Seeing a huge, unsmiling man bearing down on her, however, made that enjoyment falter. And her heartbeat inexplicably pick up its pace.
He looked different than he had during their previous two brief meetings. Plus, the first time she’d seen him, as well as on the handful of occasions when she’d glimpsed him around town, he’d been wearing his deputy sheriff’s uniform. But there was just no mistaking a guy that big, that hard-looking, that intense and contained for anyone else.
She blinked as he suddenly left the path and disappeared from view, then shook her head at herself. Oh, good show, Harper. Conceited much? Because, despite her cottage being the only one up here before the trail wound into the woods, it apparently hadn’t been Bradshaw’s destination. Breathing a sigh of relief—right?—she plugged in her earbuds and turned back to the couple of boxes she’d put off unpacking.
Within moments, she’d revived her earlier enjoyment. She loved seeing new places, loved meeting new people and diving into a new job that was never quite like any other. Since she’d structured her life to do exactly that, she was generally a happy woman.
Harper sang along with Maroon 5 as they played through her earbuds. As she efficiently unpacked the boxes of odds and ends her mother had insisted on sending her, she swiveled her hips and bopped in time to the music.
Thoughts of her mother’s hopes and expectations for her, however, elicited a sigh in the midst of crooning along with Adam Levine. Gina Summerville-Hardin refused to believe that Harper could live very contentedly without a permanent base or a host of belongings, since making a home had been her way of coping with the constant moving from place to place that had been part and parcel of her husband’s work. Neither Gina nor Harper’s brother, Kai, had loved the adventure of seeing new countries and meeting new people the way Harper and her dad had.
Still, Harper had to admit that she adored the throw pillows and candles her mom had sent. They added a homey touch to her minuscule cabin. Admitting as much certainly didn’t take away from how she chose to live and honor her dad’s memory.
All the same, when the song ran its course, she thumbed through her playlist and pulled up her father’s onetime theme song.
“‘Papa was a rolling stone,’” she sang along with The Temptations as she focused on finding a place to put the other items her mother had sent, given that storage space was at a premium. “‘Wherever he—’”
Something warm brushed her elbow. Her heart climbing her throat like a monkey riding a rocket, she jerked her chin downward. She stared at the rawboned, big-knuckled masculine hand touching her.
And screamed the house down.
“Shit!” Max Bradshaw’s voice exclaimed as she ripped the earbuds from her ears and whirled to face him.
He was in the midst of taking a long-legged step away from her. His big hands were up, palms out, as if she had a howitzer aimed at his heart.
“Ms. Summerville—Harper—I’m sorry,” he said in a low, rough voice. “I knocked several times and I heard you singing, so I knew you were here. But I shouldn’t have let myself in.” Slowly lowering his hands, he stuffed them into his shorts pockets and his massive shoulders hunched up. “I sure didn’t mean to scare the sh—that is, stuffing out of you.”
Even through the embarrassment of knowing he’d seen her shaking her butt and singing off-key, it struck her that these were probably the most words she’d ever heard him string together at one time in her presence. Drawing in a deep breath and dropping the hands she’d clasped to her heart like an overwrought silent film heroine confronted by the mustache-twirling villain, she pulled herself together. “Yes, well, intention or not, Deputy Bradshaw—”
“Max,” he interjected.
“Max,” she agreed, wishing she’d simply said that in the first place. After all, not only had they been introduced on the day she’d interviewed for her job at the inn but they’d attended the same barbecue just a couple weeks ago. “As I was saying—”
Her already open front door banged against the living room wall, and they both whirled to stare at the man barreling through it. From the corner of her eye, Harper saw Max reach for his right hip, where his gun no doubt usually resided.
The stranger’s forward momentum carried him across the threshold and into the small room, the screen door slapping closed behind him. As he left the glare of sunlight flooding the porch, he coalesced into a tall, gangly man in his mid-thirties.
Then he was blocked from view as Max stepped in front of her. She leaned to peer around him.
“Are you okay, miss?” the man demanded, glancing about wildly. She assumed his eyes had adjusted to the dimmer interior lighting, for it was obvious from the way they suddenly widened that he’d gotten his first good look at Max. His prominent Adam’s apple rode the column of his throat as he swallowed audibly.
For good reason. Max was six-four if he was an inch and probably weighed in the vicinity of two-twenty.
Every ounce of it solid muscle.
But Harper had to give the resort guest credit. He was clearly outmatched, yet while he looked as though he’d give a bundle to go back out the way he’d come in, he instead moved closer and ordered firmly, “Step away from her, sir.”
“Oh, for God sake,” she heard Max mutter, and hysterical laughter bubbled up Harper’s throat. She swallowed it down as she watched Max do as directed.
Then she looked at the resort guest. “I’m okay,” she said soothingly. “It’s really not what you must think.” She ran him through her mental database. “You’re Mr. Wells, right? I believe your wife is in my sunset yoga class.”
“Sean Wells,” he agreed, shedding some of the tension that caused him to all but vibrate.
“This is Deputy Bradshaw,” she said. “I screamed because I had my earbuds in and he startled me.”
Sean relaxed a bit more, but he shot Max a skeptical look as he took in the bigger man’s khaki cargo shorts, black muscle shirt and the tribal tattoos that swirled down his right upper arm from the muscular ball of his shoulder to the bottom of his hard biceps. “You don’t look like a deputy.”
The dark-eyed gaze Max fixed on him froze the other man in place. “It’s my day off,” he said with “Just the facts, ma’am” directness.
Harper had no idea why she found that so damn titillating.
“I just came by to ask Ms. Summerville to dinner,” he added, and shock whipped her head around.
She gaped at him. “You did?” Crap. Was that her voice cracking on the last word? She hardly ever lost her poise. But in her own defense, during their previous encounters she’d gotten the impression Max viewed her as a mental lightweight. She would have sworn, too, that she hadn’t even registered on his Attraction-O-Meter.
“Yes.” Dull color climbed his angular face. “That is, Jake sent me. Jenny’s having a dinner party tonight and wants you to come.” Glancing away, he leveled an are-you-still-here look on Sean Wells.
The man immediately mumbled an excuse and melted out the door.
“Thank you,” Harper called after him, then quirked an eyebrow when the deputy turned back to her. “You sure know how to clear a room.”
“Yeah.” The shoulder with the tattoo lifted and dropped. “It’s a talent of mine.” He gave her a level look. “So, what do you want me to tell Jenny? You in or you out for tonight?”
“I’m in. What should I bring?”
“You’re