More than Friends in the Middle of Main: A Nestled Hollow Romance, Book 3

by Easton, Meg

  Cole started humming and she smiled, knowing that he wouldn’t be humming if she hadn’t brought some music to his kitchen. The rhythm and energy she had felt before returned, and she started making three stuffed potatoes and knew that this time she would win, not them.

  “Brooke!”

  Her head jerked up at the sound of her name, and she looked through the pass-through to see who had called it out. Noemi stood at the bar directly in front of the window, panic on her face.

  “Your mom is here!”

  “Here?” Brooke asked. “In Nestled Hollow?”

  “Yes! She said she’s been texting you about meeting for dinner and you haven’t responded, but she knew that you were in town. She stopped into the store to look for you. Delbrina’s stalling her, but she’ll be over here any minute.”

  Brooke’s eyes shifted across the lobby to the door as her mom walked inside. She only glanced around for a moment before meeting Brooke’s eyes.

  Brooke turned around, her hand on the ties of her apron, hesitating.

  “Go,” Cole said. “I’ve got this just fine. Look—the lobby is clearing out, so the tour busses must be taking off soon. Don’t keep Rose waiting. There’s a table for you two, and don’t worry, I’ll make your mom something special.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “Thank you, Cole.”

  As she tore off her apron, brushed her hands down her shirt, and then ran to the sink, he said, “I’m pretty sure I’m the one needing to do the thanking.”

  She was about to say, “That’s what friends are for,” but the word “friends” suddenly felt strange. Not quite right. She washed her hands and her arms up to the elbows to get rid of the smell of cooking, but realized she was probably just replacing it with the smell of antiseptic soap.

  As she headed out toward the lobby, she glanced down at her phone. Seventeen missed texts and four missed phone calls. Oops.

  “Mom,” Brooke said as she met her mom in the lobby, arms outstretched. She gave her mom a quick hug, as usual making sure that she didn’t touch her mother’s hair so it wouldn’t get messed up. “This is an unexpected surprise.”

  “Well, I tried to make it less unexpected.”

  “I know.” Brooke held her phone up, evidence that she was now being responsible and had it with her.

  “I can seat you right over here,” Ryleigh said, and seated them in a booth, setting silverware rolled in a napkin in front of each of them.

  “No need for menus,” Brooke said, then, in answer to her mom’s questioning look, said, “Cole is going to make us something special.”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  Rose examined Brooke, or at least all that she could see from behind the table, and Brooke resisted the urge to look down to see how often her apron had failed her. She also resisted the urge to reach up and pull out the band holding her ponytail when her mom’s gaze landed there, but managed to keep her posture strong and confident.

  “What were you doing back in the kitchen? Delbrina wouldn’t say, but I got the impression that you had been here for a while.”

  Brooke smiled at Dex as he set a glass of water in front of each of them and announced that he would be their waiter for the evening. “Would you like anything to drink?”

  After more than two hours in the kitchen, Brooke was ready to drain her water cup and start on a second, but she just said, “Water is good for me,” and took a sip.

  “Club soda, please,” her mom said.

  As soon as Dex left, Brooke answered her mom’s question. “I was just helping out a friend.”

  “Right now.”

  It was more a statement than a question, but still Brooke nodded, then took a sip of her water.

  Her mom clasped her hands, resting them on the edge of the table, and let out a long slow breath. Rose McClellan, businesswoman extraordinaire, had shown up to this dinner. “What Van Zandt expects of you is a lot.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re an immensely talented girl, Brooke. But talent alone isn’t going to get you this. They want to know that you can run a business.”

  She also knew this. If they only cared about her designs, they could’ve checked out all of the thirty-six people that were originally in the running without any of them knowing they were being considered.

  “What’s the McClellan family motto?”

  Brooke smiled at her mom. “Are you really going to make me repeat it?”

  “Yes.” She smiled back at Brooke, and Rose McClellan, Brooke’s mom, broke through. “You’re thirty-two now. I don’t get to assert my motherly authority very often any more. Humor me.”

  “Decide what opportunities you want, then put yourself in their path and grab hold when one comes by.”

  Her mom nodded once, a satisfied look on her face. “Brooke, you decided that you wanted your designs at Van Zandt’s a long time ago. You put yourself in their path, and a huge opportunity has come by. You saw how much Van Zandt did for my cosmetics career—it would’ve taken me a couple of decades to launch my career as far as they took it in three short years. You need to grab hold with both hands.”

  Brooke opened her mouth to tell her mom about the progress she had made, but her mom held up a hand. “Now I know that friendships are important to you. I know this adorable town is important to you. But Brooke, there’s one important thing you need to remember: you can work on friendships at any time. You can only prepare for your Van Zandt presentation—a once in a lifetime opportunity—right now.”

  Chapter Nine

  After returning from a hardware store in Mountain Springs, Cole and Sam carried the paint supplies and buckets of paint into the empty room to the side of Back Porch Grill’s lobby.

  Nate was wiping the last of the sawdust off his creation and when he saw them, he turned and said, “Well, what do you think?”

  Sam raced forward and threw her arms out, attempting to wrap it in a hug.

  Cole laughed. “You’ve got the Sam Seal of Approval.” Then he walked around it, marveling at what Nate had created. It was octagonal in shape and looked like a castle tower.

  “Sam, come here. I want to demonstrate.” Nate opened a two-foot high door facing the front of the store. “Welcome to your lift to the top of the highest tower.”

  Sam, giddy with excitement, stepped into the little column recessed into the tower wall that was just her size.

  “There’s an electric motor in this thing. So you can wave to all of the dukes and duchesses, and when you’re ready, this is the switch right here next to you. Just push the up button.”

  Sam made a show of waving her best princess wave at them and then pushed the button. As the platform raised her up to the top of the tower, it slowly turned so by the time she was at the top of the six foot high structure, she was facing the opposite direction, which put her facing the correct way to slide down to the “courtyard,” just like the book showed. Sam squealed with delight and laughed as she slid down the slide.

  When she landed on the floor, she ran to Nate. “In my book, it said that all the people came together to make the party magical and you made the most magical thing of all. It’s even better than my imagination! And that’s impressive because Mrs. Alvarez says I have a really good imagination.”

  “This,” Cole said, shaking his head and motioning to it, unable to find the right words. “You did good work, Nate. This was much better than my imagination, too. If there’s ever any way I can repay you—”

  “Stop,” Nate said. “This is me repaying you for all the times you brought my crew warm food on cold days. Besides,” he put his hand on the side of the tower wall, “I’ve had more fun building this than I have anything in a long time. If I had kids, I’d build them things like this all the time.”

  After he and Sam thanked him several more times and said goodbye, Sam crouched down by the cans of paint, looking at each one. “When’s Brooke coming?”

  Cole pulled out his phone, but Brooke hadn’t responded to the tex
t he sent letting her know that they were back with the paint. He sent her a quick Are you still free to help us paint?

  Sam stood up. “Did she go out of town? Is she not coming?”

  The sadness in his daughter’s eyes made his chest hurt.

  “She’s in town, and don’t you worry—she’ll be here. She’s just running behind.” But he wasn’t sure. He remembered the hesitation in her voice when he’d asked her to come. “What do you say we get started?”

  He and Sam had watched YouTube videos the night before about painting techniques to make the walls look like stone, and he was excited to try it. He poured the medium gray paint into the tray and got them both rollers. He worked on painting the top half, and Sam rolled her paint on the bottom half.

  When they were about one-third of the way finished with the base coat, Sam said, “Do you think something bad happened to Brooke?”

  “I’m sure she’s okay,” Cole said. “Just busy.” For most of the time he’d known Brooke, he’d seen her as being flighty and unreliable. But somewhere along the way, he realized that he’d been wrong. She traveled more than anyone he’d ever known, but she was reliable. If she couldn’t make it, she would’ve called and canceled.

  Sam put her roller into the paint tray, loading it up with more paint. “Did she sound excited when you asked her to come? Because painting is pretty exciting. Did you tell her it was going to be exciting?”

  “He did,” Brooke said as she came into the room. “Sorry I’m late. I was working on your dress, and it was a really hard part where I needed eight hands and only had four.”

  “You had four hands?”

  “Mine and Noemi’s. Delbrina couldn’t stay late. Wow! This looks amazing!”

  When Sam finished showing the lift and the slide to Brooke and gave her a roller so she could help, too, Cole finally got a chance to talk with Brooke.

  “I haven’t seen you in a couple of days. What have you been up to?”

  “Putting together a presentation for work.”

  Cole stopped painting and faced her. “This whole time? Why didn’t you say anything? I would’ve brought you over some food. Who’s been feeding you?”

  Brooke laughed. “You are genuinely worried I would die of starvation, aren’t you? Well, this time, my mother is responsible for keeping me alive. She was worried I wouldn’t get the presentation done in time, so she had Elsmore Market bring me a stash of sandwiches, soups, veggie trays, and fruit trays to keep in my work fridge.”

  “Wow. That woman’s a slave driver.”

  Brooke rolled paint onto the next section. “Well, she didn’t call Treanor’s Outdoor Rentals to send over a cot to keep me from going home to sleep, so I’m calling it a win.”

  “Why does she want you to work so much?” Cole put down his roller and got out a paintbrush to get the top and bottom edges. “It’s not like you work for her.”

  “She just doesn’t want me to lose an opportunity I’ve been given.”

  “Is this to get your dresses into a boutique?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What’s my dress like?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t want to show you before it’s finished, but I really can’t wait to show you. It’s a dress fit for a princess. A princess walking down a runway.”

  Sam looked dreamily up toward the ceiling. “I would love to walk down a runway in a beautiful dress.” Then she looked at Brooke. “Have you ever had someone wearing one of your dresses walk down a runway?”

  “Yep. A few times. It’s fun.”

  He had known Brooke for nearly three years but hadn’t known that. If he had to guess, he’d say that was a big deal, but Brooke just kept painting like it was nothing.

  “Have you ever walked down a runway?”

  Brooke shook her head. “The designers don’t model their own clothes. Instead, there’s this spot where you can peek out from behind the curtains backstage, and no one ever notices, but then you can see everyone’s faces when they see the dresses you created.”

  “Like a spy.” Sam grinned and held out a thumbs-up. Brooke shifted her roller to the other hand and held out a thumbs-up, too, and Sam touched her thumb to Brooke’s.

  Sam would give a hug to a porcupine if it looked like it needed it or if it showed her a kindness. But thumb bumps she reserved for only a select few who had worked their way into, as Sam put it, her deepest heart.

  “Okay,” Samantha said, “it’s time for phase two.”

  Brooke met Cole’s eyes and they shared a smile.

  “Last night, me and my dad stayed up for a really long time watching YouTube videos on how to make this paint look like it’s stone.”

  Brooke raised an eyebrow at Cole, impressed, and he stood a little taller.

  “The secret to turning paint into stone is...” Sam dragged out the word, then brought out the objects behind her back with a flourish. “Sponges!” She handed one to Cole and one to Brooke, then picked up a third one and dipped one side into the lighter gray paint. “You have to make sure you don’t get too much paint on your sponge— the video said that was really important. And then you touch it so so so lightly on the darker paint and voila! Look at that!” She touched the sponge to a few more places around the first. “It really looks like stone, doesn’t it?”

  The sponging actually went fairly quickly, and truthfully, it was turning out much better than he feared it would. Once they were done, Cole poured some of the paint from the quart of darker gray into two paper cups, and Sam brandished two thin brushes.

  “Okay, here’s the plan. Daddy, I want you to start right here at this edge of the lift and paint the lines that will make it look like it’s big blocks of stone, instead of looking like it’s one giant rock. You go around that side. Brooke, you start on this edge of the lift, and go around this side. Go all the way to the top, and you can stop when you meet in the middle. Yardstick for you, and yardstick for you so you can paint the stones straight. One foot high by two feet wide, please.”

  Cole chuckled, shook his head, and wondered again what his little girl was going to be like as an adult.

  “I’m going to use this brush,” she held up one a little thicker, “and start painting vines growing up the tower wall in the lift, just like the picture in the book. Deal?”

  “Deal,” he and Brooke both said.

  As Sam took her cup of green paint into the column for the lift, he and Brooke started painting the lines of stone mortar on the outside of the tower. He couldn’t help glancing over at Brooke often—even wearing old jeans and one of his ancient flannel shirts that was a couple sizes too big for her, she was beautiful. Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail, enhancing her cheekbones and showing off the smear of paint she had on her temple.

  He decided that one of his favorite things about her was that the expression on her face, whether it was resting, concentrating, serious, confused, amused, or anything in between, was happy. Like happiness was such a part of who she was that it couldn’t help but come out.

  Before long, he and Brooke were far enough around their own sides of the tower that they couldn’t see each other and he could concentrate more on what he was doing. Sam was still hidden in her little cove, singing a song about Princess Samantha that she was making up as she went along. Eventually, though, he and Brooke rounded their corners enough that they could see each other. Or at least the parts of each other that wasn’t hidden by the slide that was between them.

  They each painted the upper part of the tower first, then the bottom half, and worked their way under the slide. Side by side, they knelt under the slide, painting in its shadows, Sam singing her song on the other side of the tower in her little cubby.

  “So,” Cole said, “That presentation you’re preparing. It’s a big deal, isn’t it?”

  Brooke hesitated a moment, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer, but then she nodded.

  “And you still have a lot to do.”

  Again she nodded. “Go
od guess.”

  “And yet you’re here.”

  She met his eyes, searching his face. “Because here’s important, too.”

  He searched her face, too, like it held all the answers to everything. To whether their friendship could also work out as a romantic relationship. If it would be what Sam needed. If it would be what he needed.

  Brooke reached out a hand, seeming nervous and tentative, and brushed her fingertips on what he was sure was a paint smudge on his cheek. He reached up and touched his hand over the top of hers, and she responded by pressing her palm against his cheek.

  He ran his fingertips down her hand, looking into those beautiful brown eyes of hers more deeply than he’d ever dared look before. In them, he saw kindness, grace, determination, and loyalty, and he wondered how he’d ever doubted whether they should be more than friends.

  Paintbrush still in hand, Brooke leaned toward him, and like an invisible string formed from years of friendship was pulling them together, Cole mirrored her action.

  As his eyes fluttered shut in the last moment before they closed the remaining distance, Samantha said, “Hey Brooke, want to go to the Take Flight Festival with me?”

  Brooke hit her head on the underneath of the slide as she hurried to turn and stand. “Sam. Hi. I, uh...what?”

  Cole banged his knee against the wet paint as he exited their way-too-visible hideout under the slide, only slightly more gracefully than Brooke did.

  Sam cocked her head to the side, confused. “Do you want to go to the Take Flight Festival?”

  “Sure,” Brooke said, still red-faced and flustered.

  “I don’t know, honey,” Cole said. “Brooke has a big project to finish. Isn’t Grandma taking you?” He looked to Brooke, to see if he could guess whether her answer was thought through and one she wouldn’t regret later, or if it had simply been an answer thrown out in an attempt to make the situation less awkward.