Hometown Hope: A Small Town Romance Anthology

by Zoe York

  “I should go. Thanks for dinner.”

  She followed him out to the door, grabbing his jacket off the side chair in the living room before he could. “Maybe we should have done this more often after…”

  “Might have made it too hard.” He said, not caring if his voice sounded rough and raw. He was raw.

  “Yeah,” she whispered.

  He pulled out his keys and lifted his hand in a silent goodbye, but she shocked him by reaching out and grabbing him. She squeezed his fingers, her eyes big and bright blue under a glossy sheen of unshed tears.

  “Don’t cry over me, Liv, I’m not worth it.”

  “You like to pretend you’re so tough.” She smiled, a delicate, shaky curl of her lips. “How about you don’t cry over me, okay?”

  He lifted their hands, still gripped together, and kissed her knuckles. “You’re totally worth my tears, baby.”

  She hesitated for a minute, indecision warring with something else in her eyes, then she pressed up on her tiptoes and covered his mouth with hers, a bittersweet goodbye. He wanted to haul her tight against him, but he’d done that twice already and it had only made things worse. So instead he cupped her face with his free hand and let the kiss linger. She parted her lips to take a hitching breath, and he thought long and hard about licking into her mouth with his tongue, stirring the passion he knew would never die between them.

  A part of him wanted to push her, to fight and force his way back into her heart, but that only served his own purposes. His own happiness.

  Letting Liv go was the only way to make her happy. Passion had never been enough to make up for his home town being a claustrophobic let down for her. He pulled back in regret and kissed her nose, then her forehead.

  “Night, Rafe,” she whispered, pressing two fingers to her lips.

  “Sleep tight, Liv.”

  Chapter 4

  SLEEP tight. What a crock of horse manure. Olivia had tossed and turned in her stupid eggplant-coloured bedroom that seemed to leak R-rated Rafe memories from every nook and cranny.

  Why on earth had she kissed him? He was going to walk out the door and out of her life. She’d managed to get through dinner—and a cuddle on the couch—without allowing the one thing she needed not to happen. And then she was the agent that made it happen.

  As far as kisses went, it hadn’t been anything naughty. Which only made it worse. Because as long as Rafe was the aggressor, she could push him back and pretend he was going too far. But now she had no cover to pretend she wasn’t disappointed.

  Disappointed. Holy crap. She’d wanted Rafe to kiss her, wanted him to touch and grope and grind against her. She was all kinds of messed in the head. She needed to focus on all that hadn’t worked in their marriage, all the reasons they got divorced. Attraction and desire had never been lacking. It was more surprising that it had taken this long for one of them to try something.

  Her alarm beeped at her again and she ground the heels of her palms against her gritty eyelids. Time for work. Monday mornings were busy but had a predictable routine to them. The semi-retired cottagers often didn’t head back to the city until after breakfast, to avoid the glut of cars on Highway 9 across Sunday afternoon and evening. As it had been one of the nicer weekends of the early fall—not too hot, not too cold, gorgeous colours in the trees—that population would have been up en masse.

  And then there were the handful of people who worked in town who would want the four dollar special before their nine o’clock start. Shannon the bank teller and Lindsay the town clerk, sisters from another mister, for example. They’d snicker at that joke, or one just like it, and Olivia would laugh along for real. She liked the twins, as she called them, and Barry the insurance salesman and Kurt the…wood art guy. Rafe called it folksy shit that cottagers paid far too much for, but she kind of liked it. She liked everything about Pine Harbour.

  It took her a long time to stop feeling like an outsider. Maybe because it was cottage country, and for half the year, more than half the population was so-called “city folk”, but no one had ever made her feel like an intruder. That was all in her head.

  Well, hers and her mother-in-law’s. Ex-mother-in-law.

  And now she was leaving, and maybe the only person who would be happy about that would be Anne Minelli.

  She washed her face, grateful that it wasn’t later in the year and dawn had in fact broken. It wouldn’t be long before she was making the short drive over to Mac’s in pitch black, which was just cruel. She was so not a morning person. Maybe she should have looked into being a bank teller or a town clerk. Except Pine Harbour only needed one of each, and Shannon and Lindsay seemed quite happy in their roles.

  She arrived at work thirty seconds before her quarter to seven start time.

  “Cutting it close, Olivia,” Frank teased.

  “Had to make myself beautiful for you, boss.” She gestured at her black fitted t-shirt and dark blue jeans. Pretty much her standard uniform that took all of ten seconds to put on. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her face free of makeup other than a swipe of lip balm.

  “It’s a good thing Rafe likes you just the way you are.”

  “You do know we’re divorced, right?”

  He raised his eyebrows and snorted. “Do you know that?”

  “Don’t you have hash browns to make or something?” She’d deflect that conversation forever, even with Frank, who’d unexpectedly assumed a father figure role in her life. A grunting, unemotional father figure, maybe, but he was all she had.

  The door chimed just as she hit brew on the first pot of coffee for the day. Two men walked in, one in a slick, pretty suit that screamed city, the other in tight black jeans, studded belt, Doc Martens and a long-sleeved Social Distortion t-shirt. They looked about the same age, in their thirties, but other than that…yin and yang. And totally out of place in Mac’s. Olivia was instantly curious.

  “Morning. Coffee’s just brewing. Can I get you menus?” she asked as they grabbed seats at the counter.

  Suit nodded. She handed over the laminated sheets and gave them a minute before wandering back. “Can I get you started with a drink? Coffee or tea?”

  Social D yawned. “Coffee for me, please. And keep refilling my cup.”

  Suit wanted the same. Olivia pulled two clean mugs from the tray under the counter. As she poured, she asked, “So what brings you guys to Pine Harbour?”

  “Location scouting,” Suit said at the same time as Social D said, “Cottage hunting.”

  “Seriously?” Suit looked at his companion and laughed. “Like anyone would believe we’re buying a cottage together.”

  Olivia suppressed a lip twitch and lifted her hands. “We get all sorts of strange bedfellows in here. But I’m betting the location scouting is the truth, huh? That sounds fun.”

  Suit rolled his eyes. “Not fun if you leave Toronto at two in the morning because someone wanted to tuck his kids in last night, and be back for bedtime tonight.”

  She couldn’t hold back her reaction to that revelation. “Awww! How many kids?”

  Social D smiled for the first time since coming in and handed over his phone. “Three boys.”

  “Gorgeous.” Not for the first time, she had a tiny pang of longing for the pile of love in the photo. Three mini-rockstar clones and a pretty brunette smiled up at her. She blinked away her personal thoughts—no point dwelling on what could have been. “Do you need another minute?”

  They didn’t. She put up their orders, then greeted a few new customers, did a round with the coffee pot, and by the time she had a minute to stand behind the counter again, Suit had his business card out and was tapping it on the counter.

  “Listen, you’re probably as good a place as any to start. We’re going to spend the morning driving around, but there’s no way we’re going to see everything we need to find in one day.” He handed over the card. Greg DeCecco, Locations Manager, Dancelight Productions. “This is Trey Rogers, he’s a freelance cinemat
ographer working on this project.”

  Social D held out his hand. “And you are…?”

  “Olivia Minelli.” She shook his proffered hand. “This is pretty exciting, I gotta tell you. We get the occasional celebrity cottaging in the area, but a movie shoot would be neat.”

  Greg nodded. “Here’s the deal. We’re here because my assistant did a pre-scouting mission and thinks Pine Harbour would be a perfect stand-in for a town in a project we’re working on. But given how far we are from the city—“ Ha. Spoken like a true Torontonian. There were two or three other cities that they would have driven through to get to the peninsula. “—We’d like to hire someone local to be a location assistant. It’s not a lot of money, more of an on-call type of gig, but might be good for someone just out of college or someone who wants a part-time job.”

  Her heart started hammering in her chest. Me, pick me. She had a job. One that kept her pretty busy. But the lure of a bit of extra money that she could sock away. “Uhm, how long would you need someone to help out?”

  “Six months, longer if they want to come on as a production assistant during filming, but our department will relocate here once filming starts, so that’s optional. Filming will start in April, if all goes well. We have a list of key sites that need to be sourced in one central area, then a list of secondary sites that could be filmed elsewhere—”

  “But that’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves,” Trey interjected. “If you know anyone who might be interested…”

  Could she stick around for another six months? A nervous flutter started in her gut. “Well…maybe me.” She offered what she hoped was a winning smile. “Depending on the terms, of course. I work here thirty-five hours a week, but I do split shifts sometimes, and finish early other days. I might have time for whatever you need.”

  Behind her, Frank cleared his throat. “Hey, traitor. Orders up.”

  “Settle down, mister.” She set their breakfast specials in front of them. “Anyway, it sounds interesting.” She needed something interesting in her life. Something that wasn’t Rafe, and wasn’t racing out of town without a plan.

  “Can you email me a resume?” Greg lifted a reassuring hand at what must have looked like apprehension on her face. “Honestly, we don’t need many qualifications other than knows Pine Harbour better than us. But HR likes us to cross our t’s and dot our i’s.”

  “Yeah, I can do that.” Behind her, Frank dinged the bell.

  Greg and Trey left with a wave right in the midst of the first breakfast crush, right before Deena, the second waitress, showed up.

  At ten, once they hit the mid-morning lull, Frank waved her away when she asked for an hour. She dashed home and googled both men and the company. Reassured they weren’t scam artists, she sent off her resume to Greg’s email address, including a couple of questions about compensation and a job description.

  When she returned to the diner for lunch service, her city visitors were waiting. Greg waved his phone at her. “I thought it would be easier to answer your questions in person. And eat whatever Frank has on special because it’s sure to be delicious.” He winked at her as the man in question made a pleased harrumphing noise from the kitchen.

  “I think that bought us ten minutes,” she whispered and pointed them to a booth. Them coming back was a good sign. It had to be.

  “So here’s the deal…” Trey outlined what they needed—someone who could take video and pictures on demand—fill in the details of the high-level sketch from the two trips up north by their staff—and do some legwork in advance of their monthly visits.

  “What should I say to property owners?” Olivia didn’t want to misrepresent a film studio. But the thought of playing a small part in the making of a movie made her want to squeal with glee. This was something fun and exciting that didn’t involve her heart or her ex-husband.

  “Nothing, hopefully. We’ll take care of negotiating contracts with property owners. We just want you to document what we can’t see from our visits and internet research. As we get closer to filming, the role might expand a bit—that would be up to you. But basically, we need someone on-call for occasional get up and go find something out for us work. Probably once or twice a week for a few hours at a time, but it might be more than that.”

  “How much more?” She didn’t want to burn out, but the thought of earning a few hundred bucks more a month was really appealing.

  “Well, we’d pay a stipend of a thousand dollars a month to start, but if you ended up doing a lot we could increase that.” She frowned, trying to do the math in her head, but every way she turned it that seemed like a lot of money for what they described. Misreading her silence, Trey glanced sideways at Greg. “We can go as high as twelve hundred dollars to start, but if that’s not enough, then maybe we should find a teenager—“

  “No, that’s…fine.” More than fine. Freedom-level fine. Super fine. She swallowed hard. “You swear to me this isn’t anything illegal? My ex-husband’s a cop.”

  Greg laughed. “The only thing illegal is how fast I’m going to drive back to city so this guy can tuck his kids in tonight.”

  Fair enough. “What do we need to do to make this official?”

  * * *

  — —

  * * *

  It turned out that in the twenty-first century, it was pretty easy to get hired by a company five hours away. Within twenty-four hours, Olivia had a brand new iPhone and MacBook Air delivered by courier, property of Dancelight Productions, and an upgraded internet connection at home that allowed her to connect via VPN to the Dancelight servers. She only had access to an empty Pine Harbour Project folder, which didn’t tell her anything about this mysterious movie that she was going to help find filming sites for, but still…it was exciting.

  She had a sheaf of papers to sign and send back, so she printed them before her shift and at a mid-afternoon lull, poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in an empty booth to fill them out on her break. In an uncharacteristically social move, Frank slid into the seat opposite. “Pretty exciting stuff.”

  “I’m not going to let it interfere with work.” A niggle of worry had eaten away at her all day, that Frank would be upset. She was excited about this project in a way that she just wasn’t about serving coffee at the diner.

  He snorted. “I’m not worried about that, Olivia. You’ve been a great employee.”

  She searched his face for a reason not to let her enthusiasm bubble over—she didn’t find one. “A movie might be shot right here in Pine Harbour, can you imagine?”

  “Should be a nice steady stream of income for a few months, no doubt.” He kicked her foot gently under the table. “And it’ll be nice to keep you around a little longer.”

  A single wet, fat tear rolled down her cheek, startling both of them. Frank turned red and Olivia busied herself with the confidentiality agreement in front of her. “Oops, it says here I can’t tell anyone about the movie.”

  They both laughed. There was no way that it would stay a secret for long. Frank reached across the table and roughly patted her on the arm. “I never thought you’d work for me forever, Olivia. You think these movie folks are going to take you away from me before you hightail it out of town anyway?”

  She flushed at the bald honesty. Her guilt was definitely misplaced. “No. They don’t want to piss you off,” she teased, knowing that Greg had phoned Frank earlier and made the initial inquiry about using the diner for some outdoor secondary shooting.

  “I kind of like the idea of Mac’s being memorialized like that,” he chuffed. “And it’s good to see you so excited about something that isn’t Rafe Minelli, that no-good deadbeat.”

  She laughed again and tipped her head back against the booth’s cushion. “You love Rafe.”

  “Sure, everyone loves Rafe. And you. But the two of you are like…” He scratched his chin.

  She sighed. “I know, oil and water.”

  “Nah, that’s not it. You mix well at first. Too well, as
evidenced by him batting his pretty brown eyes at you and you falling into his arms last week.” He lifted his hand at her gaping mouth. “I’m never going to say this again, Olivia, so let me have my piece now. You’re more like two explosive chemicals—individually dangerous, but deadly in combination. And entirely unstable.”

  “You just saw us at our worst.” When her marriage had started to fall apart, she’d quit working at Rafe’s mother’s cafe and started working for Frank instead. A heavy ache started in her chest. “We weren’t always like that.”

  “I’ve been through two divorces, Olivia. Neither of them was quite like yours. Not by a long shot. And then the cold war you and Rafe have been playing at for the last two years? That’s something else that’s hard to wrap one’s head around, I gotta tell you.”

  Olivia just sat there, stunned. She’d never heard Frank string together so many words at once. And they didn’t feel good. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I can see you falling for him all over again. And if that’s what’s meant to be, there’s probably no stopping it, but you gotta know it’s not going to be smooth sailing.”

  She shook her head. “No. I took this second job to build up a little nest egg so I can leave. Rafe and me…we need more distance than Pine Harbour allows.” In more ways than one, given how much her boss seemed to know about her divorce.

  “We’ll see.” He thumped on the table. “Finish your paperback, young lady, then back to work.”

  Chapter 5

  Six years earlier

  “BABY, I’m heading out,” Rafe quietly whispered in her ear, squeezing her hip in one last reluctant goodbye touch.

  “Mmm-kay,” she half-said, half-groaned. It was way too early for conversation. She’d woken up and made him breakfast his first few day shifts, but when he admitted that he preferred just a cup of coffee, she happily let him hit the brew button while she snuggled deep into the blankets and dreamed of what they’d do when he got back from work. “I love you.”