“That sounds really interesting. I’d love to see the scrapbook sometime,” she told him in all sincerity.
“Okay, I’ll ask Steven about it and see if I can get him to lend it to you.” The next row was rather crowded so it took him a moment of weaving in and out before he could continue talking. “He seems pretty taken with the scrapbook himself. Looking through it is like looking into a passageway between the past and the present. I could almost see the wheels in his head turning as he was making more plans for future projects.”
Dillon realized that he was going on and on, monopolizing the conversation and not giving Hailey a chance to talk. He supposed that was because of his nerves. He found himself being really interested in her despite all his attempts not to be. “So, what brought you here?” he asked.
Hailey was intently searching for one of the sellers she had connected with the last time she was here. So far, she hadn’t been able to find the woman. Preoccupied, she answered, “Frogs.”
Dillon abruptly stopped walking and looked at Hailey. “Excuse me?”
She turned to look at him over her shoulder. He looked so stunned that she had to laugh. And quickly followed that with an apology. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh like that. I’m not laughing at you,” she added. “I’m laughing with you.”
“But I’m not laughing,” Dillon deadpanned.
He looked so serious for a second that she became flustered again. She really didn’t want to mess up this rare opportunity, especially since he seemed to be in a good mood and they were hitting it off.
“I’m sorry, Dillon. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“It’s okay, Hailey, I’m just messing with you,” he told her, waving away her apology. “But seriously, you’re here looking for frogs?” he repeated. He wouldn’t have thought she was the kind who would have wanted a pet frog. She struck him as more of a pet puppy person.
“Frog figurines,” she clarified. “I come here to Mariana’s flea market every few weeks, hoping to find another figurine to add to my collection.”
She sounded serious, he thought. “How big is your collection?” Dillon asked.
“Not very big,” she admitted. She was familiar with the people in the next row and knew there were no figurines to be found at their tables. Pausing, she looked up at Dillon and answered his question. “At last count, I had almost twenty figurines, all different,” she specified, since that was important to her. And then she laughed softly. “You’d be surprised how many of these things there are out there once you start looking.”
Intrigued, he asked, “Why did you?”
She didn’t quite follow him. “Why did I what?”
“Start looking for figurines of frogs?” he said, supplying the rest of his question. “I mean, it’s not something that is typically collected—at least, I wouldn’t think so,” he amended. He didn’t want her to think he thought her hobby was odd—just maybe a little unusual.
Hailey shrugged. “I guess it goes back to when I was a little girl. I always loved the story about The Frog Prince. I must have made my mother read that story to me at least a hundred times before I finally learned to read it for myself.”
“The Frog Prince,” Dillon repeated, still trying to understand the reason behind her fascination. “As in you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet your prince?” he asked.
She blushed a little, something that he found instantly endearing. “Something like that,” she admitted.
“And did you?” Dillon wanted to know. “Did you meet your prince?”
“No,” she admitted, thinking of some of the wrong choices she had made in her life. “Not yet.”
“Well, I guess I know how that is,” he said, commiserating with her. “Kissing your share of frogs, I mean.” When she looked at him curiously, Dillon quickly explained, “I’ve probably kissed my share of... What’s the female equivalent of frogs? Froggettes?” he asked, testing the word out.
For some reason, the word he had come up with really struck her as funny. Hailey started to laugh, really laugh. Hard.
Listening to her, Dillon found himself captivated by the sound of her laughter. So much so that he could feel himself wanting her.
Really wanting her.
Chapter Eight
“You know,” Dillon heard himself saying quietly so that no one could overhear them, “I wouldn’t mind being one of your frogs.” The moment the words had come out of his mouth, he was afraid that they could be misconstrued, or, at the very least, they didn’t come out quite right. He didn’t want Hailey to think he had lost his mind. Or that he was putting moves on her. That would be too crass. “I mean...”
At a loss, he wasn’t sure just how to finish his sentence.
He was shy, Hailey realized, delighted by the very idea. Who would have ever thought that someone as incredibly sexy and good-looking, not to mention talented, as Dillon Fortune could actually be shy?
She smiled at him, doing her best to encourage Dillon to continue his thought—and to act on it.
“I think I know what you mean,” she told him.
Was it his imagination, or did Hailey seem to move closer to him without actually taking a single step? Or maybe he had somehow just willed the distance between them to disappear?
Whatever the reason and however it happened, one moment he was looking down into her upturned face, the next moment Dillon was kissing her.
He wasn’t the kind of man who believed in engaging in public displays of affection. On the contrary, Dillon had trained himself to behave like an extremely private person, keeping his thoughts as well as his feelings tightly under wraps.
But this was different. He didn’t know why it was, he only knew that it was.
So very different.
He had caught himself thinking about kissing Hailey since that first day when she had uncorked that unfortunate bottle of jasmine and wound up christening his shirt with it. That act alone, even though it
