Page 3 of The Accidental Innkeeper

So I kicked the front tire like a crazy person instead. You know, let all that anger out. Did it make me feel any better? A little. But it also hurt like a sonofabitch.

I’m not sure how long I stood there baking in the sun. Half an hour? An hour? Long enough to be soaked head to toe and smell like I’d microwaved my own sweat.

And that’s exactly when I heard the low rumble of another engine approaching—smooth, confident, and expensive. I didn’t even need to turn around. I could feel the expensiveness.

Still, I did turn. I lifted a hopeful hand to flag them down for help and immediately got slapped in the face with a full-force dust cyclone.

Not a polite little puff. A biblical event.

Of course my mouth was open because why wouldn’t it be, so I inhaled. Deeply. Dust, dirt, microscopic gravel, probably some dried animal poop and whatever poor creature had crawled out here to die and slowly roast under the sun.

The car didn’t even slow down. Just blasted past like this was a scenic racetrack and I was part of the ambiance. I coughed, gagged, and bent over, hands on my knees, hacking like I’d just tried to breathe in the contents of a litter box. And because I was already drenched in sweat, the dust didn’t just hit me. It bonded to my face, my arms, my neck. I wasn’t dusty. I was laminated.

I straightened, blinking grit out of my eyes, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Bad move. Now my hand was gritty, my face was gritty, and I smelled like hot sweat and roadkill.

Temporarily blind, I heard the screech of brakes followed by the blessed, unmistakable thunk of a car door slamming shut.

Gravel crunched under approaching footsteps, slowly, like someone wasn’t in a hurry and definitely wasn’t afraid of whatever roadside cryptid they were about to encounter.

I squinted, my eyes burning, and wiped at my face with the hem of my already-sweat-ruined shirt. Everything smeared. Dust, mascara, tears. I blinked again and spat to the side, an impressive, gritty spray that would have horrified my mother. Right now, I couldn’t care less. Survival came before dignity.

I coughed once more, waved a hand vaguely in front of my face like that might help, and tried to focus. Shapes slowly emerged. A pair of shoes planted in the gravel. I could just make out a black Range Rover parked ahead of me on the side of the road.

The owner of said SUV looked like he’d been grown in a lab specifically to make my day worse.

Tall, broad shoulders, sun-warm skin, messy dark-blond hair skimming a square jaw—the full, infuriating package. That kind of effortless attractiveness made you stare when you didn’t even know you were staring. He was way too pretty. And I was way too sweaty for this nonsense.

“Car trouble?” he asked, voice smooth and calm, like this was a commercial for men’s cologne called Patience. Possibly with a yacht in the background.

I blinked at him. “No shit.”

He smirked, not even a little apologetic. That kind of smirk said he knew exactly how he looked and had weaponized it. Heat curled low in my stomach, which only made me angrier because absolutely not. We were not doing this.

“Thanks for the dust, by the way,” I added. “I just saved a fortune on a spa exfoliation.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you see me standing by the road?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s why I stopped.”

Wow. Completely unaware he’d just power-washed me with dirt, gravel, and what I was fairly sure had once been a rodent. “You’re one of those. Aren’t you?”

Dust-guy frowned. “A what?”

I was a sweat-soaked, dust-spit-covered sasquatch from New York, standing on the side of a road having the worst day in recorded history. I was so livid, I didn’t even care how stupidly hot this man was. A deeply immature part of me wanted to body-check him and aggressively hug his expensive-looking clothes until we were equally filthy. Ha. That helped. Excellent mental image.

I waved a finger at his torso and said, in my best over-the-top cartoon voice, “Look at me, I’m pretty and muscular, so it’s totally fine that I just drowned a stranger in dust and bug poop.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you always talk like that?”

“I’m a writer,” I said, shrugging. “I’m supposed to be a little crazy. If I wasn’t, it would be medically concerning.”

Hooded hazel eyes watched me with open amusement. He stared at me for a beat longer before approaching the hood, rolling his sleeves up, and showing off hard muscle covered in some dark tribal tattoo—not that I really noticed—as he peered inside.

“Hmm,” he said.

I crossed my arms. “What? Hmm what? That is not a comforting mechanic sound. That sounds like the doctor before he tells you to sit down to give you bad news.”