The wardrobe door pitched open, light flooding in, stealing every last startled thought from his clearly malfunctioning brain save one:

She was as pretty as her voice.

And then, exactly as he knew it would, the name tripped instead of waltzed as it slipped nonsensically free.

“I-Indi Muir?”

Wait, the creeper in the closet knew her name?

And what in the world was he doing in there? Why hadn’t she heard the bell when he entered Bits & Pieces?

And how—how?—in the world was Indi ever going to tell her family about Bennington Foster’s graceless exit from her life? Another failed relationship. Another broken engagement. At least she hadn’t been the one to call it off this time. But did that make it better or worse?

Better, please let it be better. She’d wrecked so much the last time.

The man in front of her cleared his throat, and Indi’s focus snapped to attention once more as her grip tightened on the shoe she’d pulled off just before yanking on the wardrobe door. One dumb compliment from Ben a month ago about how much he liked her in heels and she’d felt obligated to wear them more often than she would’ve otherwise. But for once, those spiky extra three inches might come in handy—that is, if the stranger wedged into the antique wardrobe proved dangerous.

She huffed to blow a dislodged curl away from her forehead. “You looking for Narnia or something?”

The man lifted one hand and then stared at it as if he didn’t know what to do with it now that it was in the air, eventually settling for running it over the front of his rumpled white oxford. His navy blue tie hung loose, a sign he’d fidgeted with it one too many times.

“Narnia. Ha. That’s, uh, very . . . funny. I-I loved those books as a kid.”

“So did I. Especially the one where—” What was she doing? Her fiancé had just dumped her and a weirdo was hiding in the wardrobe she couldn’t manage to sell, and she was making small talk?

The man’s eyes were trained on her shoe. “Are you, um, going to hit me with that?”

“Maybe. If the situation warrants.” Or she could just throw it at him.

Gosh, why hadn’t she thought to do that to Bennington? She should’ve plucked off her shoe and chucked it at him the moment she’d realized where that backroom conversation was headed.

“I don’t think it will. Warrant it, I mean.”

“You don’t think it will? Or you know it won’t? You’re not a very confident criminal, are you?”

“I’m not a criminal at all.” He straightened and bumped his head on the top of the wardrobe, then winced.

Honestly, any other day and Indi might laugh at the peculiarity of this. But if she let a squeak of laughter out now, there was no guaranteeing it wouldn’t turn into a sob in the next moment. Dumped. Just like that. Before her family had even had a chance to meet her fiancé.