“Did you get a look at anyone?”
“Just the guys from the moving place,” Ashley said. “There’s a black BMW parked in the street, though.”
Jen attempted to look but couldn’t see anything.
“The truck is blocking your view,” Ashley told her. “You know who would drive a BMW, though? I’ll give you a hint. His name starts with an R.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy you a BMW if Ryan Gosling is our new neighbor,” Jen proposed sarcastically.
Ashley was lost in another fantasy. “Me and Ryan… Cruisin’ in my BMW…”
Jen glanced down at the ground shyly after one of the twenty-something-year-old hunks smiled in their direction.
“I think that one was for you,” Ashley teased her mother. “Do you want me to introduce you?”
Jen rolled her eyes.
“That’s all!” one of the movers shouted. Minutes later, several men piled into the moving truck, while three others loaded themselves into a car parked behind the black BMV in the street.
“Come on,” Jen spoke up. “Let’s go say hi.”
The two girls walked over the grass and onto their neighbor’s driveway, before journeying the pathway that led to the front door. Ashley turned and caught her mom’s attention just before Jen reached out to ring the doorbell.
“Should we have brought something? Like, a housewarming gift?”
“Crap,” Jen groaned. “Um…maybe…ah…it’s too late now. I’ll make cookies or something tomorrow.”
The door opened suddenly before either girl could ring the doorbell, revealing a man with a particularly curious expression on his handsome face.
“Hi,” he greeted them.
“Hello,” Ashley smiled. “We came over to say hi.”
Ashley’s welcoming didn’t help to solve their new neighbor’s confusion.
“We-we live ne-next door,” Jen struggled to expound on what they were up to. “The white house.”
She couldn’t believe that she was nervous. She didn’t feel anxiety from meeting their neighbor either. The truth was that his appearance was the culprit of why she had butterflies fluttering around in her stomach.
The mystery man’s brown hair was styled in a falling quiff cut, his face was chiseled and defined with the start of a five o’clock shadow, and his blue eyes were striking. She felt her Ashley reach out and elbow her lightly, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what she referred to. Their new neighbor had a striking resemblance to a forty-something-year-old Pierce Brosnan.
“Hey, I’m Ryan,” he said.
Ashley turned to her mother and smiled. Jen shot her a quick grin back before looking straight-ahead at the remarkably handsome man once again. Ryan certainly qualified as eye candy, alright.
“I’m Jen,” she introduced herself, finally gaining her composure. “And this is my daughter, Ashley. We just wanted to come over and say hi. You probably have a lot of work to do so we don’t want to be a bother.”
He stepped aside to reveal dozens of large boxes behind him in a mostly empty living room. “It’s nice to meet you two. Fortunately, I have some time off over the next few days, but I still have a lot to take care of.”
“What do you do for work? If you don’t mind me asking,” Jen asked before trying to correct herself from sounding nosy.
“I’m a financial adviser,” he answered, his deep voice ripping through the cool late-October air with ease. He promptly turned his attention to Ashley. “But the real question is, what do you do for work?”
“Me?” Ashley questioned, surprised.
He nodded.
“I sometimes help out at my friend’s mom’s dog grooming business on the weekends, but I don’t have a lot of time with school, and soccer, and stuff.”
Ryan’s eyes remained on the eighteen-year-old brunette. “Do you want to make some money?”
Ashley was never one to pass up an opportunity to get paid. Chances to make spending money at her age were few and far between. “Um…sure. How?”
He pointed at the stacks of boxes to his rear. “I could use some help unpacking.”
“Totally,” Ashley smiled before looking at Jen. “Is that okay?”
“Sure, I don’t see why not,” Jen answered, wondering why she was so quick to agree. She didn’t know the first thing about this man! “Do you want her to help you now?”
Ryan nodded again.
“Let’s get started!” Ashley announced cheerfully as she squeezed past their new neighbor and let herself into his house.
Five Hours Later.
Jen sprawled along the sofa with her Kindle as she compulsively checked her phone for the hundredth time. She texted Ashley every thirty minutes to make sure that everything was okay, but she started to wonder if she’d been too trusting. She didn’t know this Ryan guy. She didn’t even know his last name! And while Ashley immediately responded to all of her texts, five hours had passed since she’d last seen her daughter, so perhaps it was time to check on the two of them?
The sound of the front door opening put an end to her worries.
“Hey, Mom!” Ashley greeted her mother with a big smile as she strolled into the living room. “Guess how much I made?”
“How much?” asked Jen.
The young girl held up two crisp one hundred dollar bills. “Two hundred dollars!”
“Two hundred dollars!” Jen shouted, stunned. “Are you serious? Jeez, I should’ve offered to help.”
Ashley took a seat in the recliner next to the sofa. “We seriously need to talk about our new neighbor.”