Boots. Puffy-looking brown boots with faux fur trim. They were heavy in my hands as I pulled them out and inspected them. I ripped the tissue paper from the bottom, expecting to find a note, a card, something, but the box was empty.

  The boots went back into the box with a thud. I tucked it under my arm and marched out the front door of my house, straight to the front door of my overly helpful, no boundaries, neighbor.

  Ready to thrust the unwanted gift into his arms and leave, I was shocked when my eyes didn’t meet his. A young girl opened the door and I took a step back. Right, he mentioned that he had a daughter. “Hi.” I softened my voice and gave the girl who was looking at me with a confused look on her face a reassuring smile. “I’m your neighbor and I think this package was left on my doorstep by accident.”

  “Dad?” The girl shouted.

  Dean appeared behind his daughter with a tea towel slung over his shoulder My heart melted a little the second his eyes met mine. “Go check the casserole.” He patted his daughter on the shoulder. She nodded and darted out of sight.

  “She’s very cute.”

  “Thanks. Her name is Chloe.”

  I forced a smile onto my face and then remembered why I was on his doorstep. “I don’t need these.”

  His eyes glanced to the box in my hands. “What are they?”

  Shit. Fuck. Damn. He didn’t buy the boots for me. The only other person who could’ve left them on my doorstep was Melissa. Why had I jumped to the conclusion that a stranger would buy me boots for no reason? Dean’s eyebrows were raised and he had a quizzical look on his face.

  “Never mind.” I took a step backward. “Thank you for clearing my driveway. You didn’t have to do that.”

  If he wasn’t the boot man, he was definitely the snow man. I was sure of that fact.

  “I didn’t have to.” The smile was back. “But I did.”

  I wasn’t ready for his direct reply and the butterflies in my stomach were back with a vengeance. Was he flirting with me? The bigger and more important question was, where was this perfect man’s wife? Behind Dean, moving boxes were stacked high and without any décor, it was hard to detect a woman’s touch in the home.

  Hoping that the blush on my face could be explained away from the frigid temperatures, I took another step back. “Thank you. It wasn’t necessary, but thank you.”

  A timer pierced the air between us and Dean’s eyes shot to what I assumed was his kitchen.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I knew that it was time to leave, my brain was screaming at my feet to move, but my body wasn’t listening and I seemed frozen on Dean’s front porch. The timer rang out again. “I should go.”

  I turned to leave, but before I could take a step Dean interrupted. “Amber.”

  I paused.

  “Have you eaten?”

  I didn’t have to answer, my stomach did it for me, emitting a giant whale call of hunger that wasn’t suppressed at all the layers of my dress and jacket.

  The timer beeped again. “Chloe, can you turn that off?” he shouted. “And set one more place for dinner.”

  I couldn’t. I would have rather eaten glass than sit with this man and what I assumed was his soon to arrive home wife. “You’re too kind, but—”

  “Please, Amber. It’s a small town. We do nice things for each other. Join Chloe and me for dinner.”

  My eyes glanced to his catcher’s mitt of a hand that loosely held the front door open. This time I was sure; there was no ring on this man’s finger.

  My stomach grumbled again and Dean laughed. “You definitely can’t say no after that.”

  “It does smell delicious.” I relented. It’s just dinner, I thought to myself as I stepped into Dean’s home and was met with the most delicious smell.

  Dean took the cardboard box from me and set it on a towering stack of boxes at the bottom of his stairs. He held out his hands and I realized he was waiting to take my jacket, and not just waiting to take it, waiting to help me out of it. I wondered if all small-town men were raised to be gentlemen. After all of his chivalry, I knew without a doubt that Dean would be the kind of guy to open doors, pull out chairs, and walk on the outside of the sidewalk. All things that I didn’t think that I wanted, until that moment. I turned and unbuttoned my dress coat and tried to hide the shiver that ran through my body when I felt Dean’s fingers clasped the collar, and I shrugged out of the jacket. Goosebumps sprang up under the thin fabric of my dress, but they had nothing to do with the temperature.

  My stocking feet padded on the hardwood floor as I followed Dean into his small eat-in kitchen.

  “Chloe, this is our new neighbor, Amber.”

  “Hey.” Chloe’s place setting was pushed aside and she was scribbling on some lined paper.

  The lackluster greeting didn’t surprise me. “Hi, Chloe. Nice to meet you.” I plastered on a smile and tried to remember who was the grownup in this scenario. Dean’s extremely good manners had appeared to have skipped a generation. The oven door creaked behind me and I turned to see Dean pulling out a bubbling concoction and then kicking the door shut with his foot. He set the glass dish on top of the stove and tossed the tea towel over his shoulder again.

  “What can I help you with?” I stepped beside him and couldn’t help but inhale the intoxicating scent of two things that I hadn’t eaten in years. Dairy and gluten. But there was something else I couldn’t place.

  Dean opened and closed a few of the kitchen drawers before pulling out a corkscrew. “You can open the wine.” He slapped the corkscrew into my open palm. “There should be a few bottles in the box by the patio doors.” I stepped around the moving boxes, wondering how long they’d been there. The box by the patio door was filled with French red wine. I wasn’t an expert, but I did recognize the name, and it was expensive. “Are you sure this is the box?” I blew some dust off the label.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  Returning to the tiled kitchen area, I uncorked the bottle of wine. “Glasses?” I asked.

  “Good question.” He opened a few cupboards. “Chloe, have you seen the wine glasses?”

  Chloe shrugged without looking up from what looked to be a drawing of a murder scene.

  “These will do.” I opened one of the cupboards and took out two small glass tumblers. “Chloe, what can I get you to drink?”

  The shrug returned.

  “Chloe Covington.” Dean turned and shook the spatula he was using to dole out the casserole at his daughter. “That is not how you speak to a guest.”

  Chloe looked up from her drawing and I noticed that her eyes were the same shade of blue as her father’s. “Chocolate milk please.” There was a mischievous glint in her eye and the Cheshire cat smile told me that she was pushing the envelope. I raised my eyebrows at Dean, silently asking if it was okay to pour his daughter chocolate milk and he sighed and then nodded.

  “The wine glasses are in here.” Chloe hopped up from her chair and pulled three hideous leopard-stemmed wine glasses from one of the moving boxes beside her.

  “Thank you.” I took the glasses from her tiny hands and rinsed them in the sink. Dean must’ve noticed me looking for a tea towel and pulled the red one from his shoulder. “Here.” His fingertip met mine as he handed it to me and I jerked back in response. I wasn’t ready for his touch again, I needed my stomach in prime condition, a gut full of butterflies, gluten, and cheddar cheese were not going to be a good mixture.

  Wine and brown milk poured, I handed a glass to Chloe and placed the other two next to the remaining place settings. “Coming in hot,” Dean brushed by me and set the casserole dish down on the glass table. He rushed to my side and pulled out the chair. “Please, Amber, have a seat.” Dean pulled out the chair in front of him. Fire burned in my cheeks as I made my way around the table. I hadn’t been waiting for Dean to pull out the chair. I just wasn’t sure if I was to take the seat at the head of the table.

  With Dean tucked into the head of the table he raised his wine glass. “To…” He glanced around the room. “Getting unpacked.”

  “Cheers to that.” I raised my glass and was pleasantly surprised when Chloe followed suit.

  “Cheers.” She smiled, the first I had seen from her, and thought to myself that she should do it more often, her face completely lit up.

  Dean doled out giant scoops of the stringy gooey casserole. “Dig in,” he smiled.

  One bite and I was in love. “Omigod.” I set my fork down and dabbed at the side of my mouth with the cheetah print napkin. “That is incredible.”

  Chloe grinned, “It’s the gorgonzola.”

  I took another bite, yes, it definitely was the mystery flavor. “What kid likes gorgonzola?” The words escaped my mouth before I could determine if they were offensive. The huge grin on Chloe and her dad’s face told me that it wasn’t.

  Beaming, Dean patted his daughter’s arm. “This one has always had tastebuds well beyond her years.”

  “Yeah,” Chloe finished her bite. “I even like blue cheese.”

  “What about…” I tried to think of the most grown-up food I could. “Oysters?”

  She nodded, her mouth full of food.

  Or…” A decidedly Florida delicacy came to mind, “Dolphin?”

  Her face blanched and she gulped. “Dad?”

  “Fish!” I realized my extreme faux pas. “Dolphin fish. Mahi-Mahi. It’s not a dolphin, dolphin.” The little girl practically had tears in her eyes.

  “Geez, Amber, you might as well have asked her if she ate Fido. Dolphins are her favorite animal,” Dean laughed.

  “Mammal,” Chloe clarified.

  My cheeks were burning. “I’m sorry, Chloe.”

  Her laugh was a cute quiet one, “That’s okay. There really is a fish called a dolphin-fish? I’m going to look that one up.”

  “There is.” I took a sip of wine and then leaned towards her. “And they’re delicious.”

  “It’s a Florida fish?” Dean scraped the last of his dinner from his plate. “We’ll have to see if we can get it delivered to Laketown in the summer.”

  “I think that they catch them year-round,” I said. “You might not have to wait until summer.”

  Dean laughed and helped himself to a second round of what I now knew was gourmet mac and cheese. “Yeah, but there’s not much demand for high-end seafood in Laketown in the winter.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  I thought that Dean was going to choke on his dinner. “The cottagers don’t tend to spend too much time here in the winter. I mean, a few of the National League guys come up here to go sledding, but other than that, the glitzy and glamorous crowd show up in May.”

  “Sledding?” Visions of old-school toboggans ran through my mind.

  “Snowmobiles,” Chloe said. “They’re like jet skis, but on the snow.”

  I knew what they were, but had never heard them referred to as sleds. “Got it.” I shot Chloe a smile. “So, who is here in the winter then?” Banjos started playing in my head.

  “Locals, Otters, that’s pretty much it.”

  My google searches of Laketown had turned up images of palatial cottages with shaker-inspired design, gourmet restaurants, roaring river rock fireplaces, and plenty of mimosas bubbling in the foreground with even sparklier lakes behind them. Cookie-cutter subdivision homes, boarded-up storefronts, and snowbanks the size of houses weren’t on the first page.

  “Oh.” I hoped the disappointment wasn’t visible on my face and quickly tried to change the subject and pointed at the moving boxes. “When did you move in?”

  Dean rubbed his chin. “It’s been a couple of weeks.”

  “Try a month, Dad.”

  “A month?”

  I couldn’t tell if Dean was oblivious or embarrassed. The fact that my boxes had sat untouched for the weekend was weighing on me. I couldn’t imagine living out of them for a month. This time Dean changed the subject. “How was your first day?”

  “Long.” Getting stuck in the driveway felt like it had happened in another lifetime, not this morning. “Good,” I added quickly, not wanting to come across like I was complaining.

  “Welcome to winter in Laketown,” Dean said. “It takes a while to get used to it. Doesn’t it, Chloe?”

  Chloe nodded. “We’re from San Francisco.”

  “What brought you here?”

  Chloe and Dean looked at each other and an uncomfortable silence fell over the table. Dean cleared his throat and set his napkin on his plate. He pushed his plate forward and finished his glass of wine. “Hockey. Hockey brought us here.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Chloe was fighting to hold back her tears. A strange feeling washed over me; all I wanted to do was hug her. Chloe pushed back from the table and rushed out of the kitchen.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. I knew that I had said something wrong.

  “It’s alright. She’s a little sensitive right now.” Dean started to clear the plates and I stood to help him but he gestured for me to sit down. “No, enjoy your wine. I’ll just throw these in the dishwasher.”

  The doorbell rang and Chloe rushed into the kitchen. “Olive is here.”

  Her cheeks were a little puffy and there was a hint of red around her eyes, but the smile had returned to her face.

  “Your skates are by the door. Andy sharpened them up nicely.” Dean said over the clatter of plates as he loaded them into the dishwasher.

  “Bye, Dad. Bye. Um…”

  “Amber,” I said gently.

  “Amber.” She started to leave and then turned back. “It was nice to meet you.”

  I had made her cry and basically suggested we barbecue Flipper, so the kindness in her voice made me want to cry.

  “It was nice to meet you too Chloe.” I waved at her but she had already bounded out of the kitchen.

  Pitch blackness had descended what seemed like hours ago, but a quick check of my watch told me it was only six o’clock. “Where is she going?” I asked.

  “Figure skating.” Dean grabbed the bottle of wine and filled up both of the glasses. Olive’s parents drive her on Mondays. She’ll be there until nine.”

  “On a school night?” Even though I didn’t have kids, it seemed late for such a young kid.

  Dean sighed. “I know, but she loves it. It keeps her mind off of… everything.” His voice petered out.

  There was an elephant in the room. Well, there were actually two of them. Mine and his, although I had the feeling that his was much bigger. His hand was resting on the table, only inches from mine. I wanted to crawl my fingertips towards his and squeeze some comfort into him, but instead, I drummed mine on the table. “I have an idea.”

  The furrows on his brow disappeared. “Yeah?” He looked up.

  “Let me help you unpack some of these boxes. At least the kitchen stuff.” I didn’t give him the chance to object and slipped from the seat of my chair to my knees near the closest box to me. Unfolding the flaps, I discovered a set of gorgeous art deco crystal wine glasses. I pulled one out and flicked it with my nail. “These are gorgeous.” I held it up to the light to examine the pattern.

  “They were my grandmother’s.” Dean took it from my hand. “My ex hated them.”

  “Oh.” I closed the lid on the box. The elephant in the room was referred to as an ‘ex’.

  “No.” Dean rested his hand on my bare shoulder, the heat from his palm radiated through to my pinky toes. “Let’s unpack them and get rid of these things.” He took the animal print stemmed glass from my hand and transferred my wine to the expensive crystal. “I always hated these ugly things.”

  I smiled and he caught it.

  “They’re terrible, aren’t they?” he asked.

  “Hideous.” I practically shouted like a zealous preacher – raising my hands to the ceiling.

  Dean poured another glass of wine into the new and improved stemware and when we clinked our glasses together the unmistakable chime of expensive crystal rang out through the kitchen.

  “As a matter of fact.” Dean looked around. “I hate all of this stuff. That’s probably the reason I haven’t unpacked it.”

  Folding back the top of another box revealed tiger-striped dishes, but these were hot pink. I assumed that they were his ex’s dishes, and from the little I knew of the woman I could ascertain the following: she had no taste – in dishes. In men, however, I glanced over at the specimen in front of me. I had never met someone like Dean. He oozed masculinity as if he would step between me and a charging panther, but underneath the bearded jawline, I could see a softness. Like he was the kind of guy who would snuggle up in bed with his daughter to read her stories about unicorns, and probably do goofy voices for all of the characters. A surge ran through me, my hormones urging me to move closer to this man and lift that Otter’s t-shirt and examine his abs with my lips… and maybe slip my fingers into the waistband of his jeans. It wouldn’t take much to pop open the top button on those 501s and take my lips south of the waistband.

  “Amber?”

  I blinked hard. “Are you alright?”

  My face flushed red and I hoped to god that the man wasn’t also a psychic.

  “Yes.” I studied the tile pattern on the floor and then closed the box of disco safari dishware. “If you hate these dishes, you should put them away, or give them away.”

  “Or smash them?”

  I looked to Dean and couldn’t help but smile as I saw the glint in his eye. “Or smash them.”

  His laugh was deep but tinged with remorse. “As much as I’d like to smash every single one of these dishes and have the biggest bonfire of all time with this furniture,” he gestured to the chrome and glass table. “I…” he paused. “You know, Amber, there’s got to be a family in town that could use this stuff. I never thought about it before, but I’m just going to give it away.”

  My heart melted.

  He laughed again, this time, the sparkle was back in his eye. “And who am I kidding, this stuff could survive a nuclear blast.” He knocked on the glossy table leg with his knuckle. He reached over and closed the cardboard lid on the box that I was holding onto. His fingers brushed mine and I tried to keep the audible hitch in my throat silent. “Clean slate.” He patted the top of the box.