RaeAnne Thayne - Raeanne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One - Blackberry Summer

Hunger curled through him, slow and insistent. Stupid. She’d warned him away the last time he was here, told him plainly she wasn’t interested in any kind of one-on-one with him. He would do well to keep that in mind.

“Okay, what’s a hard one you can’t hit?” Owen said, considering his options. While he set up the shot, Riley risked another glance at Claire and found her watching him. Their gazes locked for a moment, then she quickly looked away, a blush staining her cheeks.

A tensile thread of awareness stretched between them, taut and shimmery, and he was so busy trying to figure out what the hell to do with it that he completely missed Owen’s shot except for the swish of the net.

“That’s G for you. I win!” Owen exclaimed after Riley took a wild shot and completely missed the hoop.

“Good game, kid.”

“How about two out of three?” the boy said.

Riley looked at Claire. “How about another day? I should go say hello to your mom.”

“Okay. I have to pee anyway.”

Riley set the ball down on the standard’s base, paused to pet Chester’s brown droopy face, then headed up the three porch stairs, the memory of the kiss they had shared the last time he’d seen her playing over and over in his head. He relentlessly tried to shut it down by reminding himself of all the reasons why kissing her was a lousy idea.

Still, he couldn’t resist brushing her cheek with a light, friendly sort of kiss when he reached her. If he inhaled the scent of her, fresh and lovely as the spring evening, that was nobody’s damn business but his own.

“Thanks for playing with him for a few minutes,” she said and he wondered if he was imagining that slightly husky note to her voice. “It’s a little tough for me to go in for a layup right now.”

“And I would guess the cast on your arm probably plays havoc with your shooting percentage.”

She smiled. “I guess I’m a wuss in that respect. A cast doesn’t seem to bother Owen, obviously.”

“I hear you went back to work today,” he said after an awkward pause, perching on the white gingerbread railing that encircled the house.

“Wow. Really? I wasn’t aware it made the Hope Gazette.”

“I sometimes think the Gazette is a waste of paper around here. I mean, who really needs it because everyone knows everything anyway? Donna Mazell apparently stopped in on her lunch break. She told me about how you’ve got a nice comfortable chair set up by the register like the Bead Queen of Hope’s Crossing.”

“Queen Claire. That’s me. I forgot Donna came in. She was looking for polymer beads for a project she’s doing with her grandkids.”

He didn’t know polymer beads from pinto beans, any more than he’d been able to figure out just how exactly Donna had guessed with such accuracy that he might have a particular interest in the comings and goings of a particular bead-store owner of their mutual acquaintance.

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