by Hart, Emma
I finished up cleaning the bowls and headed back inside. I drained the water down the sink and tossed the wet rag into the basin after it.
My phone buzzed on the counter, and I picked it up in one hand and my coffee in the other.
REAGAN: What time are you getting to the fair? I have to deliver flowers to my parents.
ME: 11ish.
REAGAN: Wanna grab coffee before the booth opens?
ME: Are you paying?
REAGAN: No.
ME: Fine. Is Ava around?
REAGAN: She had another fight with Butler last night. I’ll text her.
ME: Meet you at your parents’ stall?
REAGAN: Yep. See you then.
***
By the time I’d showered and gotten ready for the day, my coffee was cold. Instead of making it again, I walked the short distance from my house to the fairground. After showing my volunteer pass to the guy at the entrance, I headed in the direction of The Wright Bouquet’s stall.
It wasn’t too hard to find. The Wrights had had the same stall since I could remember, and even if I didn’t know, there was no missing the giant tulip that stretched several feet above all the other stalls.
It smelled freaking gorgeous. The closer I got, the richer the smell was. I loved it, and visiting the flower stores had always been something I’d looked forward to when I was younger. I’d even worked in the flagship store here in Creek Falls when I was a teenager and wanted extra money on the weekend.
Working in a florist was harder than you’d think. I actually had a scar on my thumb from a particularly bitchy little thorn on a rose stem.
A vibrant sprig of lavender was one of the first plants I saw as I reached the front. Gently, I put out my hand and pulled it toward me to smell it.
“Morning, Halley!”
I jumped at the sound of Robert Wright’s voice. “You scared the life out of me!”
He chuckled, rubbing his hands on the stained apron that covered his front. “Sorry, darlin’. I thought you knew I was here.”
“I guessed, but I was too busy smelling your lavender.” I grinned and stepped away before the scent was embedded in my skin for the next week. “Is Reagan here yet?”
“She was here with Ava about ten minutes ago. She told me to ask you to head over to the food stalls. Something about coffee being on her and if you brought whiskey, it’s a bonus.”
I grimaced. “Oh, dear. It’s like that.”
He winked. “Are you going to stop by and get something? In fact—you don’t have to buy. You’re stuck with my son for the week. The flowers are on me.”
Laughing, I took a step back. “Well, if I knew I would get free flowers for babysitting his ass, I might have considered doing it a long time ago.”
Anton laughed and waved me goodbye as I turned in the direction of the food stalls. While most of the attractions were spread out evenly, a huge section of the fair was for food only. It was where the Ferris’ barbecue stall was, but there was every other kind of food you could imagine.
My stomach rumbled. I knew for a fact that Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence had a stall for their crepes this year, and I would kill for one with strawberries and Nutella.
Maybe when I was done being a good friend.
“I’m done with him!” Ava said the second she saw me. She looked exhausted, and her red-rimmed eyes gave away that she’d been crying already today. Her glasses only enhanced the tired air that hummed around her. “That’s it! No more! I mean it!”
Reagan met my eyes. “She’s been telling me that for twenty minutes.”
“Because it’s true!” Ava rammed her fist against the table.
“Mind the coffee!” Reagan grabbed my cup and handed it to me. “Here. Before The BFG over here spills it everywhere.”
“It’s nice to know you care about me so much.”
I sighed and sat down. “Ava, we love you, and that’s why we’re going to be honest with you. You’ve been here a thousand times before. You and Butler don’t work. You keep going back to him only to boomerang back to here. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”
Reagan raised her eyebrows. “See? She agrees with me. Butler is a hack.”
“I didn’t say he was a hack,” I said quickly. “But I do agree that the relationship has run its course. You do nothing but fight.”
“I know.” Ava sniffed. “I don’t even think I love him, you know? I just… he’s comfortable. I guess I always figured that we’d work it out and it would be okay, but you’re right. It’s done, isn’t it? It’s never going to work.”
I nodded slowly, reaching over and squeezing her arm.
“No, it’s not,” Reagan said firmly. “Besides, we all know that, like Halley is hopelessly in love with my brother, you’re hopelessly in love with Ethan.”
I choked on my coffee. “I am not hopelessly in love with your brother!”
“I am not hopelessly in love with Ethan!” Ava said only a beat after I did. “I cannot stand him!”
“Can I have him then?”
“You want to date my brother’s best friend?” Ava’s dark eyebrows shot up. “Go ahead. Then you’ll see how much of an insufferable asshole he is.”
Reagan leaned forward. “See, this is how I know y’all love them. You both hate them. You’re hiding your feelings behind hatred because it’s easier than admitting you want to ride them like motorized bulls.”
“The only part of your brother I want to ride is my foot into his balls.” I put my coffee down on the table and pushed my hair behind my ear. “Being attracted to someone does not mean you’re in love with them.”
Except I was. Kinda. A little. And I was pretty sure Ava was actually in love with Ethan, but that was none of my business unless she was willing to admit it.
And, unlike Reagan, I wouldn’t press her on it.
It was like freakin’ good cop, bad cop over here.
“Whatever you say,” Reagan said. “How’s it going, listening to him kissing other women for hours?”
“We’re not here to talk about me. We’re comforting Ava,” I said quickly.
Ava barked a short laugh. “Come on, you can make me feel better. How bad is it?”
I groaned, slumping forward. “It’s not even the kissing. It’s the who. Lindsay Rinna was front and freakin’ center, ready to pucker her ass-lips up to kiss him.”
Both of their faces scrunched up. We’d all been on the receiving end of Lindsay’s wrath in high school.
“He’s not interested in her,” Reagan said. “Nobody with a brain cell is.”
Even Ava shook her head. “There’s no way. She’s too high maintenance for him. Preston is too chill to deal with her dramas.”
“I don’t care.” I plucked a leaf off the table and dropped it onto the ground.
“You care.”
“Only because it’s Lindsay.”
“Some things don’t change.” Reagan sighed and propped her chin on her hands. “What are y’all doing today?”
“Kissing people,” I muttered.
Ava slid me a look. “I have nothing to do. I had plans with Butler, but…” She shrugged. “Leo isn’t in town until tomorrow. His plane got delayed out of Detroit—something to do with thunderstorms or some crap.”
Reagan looked at me. “How long are you at the booth today?”
I smacked my lips together. “Twelve ‘til three, then four-thirty ‘til seven, then seven-thirty ‘til nine-thirty.”
Ava shuddered.
“That’s a lot of kissing. Or listening to kissing.” Reagan waggled her eyebrows.
I blinked at her, then finished my coffee. “I don’t have to listen to this. I’m going to find someone who won’t piss me off before I have to deal with other people.”
“Good luck!” Reagan called as I got up and threw my cup in the nearest trash can. “We’ll come kiss you later!”
I flipped her the bird over my shoulder and left them both laughing their asses off at me.
&
nbsp; I was charging their asses ten dollars a kiss.
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
PRESTON
Pretzels Are For Winners
I slipped into the tent from the side, avoiding the line that was already forming outside the front of the booth. There was still thirty minutes until the booth opened, but I already had a fucking fanbase out there waiting.
Once again, I was asking myself why the hell I’d agreed to this.
I should have guessed that I would be in trouble. That there’d be a long line of admirers outside, waiting to kiss me and seduce me into marrying them.
The joke was on them. I wasn’t interested in marriage—at least not to the kind of girls who wanted to marry me.
I knew this town. I was born and raised here, and that meant I was well acquainted with every single nook and cranny, every alley and shortcut, and every dirty little secret.
The biggest dirty little secret wasn’t a secret at all—it was that money talked. And money was hot. And people wanted to marry money.
That meant that I was a sitting duck for everyone in my generation who wasn’t already married or engaged.
I was young, I was handsome, and I came from a family that had money—hard-earned money.
It also meant I never got a break.
Reagan didn’t get shit like this. Neither did Halley. Given that Reagan was my sister and Halley’s dad was the mayor and had money in his own right, they should get the same treatment that I did.
But they didn’t.
That was probably the fact they weren’t anywhere near as charming as I was. They were more liable to eating you alive and spitting you back out in a near-dead state than anything else.
Now, I loved my sister, but if she weren’t my sister, I wouldn’t date her. She was hard work.
As for Halley…
I didn’t want to talk about Halley. The last thing I needed was to get a boner before I had to sit on that stupid fucking stool and kiss a bunch of people. There’d been more than enough ‘accidental’ swipes of a hand across my lap last night.
The only hand I wanted near my dick was my own.
And maybe Halley’s.
But that was a story for another day—or another shower.
Shit.
I rubbed my hands down my face and looked around the tent. It was still eerily calm in here, despite the people who were outside and making a ton of noise.
It was a weird place to be.
I sat on the stool on my side of the booth. It smelled awful in here—like dust and history and, well, mothballs. How the hell did Halley handle this every year?
Shit, I knew.
It was because she was a good person. An inherently good person who wanted the best for everyone else, and she’d put herself through hell and sitting in a musky tent if it meant giving other people a better life.
Maybe I had her on a pedestal. Maybe I held Halley Dawson to a really high standard, and she wasn’t actually that perfect, but I doubted it.
She’d never been anything other than a sickeningly nice person for as long as I’d known her.
Which, if you asked my dick, was far too long.
I blew out a long breath and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I clasped my hands in front of me and looked around. It was almost a quarter to twelve now, and Halley still wasn’t here.
It wasn’t like her at all.
This might have been my first year in the booth, but if there was one thing I knew about Halley, it was that this booth was her baby. She was never ever late.
She was too early, in fact. A bit like a teenage boy losing his virginity.
It was a little scary that she wasn’t here.
Mostly because I was thinking about her far too much for someone who wasn’t directly in front of me.
I also had absolutely no business thinking about her. She was my sister’s best friend, for the love of God. I needed the rest of me to get that damn memo, though, because it was seriously lagging right now.
My attraction to the feisty blonde librarian was a moot point. She and I could not and would not ever be together. We were like chalk and cheese, and I was ninety percent sure she didn’t even like me as a person.
There was no chance of kissing her, let alone anything else.
I was okay with that. Even though Halley was just about the only person I would entertain dating right now—
Wait, shit, no, that wasn’t right.
Someone like her.
Or maybe Halley herself, if it meant I got to pull back the layers of her life and find out what was wrong with her.
Something had to be wrong with her.
I fucking stood by that. Nobody, ever, could be as perfect as she appeared to be.
The curtain swung open, and Halley stormed in. Her hair flew around her head, framing it like a lion’s mane, and she shoved the curtain shut behind her with a shout of, “Shut your mouth, Lindsay!”
My lips tugged to one side. Ah. My friend Lindsay was outside again. I wasn’t surprised about that—when she’d come in here to kiss me last night, she’d whispered something in my ear that would have made a room full of gigolos blush.
Unfortunately for her, it hadn’t even made my cock twitch.
“What are you looking at?” Halley snapped, turning to me with a flick that made her hair go even wilder. “Do you want a picture?”
“Whoa, where did that come from?” I held up my hands. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”
“No, but you’re looking at me as though you’ve just seen a bunch of nudes and are figuring out how to exploit me.”
“That’s an interestingly accurate situation. Have you been there before?”
“Preston, fuck off.”
I got up and jumped off the stage. “Hey, what’s up?” I moved the ropes to the side and walked over to her.
It was against my better judgment, I won’t lie. Approaching an angry Halley was probably close to waving a red flag at an angry bull.
She huffed, turning, and hit me with a dark look. Her bright blue eyes were red hot, flaring with the annoyance she wasn’t bothering to hide at all. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Any woman who says that she’s fine is not fine.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Any woman who repeats that she’s fine is definitely not fine.”
“Any man who keeps harping on at a woman who’s said she’s fine is cruising for a bruising!”
“Feisty.” I grinned and put my hands in my pockets.
“Don’t, Preston.” She dropped her purse on the ground and fluffed her hands through her hair. “I have to switch on and pretend like I want to be here today when I don’t, all right? Just leave it.”
I looked at her for a moment as she pulled a mirror out of her purse, flipped it open, and checked her reflection. After a moment of looking, she pulled a tube of lipstick from her purse, too, and uncapped it.
She applied it expertly, painting her full lips in a scarlet red color that matched both her glasses and earrings today.
Don’t ask me how I knew that. I didn’t want to fucking address it right now.
Halley pressed her lips together before she put a folded up tissue between them, blotted her lipstick on it, then checked herself again in the mirror.
I would never understand women.
She stood up and tucked the tissue into her ass pocket. “Let’s do this. Joe! Let ‘em in!”
I paused as she flicked her hair over her shoulder and jumped up onto the stage, taking her stool and plastering a smile on her face like she hadn’t just been snapping at me.
The curtains swished, and I stepped up onto my side of the stage and sat on the stool. There was barely any room between us, but that didn’t stop me from leaning back and saying, “I know you’re not fine.”
“Shut up, Preston.”
“We’re going to talk about this.”
“No, we aren’t!”
“We are
.”
“We aren’t!”
She got the last word because the curtains opened fully and allowed in the people who’d been waiting outside. My line was a mix of young women and older ones, from twenty-somethings to at least seventy. Halley’s was more focused on the teens and the older guys, but there were a few men in there close to our age.
I ignored how my stomach flipped with annoyance.
She could kiss anyone she wanted, just like I could.
I had no claim to her.
That didn’t mean to say I had to like it.
The only way I’d get through this week would be if I actually got to kiss her so I’d stop thinking about it for ten minutes.
“Hey, Halley.” I leaned back closer to the curtain.
“What?” she hissed back.
“Wanna make a bet?”
“Not with you.”
“Why? You afraid you’ll lose?”
She snorted. “I don’t lose bets, Preston.”
“Then bet with me.”
“Ugh. Fine. What’s the deal?”
“I bet I’ll kiss more people than you today.”
“Done. How much?”
I smirked with a glance at my line. “Whoever loses has to line up on the other side of the booth and add another kiss to the winner’s tally.”
Silence.
“Halley?”
“Fine. You’re on. You’re going down, flower boy.”
I covered a laugh with a cough as Lindsay Rinna approached the stage for my first kiss of the day.
It didn’t matter if I did go down.
Either way, I’d kiss her by bedtime.
***
The soft, hot pretzels burned my hands through the thin napkins I’d been given to carry them. At five bucks apiece, you’d think they’d give you a paper plate at the very least.
Or two napkins.
I wasn’t fussy.
I shouldered my way into the tent. We’d finished the second session of the booth and were waiting for the third to start. I hadn’t eaten all day since my earlier break had been dedicated to helping my parents at their stall since Reagan had weaseled her way out of it this year.
I was starving. I was tired, I was hungry, and I needed a goddamn beer.
I also needed a Chapstick.
