Page 16 of Catch and Release

“Excuse me, I wasn’t done talking,” Grams pouted as he walked away.

“I was.”

“Just answer my question.”

Shawn turned around with the enthusiasm of a teenager being forced to tell a parent how school was. He glared at her.

“Don’t you think she’s pretty?”

Pretty didn’t even begin to cover it. But he wasn’t going to tell Grams that.

“I have eyes, don’t I?”

5

Willa was ready to cry into her large iced vanilla latte with whipped cream.

Overconfident idiot, she told herself.

She sat down at a corner table in the coffee shop she’d stumbled upon, folded her arms on the table, and dropped her head as an upbeat Taylor Swift song played over the speakers. It took everything in her not to audibly groan in frustration, but she was in public, and this wasn’t San Francisco.

“Rough day?” a soft southern drawl had Willa lifting her head up.

A woman with curly, raven-colored hair that starkly contrasted her pale face gave her a concerned smile.

“You have no idea.” Something about this stranger’s presence was comforting, so Willa asked, “What about you?”

“Oh, same old, same old for me. It’s my break at work right now, and I like to come here sometimes for a quick coffee.”

Willa winced. “Sorry to bother you with my self-pity.”

“Don’t be,” she smiled, sipping her coffee. “Why are you having a bad day? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Willa sighed as she leaned back into her seat, defeat coursing through her. “I need a job. Just moved here from San Francisco, where I taught yoga at one of the best studios in the country. So I thought getting a job would be easy. But none of the gyms want me, and the closest yoga studio to my house isn’t hiring right now. And have I mentioned I’ve barely driven a car in the past decade? I never needed one in SF, and now I feel like a teenager again, trying to re-learn how to operate a vehicle. You’d think it’d be like riding a bike and I’d pick it back up no problem, but no. I drove past, like, four stop signs. Accidentally, of course. But still. I’m an unemployed menace to society.”

“Here,” The raven-haired woman extended a plastic-wrapped chocolate chip cookie to her. “You need this more than I do.”

“Oh my god, yes.” Willa grabbed the cookie, opened it up, and took a bite. “I guess I should’ve been more ladylike and pretended to turn down your cookie offer, but I didn’t have it in me.”

Her companion laughed. “Don’t worry about it.”

Willa grinned. “I feel like I should know your name, unless you want me to call you the Cookie Fairy.”

A small laugh trinkled from her. “I’m Layla.”

“I’m Willa.” She took another bite of the cookie. “So, Layla, do you know of anywhere hiring yoga instructors?”

“Hmm.” Layla pinched her lips together in thought. Her eyes widened, lips quirking up for a moment, before she frowned again.

“What?” Willa couldn’t help herself.

“Well,” Layla bit her lip. “I’m the hotel manager at The Beachside Inn.”

Willa furrowed her eyebrows together in consideration. Then she got it. “Oh. Oh.”

“We’re a boutique hotel. We only offer the best of the best, but for activities, we contract with a lot of external vendors. Not a lot of in-house options.” Layla’s hands twiddled nervously around her coffee cup. “But I’ve been pushing our General Manager to try to branch out and incorporate a few in-house, luxury activities for a while now. Like yoga.”

“What are you thinking?” Willa asked breathlessly.

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