    She hoped cookies and ice cream were staples for him, even though his physique suggested otherwise.
    “This is very nice of you,” she called to him while he shuffled things around in the pantry. “I’m so grateful to you for letting me stay.”
    “I said we need to talk. There will be ground rules.”
    His terse words shouldn’t have surprised her.
    “It’s funny you say that.” She turned a stainless steel toaster toward her to check her hair in the reflective surface. Straightening her scarf, she cursed herself for not taking more time to scrub out the developing solution from her hair in the sink when she’d left the salon that morning. “I’m always telling my parents they need to set more ground rules for the girls.”
    Her sisters were growing up too wild, continually rewarded for pushing boundaries that boosted ratings. Annamae had been livid when the youngest—a high school junior—brought over a twenty-year-old guy for a family meal. All the more so because their mother fawned all over him.
    It was gross.
    “I mean privacy ground rules,” he clarified. “If you’re serious about laying low, there’s no social media. No cell phone that someone could track, not unless you’re willing to go back into town and invest in seriously high scramblers. And no use