Page 83 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

As soon as she was gone, Andrew turned to me, that evil smile back on his face. “What?” I asked.

“Can you imagine the Libbies when they see him in those tights?”

I snorted and slapped a hand over my mouth. “They’re going to rush the stage.”

He pointed towards his boxes. “Okay, really, though. Where do you want to woodland creatures?”

“Stage left,” I told him. “Actually, I’ll come with you. May as well get them set up now.”

I followed him out from Libby’s store, which we were using as kind of a staging area for the festival, into the bright sunlight of the square. A group of girls ran past, laughing, one of them lugging a box that appeared to be full of menus from Cora’s.

“You were only supposed to take one!” I called after them.

“This way no one else can get one!” the girl with the box shouted back, and the rest of them burst into giggles.

“Well, that will be nice for Cora,” Andrew muttered.

“Where’s your spirit?” I asked him. “You should be out there leading a team!”

The television producers had arranged a road rally for the town to participate in today. Which meant that half of my neighbors were currently running around in teams trying to find items on their lists while the camera crew followed.

“What about you?” Andrew asked. “I’m shocked you’re not playing. It’s a game for which there will be a winner, Riley. That’s like crack for you.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little busy here,” I told him, gesturing at the square. In addition to the rally, today was the last day of the Lilac Festival. Which meant that I had about a million things to do. Not least of which was make sure the stage was all set up for the skit later.

“And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little busy helping you. For which you haven’t been at all thankful.”

I made a scathing noise in the back of my throat. “I’ve only said thank you a dozen times today, Andrew. I also bought you lunch. And saved you some cookies from Iris’s booth.”

He sighed. “Yeah, but you haven’t said thank you for bringing these boxes over.”

“You’re a ridiculous human, you know that?”

Secretly, I was relieved that Andrew was teasing me. It meant that he was acting normally. After our weird fight over Chase, I was afraid he would be grouchy. But he showed up to work the next day talking about the latest Tigers game and at lunch that day had bugged me to share my leftovers from Rose’s. Same old Andrew.

We reached the stage and Andrew set down the boxes. “So what kind of woodland creatures are we talking here?” he asked, opening one of the flaps. He let out a little shout and pushed the box closed. “Holy hell,” he said, shaking his hand as if whatever in the box had burned him.

“What?” I asked, pulling the box opened. I pulled out the offending object—a furry little stuffed chipmunk. Okay, so it had seen better days. Most of the fur had been rubbed off and the head appeared to have been left in the sun for too long. It looked a little—melted.

“This is Curtis,” I told him. “Curtis the Chipmunk. He’s been with us for twenty years.”

“Remind me on Monday to add a new line in the budget to replace all this shit,” he muttered, pulling out an equally ragged-looking raccoon.

“Andrew Powell, what kind of language is that to use in front of a lady?” Rose’s voice boomed behind us.

“She’s not a lady, Mimi,” he said. “She’s Riley.”

“Very funny.” I turned to Rose. “How’s it going?”

Instead of answering, she gathered me up in a close hug, and I breathed in her familiar scent of coffee and cinnamon. Though she had ceded most of the day-to-day operations of her cafe to Iris, she would always smell like that to me.

“Thank you, dear,” she murmured. “How thoughtful of you.”

“It was my pleasure, Rose,” I said, hugging her back. When she released me, Andrew was watching us with raised eyebrows.

“She gets a hug and I don’t even get a hello?”

“Riley sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers this morning,” Rose said. “And a lovely card about my Frank.”