Page 61 of The One You Want

“Well I had to tell her, of course.” I rubbed my forehead. “She, uh, was prettyupset.”

“I would imagine,” he saiddrily.

“I offered to pay for it!” I argued. I had actually offered to pay way more than what the single vat of chocolate had been worth but Fran had merely patted my arm and told me not to worry about it—through tightly grittedteeth.

“So I’m guessing we can cross fudge artisan off the list of possible careers foryou?”

I snorted. “Yeah, I think that’s a reasonable assumption. Add it to the list.” The quickly growing list of all my failed jobattempts.

I had left the last Libbies meeting feeling so encouraged. Margaret had led us all through the results of our quizzes and then we broke up into groups to officially pick our PrideProjects.

When I shyly explained that I was hoping to find a career that I loved, so many of the women stepped up to help me out. Iris Jenkins, who was currently in the process of renovating an inn with her husband, offered to let me come hang out on the worksite to see if I might have a hidden talent for interiordesign.

Lilah Taylor invited me to spend a day at the bakery—I decided to put that one off for a while once I found out their day started at four thirty a.m. Libby insisted I come and work a shift in her shop. Cora said I should help out at the meadery she was opening with Owen. And Fran had, of course, offered to let me shadow her for a day. An offer I was sure she nowregretted.

My excitement from the meeting dissipated quickly over the past week. I’d been bored to tears at Libby’s shop. The meadery hadn’t gone much better—Cora put me in charge of running the tasting room and I got so nervous and tongue tied trying to explain the different varieties to tourists that I had sweated through my shirt andsweater.

Then Margaret invited me to come sit in on her classroom during story time and I was so startled when one of her kids hugged me that I knocked over the aquarium and nearly killed the classlizard.

I still contended that one wasn’t my fault. I was neither a kid person nor a hugger, and that little girl had some sticky substance on her grabby hands that grossed me rightout.

But there was no disputing the fact that a week of job attempts had not yielded any positiveresults.

“Don’t get discouraged,” Grant said, as if reading my mind through the phone line. “Something will spark yourinterest.”

“I sure hope so,” I muttered. My grandmother had already called me twice this week. Which remindedme…

“Hey, do you want to get dinnertonight?”

“Sure.” Grant sounded eager. “I was just thinking that I haven’t been to Rose’s yet. Everyone always says they have the best food on theisland.”

“They do,” I agreed. “But I was actually thinking we could go to Cora’s? It will be a lot more crowded, which means more people will see ustogether.”

There was a long pause on Grant’s end. “Um, yeah,” he finally said, his voice a lot flatter than it had been a minute ago. “That’s probably a goodidea.”

A wave of relief rushed through me. The last time my grandmother brought up Bradford, she’d gotten snappy when I reminded her of my ‘boyfriend.’

“If you’re so serious about this boy, why have none of my friends seen the two of you aroundtown?”

The whole point of fake dating Grant was to keep my grandmother off my back. We needed to get out in public where people could see us together—on an island like this, that news would get back to her in notime.

“I can meet you there at seven?” Isuggested.

“Sure.” Grant still sounded a little odd and I winced. Was he having second thoughts about this? “Or I could pick you up,” he said, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the return of his normal, easy-going tone. “Give me a chance to see my kittyfriends.”

I snorted. “You could always take them home with you,” I suggested. “They like you a hell of a lot more than meanyhow.”

“You wouldn’t really give away your cats?” He sounded scandalized and guilt knotted mystomach.

“They’re not even mine! I was just supposed to be fostering them while the shelter was too full.” And then I turned into a giant baby and stopped showing up to volunteer, too embarrassed to see either Robin or Dr. Miller. Leaving me stuck with the littlebeasts.

“I think you like those cats more than you let on,” Grant said, and I laughed until my sideshurt.

“Goodone.”

A few hours later, Grant and I pushed into the crowded dining room at Cora’s. Perfect—there were a ton of people there. Surely someone in this room knew my grandparents and would mention seeingme.

What I hadn’t given as much thought to were the people that might knowme. No sooner had Grant and I squeezed our way over to a booth did Libby, Iris, David, and Riley show up, interest written all over their faces as they looked between the two ofus.