Chapter One

· One ·

Juliet

July, seven months later

I have never in my life been more drenched than I am right now. Hair plastered to my temples, sundress stuck to my skin, I stumble into the greenhouse behind my childhood home and shove the door shut against the sideways wind that carries sweeping sheets of rain. As I slump against the door, gasping for breath, my reflection greets me in a tall pane of greenhouse glass.

Irises as wide as blue-green china saucers, hair a sopping sable mess, I blink away water and try to catch my breath. There’s a tear in my sundress straight up my left thigh from a branch that sank its sharp end into the fabric, then ripped it when I tugged myself free. My pulse is flying after my run from the small woods behind my parents’ house toward the nearest shelter (my physical fitness is currently shit). In short: I look like I barely survived a shipwreck rather than a summer evening rainstorm.

I knew I should have stayed inside where I was minding my business in my parents’ house, just New Girl and a hefty pour of whiskey for company. But no, I had to go and chase the damn cat, who snuck out again , and then get myself stuck in a microburst.

Meow. Speaking of the devil, Puck, the ancient family cat, crawls out from under Mom’s potting table, his typical fluffy white fur and matching bottlebrush tail waterlogged and dripping. He looks like a mop.

I snort a laugh, wiping water from my forehead before more can drip into my eyes. “Serves you right for running out of the house before the whole damn sky opened up.”

Meow , he grumbles, shaking himself to lose some of the water matting down his fur.

“Well, at least you made it to safety, too.” Puck twines around my legs, tickling me with his half-wet, once-again-fluffy fur. “Wonder if we can make a break for it yet.”

I turn to peer out of the greenhouse as the wind’s howl slides up an octave, only to see a wall of rainwater rolling down it.

Looks like we’ll be waiting out the storm here, then.

Now that the adrenaline is wearing off and I know I’m not about to be swept away by a storm, my body’s usual aches (thanks for nothing, mixed connective tissue disease) make themselves known. My elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles pulse with pain. Sitting isn’t going to make it go away, but standing isn’t going to make it better, either, so, on a groan, I ease to the floor. A shiver racks me as the backs of my wet legs connect with the tiles. The greenhouse is, as you’d expect, quite warm, but its floor tiles are still cool.

I slump back onto a bag of potting soil and sigh. Per usual, the cat takes my reclined position as an invitation to help himself to my lap.

“Puck”—a grunt leaves me when a paw hits my ovary—“is it too much to ask that you sit on my lap without squishing my internal organs?” His front paw smashes my boob as he crawls up my chest. I wince. “This is all your fault, you cantankerous animal. You just had to make an escape and harsh my fun Saturday night vibes.”

The cat plops onto my chest and lazily blinks his mint green eyes, as if to say, What “fun Saturday night vibes”?

“Listen here, you,” I mutter, scratching behind his wet ears because I’m a sucker for this furball, even when he’s a giant pain in my ass, “ New Girl reruns and whiskey is the definition of a roaring good time.”

Meow , he says, swishing his tail.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, throwing that in my face. It’s a monthly horoscope, Puck, and I reserve the right to act on its advice when and how I see fit within the month of July.”

It’s pathetic, that I’m arguing with my cat, since I’m really just arguing with myself, but I’ve got no one else to verbally process with right now. My parents have been off on one of their post-retirement adventures on the other side of the world for the past few weeks, which is why I’m house- and cat-sitting. Kate, my younger sister, is currently traveling for work, and Bea, my twin, has been holed up in her paint studio the past couple of days thanks to a burst of artistic inspiration. All my friends are busy being full-time employed, happily paired off, hands full with all their commitments—capital-A Adults.

So it’s just me and the cat left to muddle over what to do about my life, which has started to feel like an idling engine, running fine but going nowhere. Enter my dauntingly ambitious monthly horoscope:

Time to leave behind the season that left you wrecked and stranded. You aren’t helpless or hopeless anymore. Now you prove that to yourself. Now you wade into new waters, not knowing what’s on the horizon but trusting the course. Trust yourself to find your way again.

It’s not bad advice, especially given how I’ve felt about my idling-engine life lately. It’s just…scary. The old Juliet never needed astrological ordinances to kick her butt into gear. But this new Juliet does. And, even desperate to finally feel like my life is moving again, this new Juliet is still frankly afraid to take that first step forward, unsure of what it should be.

Meow , Puck drawls.

I narrow my eyes at him. “You have the audacity to call me a scaredy-cat? You were hiding under a potting table because you got a little wet!”

Puck opens his mouth, and while I’m prepared for another sassy meow , the last thing I expect is the deep, loud snore that I hear instead.

The cat’s eyes and mine widen in tandem. Whereas Puck’s survival instincts wisely kick in, sending him leaping off me and under the potting table for cover, I’m frozen, a sopping sitting duck.

Another deep, long snore punctures the quiet inside the greenhouse, snapping me out of my stunned state. Slowly, I ease upright, then onto all fours, crawling only far enough to peer around the edge of the long table that runs down the center of the greenhouse.

There’s no one there.

And yet another snore rumbles from the far end of the greenhouse. Even if I can’t see them, someone is obviously here, and while I want to tell myself they’re probably not a threat, seeing as they’re fast asleep, I can’t assume they’re going to stay asleep or that I’ll be safe with them when they wake up. I’ve learned the hard way that assuming the best of people can epically blow up in your face.

Glancing around, I scour the greenhouse for some kind of tool that I can use for self-defense. There aren’t any big shovels or rakes here—those are stored in the nearby shed—not that, with the state of my hands and wrists, I’d even be able to wield one with any particular strength or accuracy. I spot a short-handled shovel leaning against the potting table, which will be perfect. Not too long or heavy, with a small but solid wood handle that leads to a wide, sturdy metal base.

Carefully, I ease up to a squat and awkwardly crouch-walk my way over to the potting table, then grab the shovel. My knees hate this position, so I risk standing until I’m bent at the waist, peering through the tidy rows of flowers on the center table in various stages of growth.

Another snore rumbles through the air.

Quietly, I stand until I’m fully straightened and peek over the flowers. I still don’t see anyone, so I start to walk the length of the table, shovel raised in my hands. My heart pounds, faster and faster.

When I finally get to the table’s end, another snore rends the quiet, and I come to a dead stop.

First I see brown boots, not like the city guys around here wear, polished and fancy, but scuffed and creased. Next, long legs crossed at the ankle, in roughed-up jeans that are threadbare at the knee, as if they’ve been bent in and worn countless times. My eyes trail up the weathered denim—long calves and longer, thicker thighs—then land on a sun-bleached olive-green tee, two arms folded across it.

I gulp.

This dude’s body is entirely relaxed in sleep and yet his arms are ripped. His muscles have muscles. Veins and ropy tendons weave up his arms. Two bulky biceps peek out from the edge of his shirt’s sleeves. All across his skin are freckles.

Swallowing roughly, I clutch the shovel tighter. I’m such a sucker for freckles.

I shake my head to snap out of it. I am not eroticizing this intruder who, for all I know, could be an axe murderer.

Albeit a sleepy axe murderer. So, probably not a very good one. But still.

I tip my head, trying to see his face, but his head is bent, as if his chin is tucked to his chest. I can’t see past the ripped brim of his ball cap, which looks like it might have once been white but has faded to dingy oatmeal.

His leg twitches as another snore leaves him. He’s either one hell of an actor or he’s out cold.

A loud boom of thunder shakes the greenhouse and he jolts, as if startling awake. So he was asleep. Maybe he’s just some down-on-his-luck guy who crashed here to catch a few winks and ride out the storm before he goes on his way.

We don’t do that anymore, Juliet. We don’t give people the benefit of the doubt. We don’t assume the best of them. That’s what got us hurt.

Time to brace for an attack. I lift the shovel higher, standing out of his reach but not so far that I can’t swing and hit him with the shovel, if needed.

His ball cap shifts as he sits straighter, then freezes. The ball cap lifts a little, then a little more, as if his gaze is trailing upward. Up me. Finally, his ball cap’s brim lifts enough to reveal his face, for his gaze to meet mine. A face that I recognize, a gaze that I’ve seen before.

Wide, catlike silver-sage eyes fringed by auburn lashes. Long, straight nose. Two sharp cheekbones. That thick, unkempt beard and auburn hair.

It can’t be him.

But it could only be him.

“Will?” My voice is hoarse with shock.

What the hell is the hot stranger from the Scottish pub doing in my mom’s greenhouse?

So much for his being some innocent sleeping guy. Has this man somehow tracked me from Scotland? Has he been here, biding his time, pretending to be asleep, and now he’s going to do—well, who the hell knows what, but it can’t be good!

Panicked but determined to defend myself, I lift the shovel over my head and scream as I swing at him.

Will ducks, then rolls away and springs upright in a display of athleticism that has me deeply concerned for my odds against him.

“Wait!” he yells. “Hold on!”

I swing at him again and miss, knocking over a damask rosebush. He lunges and successfully catches the rosebush, which, come to think of it, is odd for an assailant to do, but I’m already swinging at him again as I process that thought. I miss him entirely, losing my balance as the shovel whips out of my hands, then crashes into the table. Thrown off by the momentum of my forceful swing, I stumble back, straight into a potted gardenia that wobbles, then starts to tip off the table’s edge behind me.

Will lunges again, catches my hand before I fall, and yanks me toward him, like a swing-dance step that swaps our places, before he somehow also catches the gardenia plant and rights it on the table. I try to yank my hand away as he turns suddenly, which pulls me with him, and, in a chaotic tangle of feet and pinwheeling hands, we crash to the floor, Will on his back, me sprawled on top of him.

In an uncharacteristic feat of agility and speed that I can only attribute to the power of adrenaline, I lunge for a trowel that’s resting on the table beside me, then bring it to his throat. I stare down at him, breathing heavily. “What,” I gasp, “the hell are you doing here?”

He’s breathing heavily, too, eyes wide, hands lifted in surrender. “I…” He shakes his head. “What are you doing here?”

“Nuh-uh, you don’t get to ask questions.” With my free hand, I shove back the drenched hair that’s fallen into my face, trowel still at his throat. “You’re in my mom’s greenhouse—”

“Your mom’s ?” he croaks.

“—and the last time I saw you, seven months ago, you were in the same Scottish pub as me, so you’re the one who’s going to do the explaining. Now, tell me why you’re here.”

He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple roll beneath the trowel’s tip. His mouth parts, working silently, until finally, he says, “I’m staying next door, with Petruchio. I’m his friend, from college, I swear.”

I narrow my eyes at him. Christopher Petruchio is my next-door neighbor, has been my whole life—he’s like a brother to me. “I’ve never heard Christopher talk about a ‘Will.’?”

“That’s because he calls me Orsino,” Will says, hands still raised. “Orsino is my last name. Everyone calls me that.”

I press the trowel against his throat. “Then why did you tell me to call you Will back in Scotland?”

Says the woman who told him your name was Viola. Maybe he did it for the same reason you did—self-protection.

I push away those sympathetic thoughts. No benefit of the doubt will be given! “How about I just call Christopher,” I tell him. “See if he’ll vouch for you.”

Will hesitates for a beat, then reaches for his phone in his pocket.

I slap my free hand down on his wrist and pin it there. “ I’ll get your phone, thank you.”

I tug the phone from his pocket, swipe it to open, then spin it so it uses his facial recognition to unlock. Straight to his contacts, I scroll down and find…Christopher’s name and his cell phone number.

My jaw drops. The trowel follows, landing with a clatter on the tiles. I was so sure he was lying, but…he’s not.

The pieces fall into place, as my anxiety clears enough for my memory to work properly. Christopher bustling around the past week, grocery shopping, cooking, stocking up on beer and wine. He’s been prepping for days for what I now remember him saying was a birthday bash for one of his college roommates and also a reunion for his friends from college—friends I’ve never met because Christopher kept to himself in his college years, while he was in the city, and none of them live here anymore, so they don’t see each other often.

The embarrassment that hits me is massive. I just tried to bludgeon Christopher’s college friend with a short-handled shovel. Then I held him at trowel point.

Heat floods my face as I stare down at Will pinned beneath me. I am mortified. And I’m even more mortified when I realize that I’m straddling Will’s waist. My thighs are pinned against his ribs. My pelvis rests on his, where I feel a solid, thick weight—oh my God , I have to get off him.

I scramble off his lap in a very ungainly tumble of limbs, my embarrassment making me clumsy, my stiff joints resisting my sudden movement, and try to arrange myself in a dignified seated position on the floor. I’m not even going to try to stand yet.

Slowly, Will eases up, then scoots back to lean against the table’s end, how he was when he was asleep. He draws up his knees and rests his elbows on them as he rubs his hands down his face.

I stare at him, my mind spinning, my perspective rearranging. He’s not here with any malicious intent. He’s just the sweet guy who asked me to dance in Scotland, and he happens to be my surrogate brother’s dear friend. Of all the people I could have bumped into in Scotland last year, what are the chances it was him, a man I had no idea was already tied to someone so important in my life? It’s unbelievable.

Some might even call it…serendipitous.

I want to wipe that sentence from my brain as soon as I think it.

Those thoughts belong to someone I’m not anymore. Someone who always imagined romantic possibilities—meet-cutes and kismet and love at first sight—who saw the world through rose-colored glasses. I haven’t done that since I broke up with my fiancé, quit my PR consultancy work, and hid away in a Scottish cottage, licking my wounds, before I came home and started to get my shit together.

The past seven months, I’ve dealt with the nagging health issues I’d been ignoring and couldn’t afford to ignore anymore. I’ve taken on less stressful work, built a new routine that has me in a better place: I take care of my body and take my meds; I write freelance on a flexible work schedule; I don’t date. In that time, I’ve pieced my life back together. My connective tissue disease isn’t magically cured, but it’s better managed. My work doesn’t pay what I’d like, but it’s enough to get by, which is no small feat, now that I’m the only one left living in and paying rent for the sister apartment we used to share. And I haven’t missed romance while I protect my heart, because I get plenty from the novels I’ve been reading since I found Mom’s bodice rippers as a teen in the family library.

Well, I haven’t missed romance too much.

Except, right now, maybe I miss it just a little. Because this is a moment the old Juliet would have thoroughly enjoyed. The old Juliet would have tossed her hair over her shoulder and said something witty right now, offered this guy a hand up and flirted her way out of the awkward.

What’s stopping you? a daring, reckless voice whispers in my head.

I don’t know what’s stopping me. I don’t know what I’m brave enough to do next.

My horoscope’s words echo in my head. Now you wade into new waters, not knowing what’s on the horizon but trusting the course.

Will stands, pulling me from my racing thoughts. I try to stand, too, but between my stiff body and my waterlogged dress, it doesn’t go so well. He’s there in an instant, gripping my elbow when I teeter sideways, lifting me gently, firmly, until I’m standing upright.

He drops my elbow the second I’m steady and tugs at the brim of his ball cap, lowering it so the shadows over his eyes deepen as he stares down at the ground. “I’m sorry,” he says, “for scaring you.”

I tip my head, peering up at him, and smile. “I mean, I more than paid you back, with the whole garden-tool attack.”

He glances up from beneath his ball cap and catches me smiling at him. His mouth is mostly hidden by the thick beard, but I think it tugs down in a frown. He clears his throat as he shoves his hands in his pockets. “That didn’t scare me.”

I lift my eyebrows. “Oh, really?”

Now he’s definitely frowning. And I’m enjoying it. I have no business enjoying it, but I am. “Nope,” he says.

I bite my lip so I won’t laugh. “You seemed pretty scared. I mean, understandably so. I was very intimidating…” My voice dies off as Will takes a slow, careful step toward me.

He reaches toward my head. “You have a leaf in your hair.” Gently, he plucks it from the crown of my head, pinned between two fingers. It catches in the wet strands as he starts to pull away, and he stops, steps a little closer as he peers down at me, brow furrowed in concentration. Tenderly, slowly, he lifts each strand of hair from the leaf so it doesn’t tug or snag. And then he brushes each strand back off my temple, his fingertips grazing my skin.

I swallow as my heart takes off in my chest. “Thanks.”

He nods.

The rain stops abruptly, leaving us in silence and soft nighttime darkness closing in around the dim lights that brighten the greenhouse. In that silence, I feel the weight of our nearness, standing as close as we stood at the pub, right before we started to dance. I like it as much as I did then. Maybe even more.

On a chirpy meow Puck shows himself, twining around not my legs, but Will’s. Will crouches and scratches Puck’s chin. Puck purrs loudly.

Meow. Puck sets his front paws on Will’s thigh and reaches for more. Will gently picks him up and holds Puck like they’re old friends.

I stare at him, stunned. Puck hates strangers. Especially strange men.

“And who are you?” Will asks my cat.

Puck purrs loudly as Will scratches under his chin.

“That’s Puck,” I tell him, a waver in my voice. Watching this big, gruff guy cuddle with my cat has butterflies racing in my stomach. “He ran for cover here during the storm,” I add.

“You picked a nice spot,” Will tells Puck, scratching his cheeks. Puck’s eyes drop shut. His purr is as loud as a motorboat.

“What, um—” I clear my throat. “What made you come into the greenhouse? Were you waiting out the storm?”

Will glances my way, his gaze fleeting, then dancing over to the flowers. “I stepped out for some quiet, and this place caught my eye. The door was cracked open and it looked…” His eyes drift up to mine. “Peaceful and…pretty. So I came in.”

That’s why I come to the greenhouse, too, when I need calm and a bit of beauty—the perfume of my mother’s master-gardener magic, rows of pillowy blossoms and stubborn green seedlings wrestling their way up from the dirt into the light, stretching toward possibility, the promise of growing into something better.

“It was warm and quiet,” he says after a beat. “Sort of lulled me, I guess. So I sat down, shut my eyes, and then…” He shrugs. “You know the rest.”

I bite my lip against a smile. “And then you woke up to a woman swinging a short-handled shovel at your head, before she impressively wrestled you to the ground and held you helpless at trowel point.”

His mouth quirks at the corner. Damn that beard, I wish it didn’t make it impossible to tell if I just made him smile. “That’s how that story goes, huh?”

“I clearly muscled you into submission.”

Another mouth quirk beneath that bushy auburn beard. Maybe, just maybe, it’s a smile.

A blush hits my cheeks as I stare up at him. “Sorry,” I tell him. “You know, for the garden-tool ambush.”

He stares at me, unblinking. I fight a shiver that dances down my spine. “It’s all right.”

I stare at his mouth. And I think he’s staring at mine, too.

Suddenly, a phone buzzing pierces the quiet. Will glances at his pocket, then deftly settles Puck against his chest with one arm, freeing a hand that he uses to unearth his phone. He groans as he stares at the screen.

“Christopher and your friends wondering where you are?” I guess.

He nods.

Puck shimmies higher in his grip and plops his chin on Will’s shoulder. Will winces when Puck sinks his claws into his shirt and tries to cuddle in even closer.

“Here, I’ll take him.” I reach for Puck, who grumbles a meow as I ease him off Will’s shoulder, then step back.

I smile nervously, trying to find my courage. I’m not sure what I’m ready for, what this second chance meeting means, but I want to be brave, to try, even just a little. “We keep bumping into each other,” I tell him. “Maybe…I’ll see you around again. Are you staying long?”

Will’s throat works in a rough swallow. He pockets his phone. “Ah, no. Leaving first thing tomorrow morning.”

I’ll admit it, for a moment, I wait and hope. Maybe he’ll follow that up with a but come have a round with the guys or can I walk you back to your house?

But nothing comes. “Gotcha,” I finally muster, forcing my smile to stay intact, praying my face doesn’t show how small his crisp put-down has made me feel. “Well…bye, then!”

I can’t take the embarrassment a second longer. Clutching Puck so tight he lets out a strangled howl of protest, I speed-walk out of the greenhouse.