CHAPTER ONE – IMMY
Blast From The Past
“That is one hot piece of ass.”
I eyed my grandmother across the room. She was standing in front of the window, her head shoved between the two curtains. Since her dress was the same navy blue as the curtains, it gave the illusion that the curtains had grown a body.
Or that she’d grown a pair of curtains.
Either one would fit her.
“Grandma,” I said. “Stop perving on Mr. Hawkins.”
She’d had an inappropriate crush on the gentleman who lived opposite us for two years, and I’d caught her peeking at him more than one time.
Hell, he’d caught her. Usually, when he was mowing the lawn in his shorts, but that was a nightmare for another day.
“It’s not Mr. Hawkins. It’s the sexy as hell man in front of the moving truck next door.”
I frowned. The ‘SOLD’ sign had been banged into next door’s front yard for two months now, and we’d just talked yesterday about how we thought nobody was ever going to move in.
“Someone is finally moving in?” I got up from the dining table, careful not to knock my coffee onto the canvas I was painting, and joined her from her neighborhood watch spot.
That’s how she referred to it, anyway. She fancied herself as the great keeper of the neighborhood, ready to call the police like an elderly vigilante Superwoman-esque kind of person.
I called it her nosy parker spot.
“Oh, now you want to look with me.” She sniffed when I joined her. “Look? See? That’s his daughter.”
I peered out at the little girl—she had to be four at most—who was dancing on the front lawn in a pink, glittery princess-like dress. It was the exact style of dress I spent my early years living in, and I smiled as her crazy, blonde curls flew around her head as she twirled around.
“Cute,” I said. “Why are you perving on her dad?”
“Because I’ve been watching them for twenty minutes, and I don’t see her mother, so I assume Mr. Muscles is single.”
“Maybe she’s at work?”
“And he’s moving house by himself? No, darling.” She scratched her nose. “You’re showing your single. If you were married, you’d know this important thing: if he was married, his wife would be there to stop him from messing it all up.”
Showing my single. Right. That’s what she was calling it this week.
“Where is he, then?” I narrowed my eyes, shifting to get a better look.
“There! Coming out of the house in those heaven-sent pants!”
If this man wasn’t at least forty, I was hiding her contact lenses. Given that the woman was eighty, even forty was pushing it as acceptable.
All right, so that made her a raging cougar, but it was the age we’d agreed on. it brought us both necessary peace.
I caught a glance at the guy and froze. He looked way too familiar to me. As in, I knew that profile as well as I knew my own, and my stomach was already hurting from how tight it was over the sight of him.
If he was who I thought he was, I was going to regrow my hymen and join a nunnery.
He disappeared into the moving truck. I stared a hole in the side of it until he came back out, this time carrying a huge box.
My heart jumped into my throat so hard it shot out of my mouth and boomeranged right back in there.
No.
This was not happening.
“Oh, hell,” I breathed, staring at him as he set the box down and crouched in front of the little girl.
“Do you know him?” Grandma asked, turning her blue eyes my way.
“Yeah.”
Yeah, I know him.
I knew that face.
I’d know that face anywhere.
In fact, I’d know any part of his body anywhere, given that I’d spent two years of my college life under it, over it, and in front of it.
Mason Black was, apparently, the equivalent of a fine wine. It’d been six years since I’d seen him last at his college graduation, and he’d only gotten hotter since then. From what I could see, anyway.
He was still tall, still impossibly handsome, still built like a romance novel hero with muscles in all the right places. Even his hair, his thick, dark hair, was cut in the same style—short on the sides, longer on top, and swept to one side like he was a freaking rockstar.
But the short beard, not quite a full one but not quite stubble? That was new.
The problem was that none of that covered the main issue: unless we were in bed together, we didn’t get along.
I know. It’d been fucked up then, and it sounded even weirder to my adult ears. But we’d just never been friends, not the way you’d think two people who hooked up as often as we had should have been.
That was probably the only reason why him graduating and never calling me hadn’t hurt as much as it should have.
“How do you know him? Why haven’t I met him? When did you meet him?” Grandma demanded, pulling back from the curtain.
“We knew each other in college,” I said vaguely. “I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Is he the guy you were banging for two years?”
“Grandma!” I choked on my own spit and darted away from the window. “I did nothing of the sort!”
She put her hands on her round hips and glared at me. “You most certainly did. I read your journal, and it said so.”
“You read my journal? What the hell?”
“You left it open. I thought it was one of your romance novels. The writing wasn’t up to much, though. You’re no Jane Austen.”
My cheeks flamed bright red. “Okay, we’re done here.”
“Why? Are you going to ask him if you can pick up where you left off?”
“No! I’m going to ask him what the hell he’s doing here.”
“Okay, but I’m opening the window to listen.” She paused. “And don’t forget about the little girl. No cussing.”
I frowned. “I work with kids. I know not to cuss.”
“Hmm.”
I glared at her back for a moment before I opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. The spring air was pleasant, and the flowerpots that were now bustling with greenery showed signs of colorful life in the buds that were growing.
I, however, didn’t care for any of them.
I only cared about the man who’d just done a double-take and was now turning around.
Mason’s eyes widened as they landed on me. He gave me a long, hard look, dragging his gaze from the messy blonde bun on top of my head to the pink polish on my bare toes.
It was a look I felt everywhere—the kind of look where you just knew not an inch of your body had gone unnoticed.
Mason took a step forward before he stopped himself. “Imogen?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” were the first words that came out of my mouth. “Please tell me you work for the removal company.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again, right before his lips tugged up into a smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “It’s good to see you, too.”
“I’d tell you the feeling is mutual, but it isn’t.”
He smirked. “Some things don’t change. And no, I don’t work for the removal company. I bought this house.” His gaze flicked toward the house behind me. “I didn’t know you lived here.”