She was full of good advice, Hailey thought, settling in to help Callum with his daughters. Too bad she couldn’t seem to take her own to heart and stop thinking about Dillon.
But she found that it was hard to stop thinking about the man when their paths kept crossing. Or almost kept crossing. By the time the weekend rolled around, she had just barely missed running into Dillon a number of times.
Just two ships passing one another in the night, Hailey thought philosophically.
She felt frustrated. There had to be some way they could travel in the same direction, at least for a little while, she thought.
“I could sure use a little help here, Janelle,” Hailey murmured under her breath the following Saturday morning as she drove to Mariana’s weekly flea market. “I’m trying my best to grab onto life with both hands just the way you always told me to,” she told the memory of her best friend, “but so far, life seems to just be slipping through my fingers. At least when it comes to Dillon.”
She sighed as she continued making her way to the flea market.
Maybe she was being too impatient. Janelle had always said if something was meant to be, it would happen, usually when you were just about ready to completely give up.
“Sure hope you’re right about that,” Hailey silently said to her friend, “because I’m pretty close to giving up on that hunky cowboy-hyphen-construction guru.”
Yes, she wanted to find out what his secret was and why he had suddenly withdrawn when she had told him he had the makings of being a great dad. But there was a fine line between determination and stalking, and there was absolutely no way that she wanted to accidentally blunder into that category.
Okay, she told herself as she reached her destination, she had very little free time to herself these days and there didn’t seem to be a letup coming anywhere in the near future. Which of course was a good thing as far as the spa went. But this was an island of time she had managed to cut out for herself and she needed it. She was going to use that time to see what treasures she could find at Mariana’s.
Specifically, the treasures she was on the lookout for were frog figurines, something she had started collecting way back in her early teens. Every few weeks, she would hit the flea market, Rambling Rose’s very own treasure trove, to see if there were any new figurines there waiting to be added to her personal collection.
Searching through the hastily assembled tables that seemed to go on for endless row after row was both her hobby and her diversion. Just looking through all these things was its own reward, and whenever she actually found a figurine, it was a little like Christmas morning when she was a kid all over again.
She parked her car in the lot that stretched out along the fairground’s perimeter. Getting out and eager to get started, she was completely focused on the hunt before her. For the first time in a while, she wasn’t even thinking about Dillon.
Which was probably why she didn’t see the man until she was practically right on top of him.
Actually, she was on top of him, having walked right into someone without even realizing it.
Their bodies collided and it was all she could do to keep from falling down. The only reason she regained her balance at all was because the person she had walked into grabbed her hard by her shoulders in an effort to keep her upright.
Hailey began to apologize before she realized whom she had walked into.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—Dillon,” she exclaimed, practically doing a double take. Hailey tried to back up and found she couldn’t.
Belatedly, Dillon realized he was holding onto her. Not only that, but it took him a second to release his hands from her shoulders. Electricity shot through him, as if holding her like that felt right somehow.
He was going to have to watch that.
“I didn’t realize you would be here,” she cried, feeling genuinely flustered and more than a little tongue-tied, which was highly unusual for her. “Sorry,” she apologized again. “I didn’t mean to walk into you like that.”
Rather than be standoffish, which was what she half expected, since she’d gotten the impression that he was avoiding her, Dillon looked amused.
“Who did you mean to walk into?” he asked Hailey.
“What?” And then she realized that he was teasing her. She laughed, some of her nervousness leaving her. “Nobody. I was just trying to get my bearings. The people who bring their things to Mariana’s Market never seem to be in the same place twice. They’re always switching around so it’s like a brand new treasure hunt each and every time.”
Dillon looked at it from the point of view of a businessman. “They do that so they can try to catch your eye with something new, something you didn’t even know you were looking for until you see it.”
Hailey looked impressed. She wouldn’t have thought a flea market would have any allure for him. “You sound as if you’re talking from experience.”
“I am. Secondhand experience, actually,” he readily admitted. “But still valid in this context. Steven came here just last month and found this really cool scrapbook while he was browsing one of the stands.”
“Oh?” He’d caught her attention even as she continued weaving in and out of the rows, looking at what the various sellers had on display. “What made it so cool?” She couldn’t help being curious about what Dillon and his brothers might have found appealing at a flea market.
“It was filled with old articles about the town, you know, the way it was back when it was first built,” he told her, following Hailey as she turned down another row. “There was even an article about the old Foundling Hospital—except it wasn’t
