Free Wild in the Moment by Jennifer Greene

there was no one to do that with. Not here.”
    â€œYou really hated growing up here.” He didn’t make it sound like a question. Good thing. Because it wasn’t.
    â€œNot hated. I love my parents, and my sisters and I were always thick as thieves. And honestly, I liked the town. It just didn’t like me,” she said frankly, and then grinned. “You won’t like me, either, when you get to know me better.”
    His eyes seemed to pick up a challenging gleam. “You sound very sure of that.”
    â€œOh, I’m dead sure of it. Neighbors used to say I was as restless as a leaf in a high wind. Mamas used to make their teenage boys go inside when I was driving by, just to protect them from the influence of ‘that wild Daisy Campbell.’”
    â€œNow you’ve got me scared,” he said dryly.
    They both chuckled—and then both hustled to get dressed and get the house back in order before the snowplows arrived.
    Daisy knew perfectly well that she hadn’t really scared him, but she hoped—from the heart—that she’d gotten through. She wasn’t the kind of woman that a nice guy married. Not a nice guy who was into roots and settling down in a house with 2.2 kids and a basketball hoop over the garage and an SUV. She was the kind of woman who a guy wanted to have an adventure with.
    Like they’d had.
    Last night.
    But good guys didn’t last—not with her. Whether it was her fault or theirs, Daisy didn’t know. Right then it didn’t matter. It just mattered that she’d made sure Teague was warned off before either of them could be hurt—particularly because she was going to be stuck in White Hills for a while.
    For his sake, and hers, she intended to stay far away from Teague Larson.

Five
    T eague trudged down Main Street. Since the blizzard two weeks ago, there’d been no bad snowstorms, but no temperature melt, either. The sludge and crusty ice were piled so high you could barely find a decent place to park—which is why he’d been stuck walking the last three blocks. Usually he liked winter, but typically by late January, the snow had dirtied up; people were sick of bundling in winter gear; the thrill of Christmas was over and everybody was broke.
    Actually, he wasn’t. He was making more money than he had time to spend—a totally unjust state of affairs—but blizzards had a way of soliciting business. When people were stuck in their homes, they tended to look around more, see the cracks, hear the groans. He swore half the town had called him, hoping to get a major rehab project going over the winter. More to thepoint—for him—was that working nonstop the past two weeks had kept his mind off Daisy Campbell.
    Sort of.
    Hands in his pockets, he passed by Carcutter’s Books, then Ruby’s Hair Salon. After Ruby’s, he crossed the road, automatically bending down to save little Tommie Willis from falling—that kid was always getting away from his mother, and the pavement was extra slick this afternoon. Still, he barely noticed the child or the storefronts.
    She was still in White Hills, because everywhere he went—customers, gas station, hardware, grocery store—people were buzzing about the glamorous, prodigal daughter come home. But he’d driven out to the farmhouse countless times. No one was there and no phone had been hooked up.
    It wasn’t as if he assumed they had a big thing going. He didn’t. But she distinctly hadn’t called him. It’s not as if he were hoping for the earth and the sun. He just wanted to find out if she could possibly, conceivably, want to turn his nights inside out ever again in this century.
    The wind whipped around his neck, slapped his cheeks red. That’s how his heart felt. Slapped. Obviously he hadn’t turned her nights inside out. And since he knew he functioned best solo, he had no explanation for his heart