Page 9 of Fake It Till You Make It

“Ah, can you say something else? This house is even bigger on the inside.” She paused, and then said, “I’m a little turned around.”

“Who’s that?” Tobias whispered. Noah shrugged.

Eli straightened. “We’re in the kitchen. Back and left.”

Laughter sounded cheery, but still distant, before she asked. “Your left or mine?”

With his long-legged stride Eli set off in the direction of their unknown visitor. “I’m coming.”

“No,” she snapped. “Don’t move. I’ll find you on my own.”

Eli stopped in his tracks, not by direction but inirritation. Who was this woman giving him instruction in his own house? “You hear this?” he accused Leah, pointing to the pink flyer as if it had conjured up a harbinger of doom. “She’s one of them.”

His mother snorted, pushing her chair back from the table. “This is a woman I want to meet.”

He snapped out of his paralysis, moving through the parlor his mother used as a reading room. Tobias and Noah fell in step.

In strode a woman, skin the color of autumn leaves, five feet, eight inches tall, curvy, and smiling—unnaturally, in his opinion—for seven thirty in the morning. There was lots of hair, swept to one side by some fancy celebrity-style headwrap, and tons of purple. Her flowy shirt, the pants, and her painted toenails, which peeped at Eli from girly sandals with silver studs, were all purple.

“Who are you?” Eli stared in open curiosity—and irritation. She slipped a pair of jumbo sunglasses off her face revealing large brown eyes beneath fanning dark lashes. He paused, maybe even stared, taking in the details. A beautiful woman with obsessive tendencies. This was a bad combination.

“Ah… good morning, I’m Amarie Walker,” she sputtered, then popped the county bulletin from under her arm. Half of his face from five years earlier stared back at him. The folded crease split his forehead into two sections like the separation between his former life and current day. Obviously, his momma’s tomfoolery had brought the crazies a-calling. Eli was just about to haul her to the door when she announced, “I’m here for the job.”

“Aw… really?” came Tobias’s cautious, but optimistic, reply.

“Gotta be new in town,” Noah said, more than a hint of interest in his timbre.

Eli shifted into business mode. “You didn’t schedule an interview.”

“Well, no, but I’m here now. Efficiency is a plus, right?”

“Wrong,” he said dryly. “Following proper procedure is.” Eyes wide, she looked past him to the rest of his family as if they might back up her statement.

“Huh… okay,” she responded with a tilt of her head, causing all those curls to brush her exposed brown shoulder.

“Okay?” he quizzed. “Anything else you care to add?”

Service had grown to a little over one thousand residents in his thirty-three years. Still considered a small town, the meadow between the Appalachian Mountains had doubled in size. Folks tended to spread the word about newcomers in the community. Eli didn’t know everybody, but he would’ve remembered her. This rogue candidate would inject an unexpected excitement into the daily routine.

Her skin looked soft and velvety like the suede coat he wrapped himself in during the winter months. In fact, all of Amarie Walker looked soft and warm. The more Eli studied her spiraled curls and cushy contours, the more he lost the flow of conversation, choosing to think on more intimate things he’d foregone.

“Well, I could step outside, and then call you, Mr.…” she paused, waiting.

Clearing his throat and his brain of soft shoulders, he grumbled, “Calvary, Eli. The veterinarian and owner of Calvary Vet.”

“Yes, of course you are.” She sighed, the smile tacked in place with superglue. “I could call you, Mr. Calvary, and schedule an appointment for… now?”

She’d made her point. It would be ridiculous of him to send her away, his first and only party interested in filling the position. He could flex for a qualified candidate.

“No need,” he said, in his take-charge voice. “Let’s see your resume.”

“Ugh, I—I don’t have one.”

“Not with you or not at all?” Oh boy, he was right to be suspicious. This woman with her disarming smile and sunny disposition hadn’t prepared for the interview at all. She probably would be late every morning and leave early every evening.

She blinked. “Is an answer required for employment?”

Against his better judgment, he’d thought to give her a chance. He should have known better.