by Piper Rayne
She looks at my grandma in the back. “I thought we were looking around the different towns?”
I look in the rearview mirror and find Grandma hitting Dori on the arm.
“Oh, I have to go. That’s Wyatt and my great-grandson.” Dori points out the window, but I don’t see who she could be talking about. “I completely forgot I said I’d watch him this morning.” She opens the door, and since the valet is still nearby, he helps her down. “Cade, you don’t mind if I steal your grandma, do you? I could really use her help. I can’t watch a toddler all by myself. He’ll have me tied to a chair or will be running out in the middle of traffic. You don’t want a child running into the middle of traffic on your conscience, do you?”
“Sorry, dear.” Grandma pats my shoulder. “But you two go. Cade knows all the places around here too.”
“I’ll definitely just do this another time.” Presley’s hand goes to the door handle.
“Nonsense.” Dori is suddenly at Presley’s door as though she’s strong enough to keep it shut if Presley tries anything.
I’m not a complete idiot. I know the stories of Dori involving herself in her grandchildren’s love lives. And now it looks as though they think they’re going to involve themselves in mine. That’s a no-go.
“Let her go if she wants.” I spread my arm out along the seat of my truck, my other hand on the steering wheel. “It’s just that she can’t control herself around me.” I laugh.
Presley doesn’t. “That’s not it. Surely you have better things to do rather than take me around town.”
Both grandmas peer through the window, waiting to make sure we pull out of here.
“Actually, I have about an hour,” I say. “Can you handle an hour in my presence without jumping my bones?”
She guffaws, and I want to clap myself on the back for earning that reaction. “Of course I can.”
“Good, then you two go.” Grandma waves. “Bye now.”
They both go inside the resort, probably to have a long leisurely brunch.
“You can just take me to the store, and I’ll figure it out after that.” She’s facing forward, her purse in her lap with her hands holding it to her body.
“I can drive you around. It’s not a problem.”
She turns toward me. “Did you plan this? Have your grandma set this up?”
“Why would I do that?”
“So you can be a little birdy in my ear about how I’m not going to be successful and I should just let you and your brother bail me out.”
I laugh. “Man, that’s a conniving thought. One thing you’ll figure out fast if you move here is that my grandma noses her way into everyone’s business. Dori’s her sidekick. Those two have already gotten her grandchildren married off. They must think we make a good couple.”
She scoffs. “They don’t even know me.”
“I’m not saying they’re right. I’m just stating a fact.”
She turns and narrows her eyes. “Can we please just go?”
“Nothing would make me happier.” I pull out of Glacier Point and turn right toward Lake Starlight’s downtown.
“Where are you going? Isn’t Sunrise Bay that way?” She points in the opposite direction.
“I’m showing you around here first.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a nice guy, even if you don’t believe me.”
She huffs, but her attitude dies down a bit. “Well, thank you. I’ll gladly pay you for gas.”
I shake my head. “That’s okay, I’ll just take it off what we pay you for the building.”
Her head whips my way and a strand of her blonde hair sticks to her lip gloss. She’s quick to pull it away.
“I’m kidding,” I say.
The tension leaves her body, but damn, she’s strung so tight right now. When we reach a stoplight, I pick up my phone and text Jed that I won’t be at the meeting this afternoon, but I fail to mention the reason why.
Cade drives slowly down Main Street in Lake Starlight. I try to concentrate on the diner, the tattoo shop, the bakery. Anything but the way his long fingers flex on the steering wheel. The way he taps out a song with only four fingers on his muscular thighs that flex under his jeans. The fact that there’s a scent in his truck. It’s not a specific cologne or leftovers rotting in the back. It’s a fresh scent that I’m scared might be Cade’s signature smell. Scared because I like it a little too much and I hope it permeates my own clothes.
“So is this like recon work?” he asks, passing the restaurant he was going to take me to the other night. The maroon awnings with Terra and Mare in gold makes it look like a fancy restaurant. I wonder how different things would be between us right now had he not canceled.
“I just want to make sure I don’t venture into something that has stiff competition.”
“Makes sense.” He continues inching along the street. It must be driving the people behind us crazy. After Lake Starlight, he follows a sign to Greywall. “There are three towns pretty close together around here. So if whatever you want to do isn’t in one of those, maybe you’ve found your niche. I think it’s smart to do inventory of what’s around, but what do you want to do?”
Do I really want to sit in a car and have Cade try to figure me out? It sounds dangerous.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“What do you enjoy doing?” he asks.
I think back to my life in Connecticut. After college, I had a slew of jobs in offices that I loathed. I didn’t enjoy sitting at a desk for an entire day—or worse, being in meetings where I swear people droned on because they enjoyed hearing their own voices more than they had something useful to say. I can’t count how many times I sat in those meetings thinking this should have been an email.
“Okay, let’s start with the basics,” he says. “What do you do in your free time?”
“Um…”
“Any hobbies?”
I shake my head.
“All right, I guess I’ll make it even easier. If you have a night free, do you go out or stay in?”
“Stay in probably,” I say.
“Do you cook or get takeout?”
“Get takeout.”
“So you can’t cook?” Cade glances over.
“Kind of. Simple stuff, but I wouldn’t enjoy spending my entire night cooking and washing dishes.”
“So a cooking school is out of the question.” He smiles as if he’s saying, “See? I can fix your problems.”
I raise both eyebrows.
He grins. “Television show or movie?”
“Neither,” I say. “I’d read.”
“There you go. On the couch or in the bathtub?” he asks.
“How is that going to help you figure out what would make me happy?”
“It’s not. I was just hoping you said bathtub so I could get a visual.”
I playfully push his arm and he exaggerates the hit, going up against the glass of his window. I roll my eyes. “Nice.”
“Sounds like maybe books is a possibility. There’s one bookstore in Greywall. I’ll drive you by it. We can go in if you want.”
Books? I let that thought resonate for a moment. I do enjoy reading. Always have. And I did want to take English in college before I let myself be railroaded into getting a business degree. A bookstore might be nice. But so many people read off of e-readers nowadays. Would I stand a chance of being successful?
“There are libraries for books,” I say out loud when I didn’t mean to.
“True, but bookstores are popular even with libraries around. Have been for decades.”
He pulls into downtown Greywall and I immediately see where the town got its name. Whereas the mountains in Sunrise Bay are in the distance and at the far side of the water, here the town is set at the base of them and it serves to act as a giant gray wall rising up behind the town. It makes me feel little. I lean forward to look in wonder out of the windshield so I can see the top.
He parks along the curb
just outside the bookstore, which just says “Books” on the window. Cade turns off the ignition and climbs out of his truck. I quickly follow him, and he’s a gentleman, opening the store door for me. Walking in, I’m very aware that he’s behind me and could be checking out my ass. A blush warms my cheeks as I politely say hello to the man behind the counter.
As I head down an aisle of shelves, Cade detours straight to the man and says, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
Cade leans on the counter as though they’re friends. “Has the whole e-book business hurt you?”
The man stands from his chair. If he has a chair, does that mean he’s not nearly as busy as he should be? “I sell a lot of travel books on the area. Lots of nonfiction. Greywall’s library isn’t great, so for our residents who don’t want to venture down to Anchorage, this store is a good one to come to. All in all, I would say no.”
“Great. Thanks.” Cade shakes the guy’s hand and joins me in the second aisle.
The guy wasn’t joking about nonfiction. His fiction shelves are sparse and his children’s section nonexistent. For a moment, the Shop Around the Corner from the movie You’ve Got Mail comes to mind. What a great way to fill your day. Story time and helping kids learn to love to read.
“You know, I think I met you about ten years ago,” Cade says from behind me.
I stop and circle around. “Excuse me?”
I haven’t forgotten the one other time I was in Sunrise Bay. My parents never knew I came until my dad received my credit card bill. I was nineteen and Grandma Beatrice had just passed away. My mom said it wasn’t my place to come pay my respects, that the family didn’t know me. And that’s when I showed up and found out about Clara.
He nods. “At the cemetery. I think you were visiting your grandmother’s grave.”
“That was you?” It all comes back to me. He was younger, more boy than man, and he mistakenly thought I was Clara.
He nods. “It was me. So you knew about everything for a long time?”
Just thinking about that moment in my life makes me wish I would’ve listened to my mom. No one knew I was here, and when I saw my biological parents hugging Clara, the pain was immense.
“Yeah. Ready?” I walk out of the aisle, past the man. “Thank you so much. Great store.”
He says bye and I walk out onto the sidewalk, staring at a cupcake shop. I’m not gonna lie, I wouldn’t mind buying a dozen, sitting down on the park bench, and stuffing my face until the pain just goes away.
Cade comes out and unlocks the truck. He tries to open the door for me, but as soon as he hits the key fob, I grab the handle.
Before I shut the door, I turn to face him. “Can you just take me back to Sunrise Bay?”
He nods and rounds the back of the truck. Just as I was starting to warm up to him, he had to go and bring up something painful.
Cade drops me off at the sewing store without saying much else. During the drive to Sunrise Bay, I came to the conclusion that a bookstore would be a great way to earn a living. But I’d need to cash in my 401k from my job in order to afford to renovate. My dad would never give me a loan. Even if he entertained it, Mom would say hell no, hoping it would drive me back to Connecticut.
So after I get some large garbage bags from Handyman Haven and get rid of some of the stuff I’m positive Clara won’t want, I stop the anxiety brewing inside me, deciding it’s time to call home and tell my parents my plan. The last thing I want is my mom showing up in Sunrise Bay. I dial and put the phone on speaker.
My mom answers immediately, as she usually does. “Presley, how are things?”
“Good.”
“When are you coming home? I was just talking to—”
“Mom.”
She’s silent. She knows. The woman knows me better than I know myself. She never could get pregnant, but her motherly instincts never fail her. “You’re staying.”
See? I told you. I inhale a deep breath, waiting for the inevitable lecture. “I have to.”
“You don’t have to,” she says coldly.
I know she’s hurt, and she’s scared. But I hope she can see this as something I need to do. “I want to. I want to start over and find my place in the world, carve out a life for myself.”
“Then go to Boston, go to New York. Start over closer to home. You don’t have to start over in their town.”
My heart breaks for my mom. “This is where the opportunity is. Clara gave me her half, although I’d really like to pay her back. I’m going to cash in my 401k so that I can renovate the space. I want to open a bookstore and gear it toward fiction. Have a kids section and a teen section. Get kids wanting to read early.”
I plead my best case. Mom was the driving force behind me becoming a reader. She pushed me when my literacy was lower than average. She’s the one who spurred the love of the written word inside me.
“You always loved your books. Are you sure that’s not what you’re doing now, sweetie?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, rolling a spool of thread back and forth under my fingers on the table.
“I think you enjoy living in those books, imagining yourself in those situations. You’d gush for hours about them. Are you sure you staying there and starting over isn’t you trying to write a new book for yourself?”
Even though the silence is deafening, I think over what she’s saying. “I’m not a Knight here. I’m just Presley, the love child Denise Harrison gave up for adoption.”
“Exactly! That’s like a scarlet letter in a small town, Pres.”
“I can handle it. I’ve handled worse.”
She’s quiet, but I hear her spoon stirring in her teacup. I glance at my phone to see the time, and yeah, this is her tea time every day. Memories of when she would pour a cup and pick up a book while I read beside her on the couch come rushing back.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m going to be okay here.” I truly do believe that. The conversation with Clara went pretty well. I could do without Ethel manipulating me to spend a day with her grandson. Although he’s the one who brought up the idea of me having a bookstore.
I wish I could shake whatever this is I feel for him.
“At least let me come up and help you get set up,” she says.
“I can’t let you do that. I want to do it on my own.”
If my mom comes, she’ll bulldoze me, and this store will end up being what she wants. The need to strike out on my own is like a match that’s been lit inside me. That little flame is growing into a raging fire I can’t put out.
“At least let me come to the grand opening?”
I smile. “Of course.”
“And we’ll be sending you over half the money for Clara. You can pay us back.”
“Mom, no.” I never expected her to be this okay with my move.
“I know you, and you’ll give in to suggestions she gives you or do something to make her happy. If this is really going to be yours, it’s going to be yours. So just pay her and you can pay us back.”
“With interest?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says.
I know they might not pressure me to pay them back, but I’m going to pay every dime—eventually.
“Mom,” I say. She doesn’t say anything. I’m sure she’s still processing. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re my daughter. Your happiness is my happiness.”
I smile, knowing how fortunate I am to have her. Then guilt weighs on me because why do I feel the need to get to know the woman who gave me up?
“Now do what Knights do. Take that city by storm and show them they don’t scare you.”
I laugh. “I will.”
We hang up, and I lean back in the chair. Too far back apparently, because it tilts all the way and I fall to the floor. Even though I’m staring at the ceiling, I finally feel as though all the pieces are coming together.
A paper gets shoved into the slot of the door, so I stand, walk over, and pick it up. Another dose
of dread replaces my excitement.
Town meeting Thursday night.
On the agenda:
Parking meters by the bay.
Fourth of July fireworks.
Denise Harrison’s building.
Seven p.m.
Great. I can only assume the Greene brothers are responsible for this one. I’ll be sure to thank them.
Thursday night comes faster than I hoped. Mostly because there’s nothing I can do at the town meeting to stop Presley’s plans. Jed’s on my ass about voting no, but she’s got Clara in her back pocket so everyone will agree that a bookstore, which I heard she ultimately did decide to go with, is a great addition to the Sunrise Bay downtown area.
I walk into the town building on the other side of the square and the room is already packed, thanks to Nikki announcing to everyone what’s happening tonight. Usually it’s only the business owners within the square who care what kind of business comes in. Mostly they’re worried someone is going to sell sex toys or that wacky weed as George refers to it.
Most of the council members are sitting along the panel already, but there’s no sign of Presley, so I linger outside. I can’t even answer why. The woman hates me. She’s started cleaning out the shop and I tried to help her with a table she was struggling to get out the door. Her response was to tell me to stay on my side of the sidewalk.
Just as I second-guess my decision and am about to go in and find my seat, I spot Presley walking up the sidewalk with Clara next to her. Man, they sure have become chummy.
“Cade.” Clara walks by me.
“Clara.”
She smirks because I’m sure Clara is very aware of my feelings for Presley. It isn’t every day I show interest in a woman.
“Mr. Greene.” Presley never looks at me.
I clasp her elbow lightly to stop her from going inside. “Mr. Greene is my father.”
“Sorry to offend you. I really need to get in there.” She finally looks at me.
“There’s something I want you to know before you go in there.”
An expression of boredom lands on her face and she sighs. I’m half tempted to say fuck it and keep what I was going to say to myself rather than be honest.
