11. Daphne

11

DAPHNE

"It was just a kiss," I reminded myself aloud as I typed the third and final proposal for my next series, none of which involved me staying in Firefly Island.

This town was dangerous. Not as dangerous as the war-torn regions we'd covered during my segment-producing days at CNN. But dangerous nonetheless. It was emotional quicksand. I could easily get stuck here.

Speaking of quicksand, my childhood led me to believe it would be a much bigger issue than it actually turned out to be. Growing up, I honestly thought I'd be set on fire thanks to the yearly Stop, Drop, and Roll training I'd had in elementary school. That I'd contract rabies by a dog foaming at the mouth or be infected by a rusty nail. Oh, and dynamite. I was sure that there would be a lot more dynamite-related occurrences.

None of those dangers had presented themselves in my adulthood. But emotional quicksand was real. I feared Firefly Island held the same magical elements as the Bermuda Triangle. It would suck me in, and I'd be lost forever.

There was an energy here, a pull that I'd never experienced before, and it was intoxicating. The sense of community was not something I'd been aware I was missing, but after spending less than twenty-four hours in this town, I knew that I was.

All my life, I'd moved from small town to small town, sometimes twice in one year, sometimes leaving in the middle of the night to avoid debt collectors and business associates who my father owed money to. He was in ‘sales' and was always looking for the next ‘big opportunity.'

I'd worked so hard for my independence, earning my high school diploma at sixteen and receiving scholarships to Northwestern. After graduating college at twenty, I moved to New York, where I interned at CNN before landing a job at Pulse and moving to Los Angeles, where I'd been for the past seven years.

As a kid, I promised myself I'd never live in a small town because I knew firsthand that they weren't as idyllic as my favorite show, The Gilmore Girls, had portrayed. Although, I had to admit, the few summers I spent in Firefly Island had reminded me of Stars Hollow, the fictional town in the series. There was even a gazebo in the Historic District.

But I digress. Never in my life had I been tempted to reside somewhere with a population of less than a million. But less than twenty-four hours in this town, and that's exactly what I was envisioning.

I was picturing myself meeting Nadia and the ‘squad' for brunch at the Dreamy Bean Coffee and Book Café. I was imagining us all hitting up a yoga class or walking around the Annual Arts Festival. Not that I'd actually ever been to the Dreamy Bean or attended the Annual Arts Festival, but I followed Firefly Island on Instagram, and I suppose, if I were being honest with myself, I'd always sort of romanticized the small town.

Probably because the summers I'd spent here were the only time in my childhood I'd felt safe. Visiting Grammy Moore and Aunt Rhonda had always felt like the emotional equivalent of a warm blanket and hot chocolate after being stranded alone in a snowstorm.

That was sort of what my childhood had been like. At home, I felt isolated. My mom's priority was making sure my dad was happy, especially if he'd been drinking, and, spoiler alert, he was always drinking. I'd learned at an early age to agree with him and not challenge anything he said for fear of setting him off. I tried to be invisible at home. At school, I worked hard because I knew that was my ticket out of there. Once I hit high school, I enrolled in zero period, night classes, and summer school just so I could graduate early and have some control over my life.

Which is exactly what I had now. I lived in California, worked in my dream job, and didn't have to answer to anyone. So how had this town and the people in it gotten under my skin in a day's time? How was that possible?

Was I having a thirty-life crisis? If that was the case, the remedy was not going to be to spend any more time wrapped in the solace and comfort of the warm blanket that was this town.

Especially when that small town had Harlan Mitchell in it. As disappointed as I was in the moment that our dance had been interrupted, I was now leaning toward the everything-happens-for-a-reason philosophy. Alexandra calling and Harlan being called away for a photo op was probably the best thing that could have happened.

Harlan was the apple in the Garden of Eden. He was a temptation I didn't have the strength to resist. My attraction to him was off the charts, and I feared he hadn't even really turned his charm on me. If and when that happened, I'd be toast.

This was for the best. Get in; get out. Tomorrow night I'd be falling asleep in my bed back home in California.

I reread the final proposal for Alexandra and hit send. The second my finger hit the button, I heard a loud crack, and I let out a shriek as I scrambled on top of the small table that my laptop was on. Panic overwhelmed me as I glanced around, thinking that I wasn't alone. Aunt Rhonda had warned me about ‘critters' up in the attic.

My eyes scanned the floor manically, certain I was going to be met with the beady eyes of a raccoon or some other woodland creature.

The sound came once again, but this time, I was able to deduce it was coming from behind me. It was coming from the window. I glanced over my shoulder, thinking I was going to come face-to-face with an owl or a hawk or some other nocturnal bird of flight, but there was nothing there. I was still staring at the glass when I saw a tiny pebble strike the pane.

Tilting my chin down, I peered out and saw the man who had been clogging up my brain for the past three hours, or more accurately, for the past fourteen hours since I'd seen him in the buff taking an outdoor shower.

"Harlan?" I questioned aloud.

The moonlight illuminated his handsome features, and a grin that spread across his face. He was wearing a zip-up hoodie and sweats, and somehow looked even sexier than he had in the penguin suit. He lifted his hand in a wave, then turned it so his palm was facing himself and motioned for me to come down.

My heart was thudding in my chest as I climbed down from the desk. I glanced down at what I was wearing. I had on pajama shorts and a white V-neck T-shirt, and I was going commando. I didn't have anything to change into because my luggage wasn't arriving until tomorrow morning at ten. Which was why I didn't have any underwear. I took a shower after we got home from the gala and didn't have any clean ones to put on. The only reason I had these clothes was because I'd had them in my carry-on from a trip I'd taken to Chicago.

I would have preferred Harlan's last impression of me be in the How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days yellow dress dupe, but it was a little late for that now. He'd already seen me through the window.

My legs were noodles as I carefully climbed down the ladder that led to the attic, then tiptoed on the stairs that creaked loudly beneath the balls of my feet. I wasn't sure if my Jell-O knees were caused by the rush of adrenaline from fear of a critter or from the arousal of a man.

When I reached the back screen door, I slid on a pair of flip-flops and took a deep breath before I pushed it open and stepped outside. Harlan was standing at the bottom of the steps that led to the kitchen. He looked so much better up close than he did from a distance. It was unnerving. His thick, wavy bedhead made me envision him rolling around in his sheets. A five o'clock shadow covered his strong jaw making my palm itch to reach out and touch his face. His soulful, whiskey-brown stare stole my breath away.

"Hi," I said breathlessly.

"I, um, I couldn't sleep, and I saw your light was on."

I nodded as I tried to calm down my heart, which was racing like a car in the Grand Prix.

"I would have called you, but I didn't have your phone number," he explained.

"Oh, right." I had to actively work at not giggling like a schoolgirl.

Shit. I'd just made the decision that not seeing him again was absolutely the best thing, and now, here he was standing in front of me in a zip-up hoodie and sweats, looking so sexy it should be illegal.

"I looked for you after I was done with the photos; Nadia said that you left."

"Yeah, Aunt Rhonda wasn't feeling well." I felt like a tongue-tied teenager trying to speak to her first crush. There was so much I wanted to say to him, but yet, my mind was totally blank. All I could think about was the fact that despite having decided the less time I spent with him, the better, I didn't want this conversation to end.

He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "Do you want to go for a walk?"

"A walk?" I repeated. I didn't know the exact time, but it had to be past 1:00 a.m.

His stubble-covered chin dipped in a nod. "There's something I want to show you."

As someone who always had to look out for herself, I'd studied several different self-defense styles. I carried mace everywhere I went in California. I lived in a building with twenty-four-hour security that had underground parking, was well lit, and in a good neighborhood.

I'd seen too many episodes of 20/20 and Nightline . This was not a good idea. I knew better than to go for a ‘walk' with a man I didn't know, in the middle of the night, in a secluded area, and no one would even know I was missing for hours.

It appeared the rational side of my brain was out for lunch because instead of politely declining, I heard myself say, "Sure. Yeah."

I didn't know how to explain my decision other than to say I felt safe with Harlan. Safer than I'd ever felt with anyone in my life. We began walking in the field beneath a blanket of a dark, inky sky dotted with bright stars. Crickets chirped, and leaves rustled in the midnight breeze. The entire scene had a dreamlike quality. I wouldn't be surprised if I'd fallen asleep at the computer, and this entire thing was just that. A dream.

"So, did you find out who bid five thousand dollars for you?" I asked, even though there were probably a thousand other questions I'd rather know the answer to. I wanted to know everything about this man. But somehow, I didn't know what to say. It was a very strange phenomenon; one I'd never experienced. I had a degree in journalism.

"I was told it was a woman named Ms. French."

"Ms. French?" I repeated.

He nodded.

"That sounds like a Bond villain or something."

He chuckled. "It does. My dad loved those movies. He watched them so much when I was a kid."

"Who is his favorite Bond?"

Kale, the actor I was in a situationship with, was on the shortlist to play the next Bond, so the last time he was in town, we'd binged all twenty-five Bond movies chronologically, starting with Dr. No and ending with No Time to Die .

"I don't know. I never asked him." Harlan was quiet for a beat before continuing, "He died when I was twelve."

My heart sank. I knew what it was like to lose a parent, even one I wasn't close to. It was still hard. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay; it was a long time ago. But I still miss him."

"We're you two close?" I knew I didn't have the right to ask him such a personal question since we didn't know each other, but it didn't feel like I was stepping over any boundaries. I hoped I wasn't misreading the situation.

"Yeah, I was pretty much his shadow. He was a mechanic, just like my Grandad, and I spent a lot of my childhood in their shop or following them around on the farm."

"That sounds…nice."

"It was." He nodded as he turned his head toward me. "What about you? Are you close to your parents?"

I never talked about my parents, especially my dad. Not in a real way. I told people we weren't close and he lived overseas, but never in more detail than that.

"Um, no…I wasn't ever close to my dad. He drank a lot, and I just sort of tried to stay out of his way." I smiled, feeling vulnerable for my admission.

Beside me, I could feel Harlan's energy shift to protective. It was palpable. "That's…shitty. What about your mom?"

"She was mainly concerned with keeping my dad happy. She's gone now. She passed away when I was twenty."

"I'm sorry."

"What about your mom?" I asked, trying to turn the conversation away from my family.

"She died when I was three."

Damn. I wouldn't have asked if I had known that.

"I don't really remember her, though." He shook his head. "It's so weird I never talk about them."

"I don't talk about my parents, either."

"Why not?" He stepped over a log and held out his hand to me.

I shrugged as I placed my palm in his, as he helped me over. "I think most people that ask don't actually care about the answer."

"I do," he rasped as I stepped down in front of him.

His sincerity washed over me like a gentle breeze. Even though this was, objectively, a very depressing conversation, it didn't feel that way to me. It felt intimate and real.

I took in a shaky breath. "What about you? Why don't you talk about them?"

He sighed as we continued walking. "I guess no one ever asks me, because everyone in town knows."

"Yeah." I nodded. "Small town."

"Where did you grow up?"

"We moved a lot. From the time I was in kindergarten until I graduated high school when I was sixteen, I went to fourteen different schools."

"Holy shit. Fourteen?"

"Yep, fourteen," I confirmed as we reached a cluster of trees.

Harlan led the way through the mini-forest to a clearing with a large pond surrounded by weeping willows. Fireflies flitted above the water, giving the entire atmosphere an even more surreal feeling than it already had.

"Wow. This doesn't even look real. It's…magical." I was now convinced this had to be a dream.

"Do you want to go out?" Harlan asked as he walked down to a tiny dock with a rowboat tied to it.

"Sure."

Harlan held my hand, steadying me as I stepped down into the boat. I felt like Julia Roberts in the elevator with Richard Gere in Pretty Woman before they went to the Opera in San Francisco. I wanted to thank Harlan because I didn't know what was going to happen next, but it was already the most memorable, romantic night of my life. I lowered myself onto a seat as he untied the rope that tethered the vessel to the dock. He sat directly in front of me and began rowing the boat into the center of the pond.

Lightning bugs flitted through the air, illuminating the drooping branches of the trees. The scenery was breathtaking in itself, but all the oxygen was stolen from my lungs when I glanced up, and my eyes met his. The intensity in his stare vibrated through my entire body. It washed over me like a physical touch.

Unable to maintain eye contact, I turned my head and tried to lighten the mood that was thick with sexual tension. "This is very Little Mermaid ."

"The cartoon?" Harlan questioned.

"Yes, it's giving out "Kiss the Girl" vibes."

When I glanced back up at him, I saw that his eyes were now trained on my lips. My plan had been to do something to break the sexual tension, not add to it.

"You know when Eric and Ariel are in the boat?" I prompted. "Sebastian sings "Kiss the Girl" while they're in the boat on the pond together."

His head slowly turned from side to side. "I've never seen it."

"You haven't?" I swallowed over the lump of arousal clogging my throat.

"No. But I definitely want to kiss the girl."

Damn. I walked right into that one.