The New Girl In Town. Brenda Harlen

I did.”

      “Well, you girls go on, then,” Harry said. “I don’t want to keep you any longer.”

      “Thanks for your help, Mr. Anderson,” Zoe said.

      The old man smiled at her. “It was real nice meeting you, Zoe. Good luck with that house.”

      “Thanks,” she said.

      Then, to Tina, as they walked out of the store, “And thank you.”

      Tina smiled. “My uncle Harry is a darling man with far too much time on his hands.”

      “I can’t believe I was in there an hour,” Zoe said. “I’ve never spent an hour in a hardware store in my entire life.”

      “You’ve never lived in Pinehurst before. This town operates on a whole different schedule than the rest of the world.”

      “I miss Manhattan already,” she muttered, unlocking the trunk of her car to deposit her purchases inside.

      The other woman chuckled. “What do you miss? The crowds, the noise or the chaos?”

      “All of the above.” She closed the trunk. “But I think what I miss most is the anonymity.”

      “I felt the same way when I first moved here from Boston.”

      Zoe smiled. “Is there anyone living in this town who actually grew up here?”

      “Of course,” Tina said. “I’ll fill you in on all the local characters over lunch.”

      She glanced at her watch again. “I really have a ton of things to do at the house.”

      “Have you eaten?”

      “No,” she admitted, belatedly realizing that she also needed to restock her dwindling food supply.

      “Then let’s go,” Tina said. “Because if we don’t show up at Freda’s, Uncle Harry will know before the end of the day that I lied to him.”

      And so she ended up having lunch with Tina at the popular little café. And she enjoyed it, far more than she expected to. It had been a long time since she’d shared a simple meal and easy conversation with a friend. And though she didn’t know Tina very well, she already considered her a friend—one of the first she’d made in Pinehurst.

      Then she thought of Mason, and wondered whether he might be another. She’d been thinking about him a lot since their initial meeting a week earlier—probably too much—so she put those thoughts aside and dug into her spinach salad.

      When Zoe finally got home after lunch and grocery shopping, she felt as though she’d already put in a full day and hadn’t even begun to tackle the dust and dirt. She shoved a bucket under the kitchen tap and turned on the water, thinking that it would have been nice to hire a cleaning service to come in and scrub the place from top to bottom. But that was a luxury she couldn’t afford—especially not when she had time on her hands and nothing else to do.

      Still, it was almost nine o’clock before she decided to hang up her mop for the night. Although she was physically exhausted, her mind was unsettled, her thoughts preoccupied with everything yet to be done. She decided a nice cup of tea would help her relax and get some sleep.

      After the kettle had boiled, she carried her mug out to the porch and settled into an old weathered Adirondack chair. She lifted her feet to prop them on the railing, then dropped them quickly when the wood creaked and swayed. Instead, she folded her legs beneath her on the chair and cradled her mug between her palms.

      The darkness of the nights still surprised her, with no streetlights or neon signs to illuminate the blackness of night. There was only the moon, about three-quarters full tonight, and an array of stars unlike anything she’d ever seen. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the cool, fresh air, and smiled. It was beautiful, peaceful, and exactly what she needed.

      At least until she heard a thump on the porch and registered the bump against her arm half a second before she felt the shock of hot tea spilling down the front of her shirt and a disgustingly familiar wet tongue sweeping across her mouth.

      She sputtered and pushed the hairy beast aside.

      “Rosie, down.”

      He sat, panting happily beside her chair.

      Zoe resisted the urge to scream, asking instead, in a carefully controlled voice, “Where is your master?”

      The beast tilted his head, as if trying to understand the question, but—of course—made no response to it.

      “Maybe you’re smarter than he is,” she said. “Do you understand the word by-law?”

      The beast merely cocked his head from one side to the next.

      “Or dog pound?”

      He barked, but then he licked her hand, clearly proving his ignorance.

      “How about leash?” she asked in a deliberately friendly tone.

      The beast dropped to his belly on the porch, covered his ears with his paws and whimpered.

      Zoe exhaled a frustrated breath and untangled her legs. She set the now half-empty cup of tea on the arm of the chair and stood up. “Let’s go,” she said.

      Rosie danced in ecstatic circles around her, nearly tripping her on the stairs.

      

      It was the start of the ninth inning in a tie game when Mason heard knocking. He scowled at the door, his eyes still glued to the television. It was early in the season, but his commitment to his Yankees was resolute. Unfortunately, so was the pounding.

      He swore under his breath as he pushed himself off the couch. The lead-off batter singled to right field and Mason pulled open the door. The sight of the woman on the other side was so unexpected—and so unexpectedly appealing in a pair of yoga-style pants that sat low on her hips and a skimpy white tank top—he actually forgot about the ballgame playing out on the fifty-two-inch screen behind him.

      “This beast is a menace,” Zoe said tightly.

      He winced and glanced at the animal sitting obediently at her side. “What did he do now?”

      “What did he do?” she echoed indignantly. “Look at me.”

      He took her words as an invitation, allowing his eyes to move over her—from the slightly lopsided ponytail on top of her head to the pink-painted toenails on her feet—lingering momentarily at some of the more interesting places in between.

      “This—” she gestured to the stain on the front of her shirt that he’d thought was a flower “—was a cup of very hot tea.”

      “It’s…pink.”

      Her cheeks seemed to take on the same color.

      “It’s herbal tea,” she said. “Raspberry. But that’s not the point.”

      “Of course not,” he agreed solemnly.

      Her eyes narrowed. “The point is that you were going to keep him on a leash.”

      Rosie tucked her paws over her ears and whimpered.

      Zoe rolled her eyes in disbelief. “You’ve obviously taught him to react whenever he hears that word. Why can’t you teach him to stay off my property?”

      “I think he has a crush on you.”

      She sent him a look of patent disbelief.

      “I’m not kidding,” he told her. “He’s never wandered away from the backyard without me before.”

      “I find that hard to believe.”

      “It’s true. And I really am sorry about—” his gaze fell to the pink stain on the front of her shirt and the tempting feminine curves beneath it “—your tea.”

      She crossed