Laurel Blount - Hometown Hope

Then the astonishment of Jess speaking. That was the memory that got to her most of all. The incredulous joy on Hoyt’s face... She still got choked up, thinking about it.

The Bradley family had been through a lot. The whole of Pine Valley had sympathized with Hoyt in his grief and worried over Jess’s long silence.

Especially Anna’s father. He’d written Jess and Hoyt’s names on the very top of the prayer list he’d kept tucked in his Bible. Her father loved everybody in his small town, but Jess Bradley held an extra special place in his heart. He’d always considered the little girl’s love of books one of his biggest successes as an educator.

Before his memory had completely failed him, her father had told her proudly about how Hoyt’s wife had brought Jess in for story times and other special bookstore events.

“Neither I nor his teachers could ever get Hoyt interested in literature, but we did manage to reach Marylee Sherman. She was an avid reader, and she was doing her best to make sure that baby of theirs loved books, too. It’s a shame how things work out sometimes. It truly is.”

Her father would have been so pleased to see how Marylee’s efforts continued to pay off. Jess’s passion for books had grown until it rivaled Anna’s own. Come to think of it, because of Jess, Anna had sold more books to Hoyt Bradley over the past couple of years than to anybody else in Pine Valley.

Her father would’ve chuckled over that.

Anna might have appreciated the irony a lot more herself if it hadn’t meant seeing Hoyt on a regular basis. Even after all these years, Hoyt Bradley made her feel...uncomfortable.

She hadn’t always felt that way. Once upon a time she’d actually tried to run into Hoyt, hanging around hallways where she knew he had classes, making long detours by the athletes’ boisterous lunch table, hoping he’d look up and say hi.

That was the sort of thing that happened when you were shy and socially invisible, and your beloved English teacher asked you to tutor the local football star. Anna’s job had been to keep Hoyt eligible to play, but she hadn’t stopped there. She’d boosted Hoyt’s GPA enough that he’d qualified for a college football scholarship.

Then copies of senior exams had been discovered in the gym locker room, and all eyes had turned on Anna. After all, people had said, as the principal’s daughter, she had access to the school after hours, and Hoyt was...well, Hoyt Bradley . Any girl, especially a nerdy bookworm like Anna, would be willing to do whatever a guy like that asked her to do.

It all made perfect sense.

It just wasn’t true.

Anna had no idea how Hoyt had managed to get those test keys, but whatever he’d done, he’d done without her help. To be fair he’d tried to make that clear. He’d told everyone that Anna had nothing to do with the theft. But since he’d stopped short of making a public confession of his own guilt, most people had simply assumed he was covering for her.

There was some irony for you. Hoyt was the actual guilty party, but in the end, he’d come off looking like some chivalrous hero, while she looked like...well...

A lovestruck dork.

Which, if she were brutally honest with herself, was uncomfortably close to the truth.

A rapping on the door startled her out of her thoughts. She glanced up to see Hoyt peering at her from the sidewalk.

Anna shot an alarmed look at the antique clock on the wall. She’d known she’d have to deal with Hoyt at some point today, but what was he doing here at this hour? It wasn’t even 7:00 a.m. On a Saturday . And she was wearing her rattiest yoga pants and an oversize green T-shirt with I’d Rather Be Reading scrawled across the front in glittery pink script.

Plus, she had the kind of curly hair that had to be beaten into submission every morning, and she hadn’t even made her first attempt yet. She probably looked like some cartoon character who’d just been struck by lightning. Still, considering she’d locked the man’s daughter in her storage room yesterday, she couldn’t exactly shoo him away.

Besides, she’d been the accidental witness to an incredibly emotional moment last night. When Hoyt had heard his daughter’s voice for the first time in way too long, she’d seen the man’s heart hanging out. He was probably feeling vulnerable himself today, facing her after a moment like that.

Anna set down her mug, took a deep, calming breath and headed in his direction. She unlocked the door and opened her mouth to say something friendly and reassuring.

She didn’t get the chance.

“You trying out a new look, Delaney?” Hoyt gave her a quick once-over and grinned. “I like it. You should wear your hair like that all the time.”

As he shouldered past her into the store, Anna could feel her cheeks heating up. As usual, Hoyt Bradley was poking fun at her.

This man wasn’t vulnerable. He was impossible.

“My Saturday hours are posted right there on the window. I don’t open until ten today. I’m aware that reading goes against the whole caveman thing you’ve got going on, but you really should give it a try sometime.”

He raised an eyebrow at her tone and then shrugged. “Sorry about that.” He didn’t sound particularly sorry, but then Hoyt never did. “Some of us cavemen have to get to work early.”

He did look ready for work. He was wearing a rust-colored shirt paired with khaki work pants and boots. An embroidered sign on his shirt pocket read Bradley Builders in black script. His dark hair was damp from a shower, and he smelled like some kind of foresty aftershave.

He made her feel like a slacker.

Whistling cheerfully, he paused to pour himself a mug of coffee from the machine behind the counter. “If you want that window and door fixed anytime soon, I need to take some measurements before I hit the building supply store this morning.” He vanished into the storeroom, filched coffee in hand.

The instant he was out of sight, Anna went straight for the heavy-duty rubber bands she kept in a drawer at the checkout counter and attempted some emergency hair management.

Hoyt Bradley hadn’t changed a bit since high school. She could almost feel her blood pressure going up.

She’d barely finished corralling her uncooperative hair into a messy ponytail when Hoyt reemerged from the storeroom. He retracted the tape measure in his hand and stuffed a torn scrap of paper in the breast pocket of his shirt. “I’m done. I can get the door fixed today, but I’m going to have to special-order the window, and that’ll take a while. I’ll board up the gap for you when I swing back by.”

More Hoyt was the last thing she needed. “Don’t worry about it. I can rig up something to keep the rain out.”

“Rain’s not all you want to keep out. You don’t want somebody breaking in.”

“In Pine Valley? I doubt that’ll be a problem. Besides, there’s nothing in here to steal except books.”

Hoyt paused. For the first time since she’d opened the door, he looked serious. “About that. How bad is it?”

Something about his tone put Anna on alert. “How bad is what?”

“Are you carrying a lot of debt or is it just a cash flow problem?” Confused, she frowned at him, and he made an impatient noise. “The bookstore , Anna. How deep in the hole are you?”

Typical Hoyt, standing there, asking nosy questions as if he had every right to know. Well, she wasn’t sharing. For one thing, her finances were none of his business.

And for another thing, she’d already been embarrassed enough for one morning, thank you very much.

“That’s a bit personal, don’t you think?”

Hoyt sighed and looked at his watch. “I think you never could give a guy a straight answer. I don’t have time to get into all this right now anyway. I’ve got a job site to get to. We’ll have to hash it out later. How about after work? That good for you? You could come over to my house for supper.”