“How do you know that someone wasn’t lying?” Harper asked, confident she could honestly say she hadn’t kissed Adam. He’d kissed her. Big difference.
“Well, since that someone was me,” Shay said, “I feel pretty confident stating that you were locking lips with Adam Baudouin on Main Street.” Shay eyed Harper, and Harper resisted the urge to run. Barely.
Emerson and Shay were watching her, waiting for her to spill, so Harper zipped her lips and stared back.
Long, tense moments passed. Harper felt sweat bead between her shoulder blades and drip down her back, but she held strong. Until Emerson crossed her arms and dug in for the long haul.
Her bestie wasn’t big on gossip—in fact, she wasn’t all that talkative—but if she felt like someone was hiding something from her, she was a master at ferreting out the truth.
Being under that intense scrutiny made Harper’s stomach go wonky and she found swallowing difficult. Like Emerson, she hated secrets—hated keeping them almost as much as she hated uncovering them. Which was why she never kept any. She knew just how harmful they could be.
Tightening the band on her ponytail, which made her feel sporty and flirty, she said, “Fine, he kissed me.” Her friends exchanged knowing smirks, so she added, “But it was just a kiss. Nothing else happened.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” Emerson asked.
It was a good question, and one Harper didn’t have an answer for. But then she caught a glimpse of number nineteen playing shortstop and she knew. Knees bent, ready to go, his game face dialed to destroy, Adam looked strong, capable, and ready to handle anything that came his way. And that, more than anything, got to her.
“Because it happened twice,” Harper admitted, leaving out the part that she wanted it to happen again. “And if I told you guys about the second kiss, then I’d have to tell you about the first one, which took place after I caught him in my grandma’s shop, and before I fired Baby.” She dropped her head to the counter with a thud. “I am such a hypocrite.”
“Because you got cozy with Adam in your grandma’s shop, then fired the coed for doing the same thing?” Emerson asked.
Harper groaned. “And worse, I liked it.” Harper took a minute to choke on that truth, while her friends did that whole glance-slyly-at-one-another thing again, which actually wasn’t sly at all. It was kind of annoying. “I was kissed by the Five-Alarm Casanova. And I liked it. Not that it is happening again.” She looked her friends in the eyes when she said it, as though having witnesses would create accountability and ensure it would never happen again.
“You sure?” Shay asked. “Because you said it wasn’t happening again, and then you checked the field for him.”
Harper realized she was not only scanning the field for him, but her eyes had zeroed in on his mighty-fine butt in two seconds flat. Like a moth to a flame.
“I’m sure.” She took one last look, then turned to her friends. “I asked him to model for the Boulder Holder, and he said he’d have to think about it. Not that I blame him—posing in underwear isn’t really in his best interest—but if he doesn’t do it, then I am so screwed.”
“It’s not like St. Helena is short on good-looking men,” Shay said.
Shay had a point. For such a small town, St. Helena seemed to have a surplus of man candy walking around. Between Shay’s Cuties with Booties blog, which was filled with hot men posing with animals in need, and her yearly calendar, Harper had shot most of the hotties in town. Only no matter how rugged or sexy the cuties of St. Helena were, none of them had the swagger Chantel was looking for. Except Adam.
Adam had a charisma about him, that something special that made it hard not to stare. In fact, the photo of Adam in SHFD turnout pants and suspenders, holding Large Marge the bulldog, had been the most talked about month in the calendar. Mr. July wasn’t just the calendar’s centerfold, he was also an instant hit. Then her grandma had uploaded it to her Pinterest board and it went viral, making Adam a bona fide Internet sex-lebrity.
Gaining him the exact kind of notoriety he was now trying to avoid. And creating the exact kind of buzz Chantel was looking for. God, this was a mess.
“I’ll ask a few other guys I’ve worked with in the past,” Harper said, “but Chantel is stuck on Adam. He’s my ticket in. So I can’t dump my not-boyfriend for another not-boyfriend and expect Chantel to give me another chance.”
“Chantel sounds like an idiot,” Emerson said. “You don’t need some guy to prove you are perfect for this.”