Page 37 of Our Now and Forever

Not that he doubted Dupuis would be more than happy with his performance at the end of the trial, but this left Caleb an opening to walk away knowing he was honest from the beginning. Mostly.

“Well,” Wally said, “you already have the owner’s approval, so now it’s a simple matter of paperwork.”

He’d met the owner? Caleb shuffled through his morning and cringed. Piper Griffin owned the paper? “I didn’t realize when I met her that she was the owner of the place.”

Exiting his chair, the editor motioned for Caleb to precede him into the hall. “Hattie’s family started this paper back in 1927. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”

Hattie? The eccentric old lady with the cat paintings and wild clothes owned a newspaper?

“Not knowing why you were here explains the jeans,” Wally continued as they strolled down the hall toward the front office Piper had occupied. “You won’t need a suit and tie, but khakis and a polo shirt is sort of the uniform for the sales team. Though team is a bit of an exaggeration. Gerald and Piper handle all the selling, and with Gerald retiring at the end of the year, you can see why we’re in a pinch to fill the spot.”

Caleb filed the issue of working on a team with Piper to focus on the bigger problem. The paper needed a permanent replacement for this Gerald person. There was nothing permanent about Caleb and Ardent Springs. “About the trial period—”

“No worries,” Wally said, stepping into the office across from the building entrance. “We’ll give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings. Eleanor,” he said, turning to a woman behind the desk, drawing Caleb’s attention to the stranger in the room, “Mr. McGraw here needs to fill out an application and a new hire package. He’ll be working with Gerald for the next couple weeks to learn how things run around here.”

“Bless your heart,” the stranger said, flashing a sympathetic smile as she glanced over the cat-eye glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. “You’re a daring soul.”

Not the “welcome to the company” he was expecting.

“Let’s not scare him off on the first day.” Wally slid his hands into his pockets, which emphasized his protruding middle. “Gerald Nichols has been with the Ardent Advocate since 1960. There isn’t a person in this town he doesn’t know. He either went to school with them, coached them in Little League, or attended their baptism as an honorary grandparent. Since selling is all about relationships, that makes him the best around.”

“He’s also the crankiest SOB this side of the Mississippi,” Eleanor said. “And that nicotine gum isn’t doing squat to soften his disposition.”

Rolling his eyes, Wally sighed. “Gerald’s a longtime smoker. His wife, Dolly, finally had enough and said it was her or the cigarettes, so he’s trying to quit. It’s been a transition for all of us.”

If Caleb wanted to spend his days with a hateful old man, he’d go to work for his father. “Are you sure—”

“Gerald is a great guy,” Wally said, cutting him off again. “Everybody loves him. You’ll be fine.” Moving faster than he had since Caleb met him, the editor shuffled out of the room. “Eleanor, you can take it from here.”

The blonde stuck a pencil in her hair bun as she rolled to a file cabinet behind her and withdrew a long manila folder. “You will be fine,” she said. “Really. Have you ever worked in sales before? You can’t be but twenty-five or so. You fresh out of college? Though if you are, I don’t know what you’re doing in this little town of ours. What brought you to Ardent Springs, sugar?”

Caleb didn’t know which question to answer first, so he took them in order. “No, I’ve never worked in sales, and I’ll be twenty-nine this month. Not fresh out of college.” He ignored the final question.

“Oh,” Eleanor said, her moment of supportive enthusiasm wavering. Her voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned his way. “Not that I condone fibbing, but in this case, I highly suggest you not tell Gerald that. He’ll chew you up and spit you out if you do. Use that pretty face of yours to charm the customers and he won’t be any the wiser.”

This was not how Caleb imagined his day would go when he’d parked in front of 121 Second Avenue North. Pride alone kept him from walking out the door without looking back. He didn’t need some old codger making his life miserable, but he’d taken the job now. Quitting before he’d gone on his first sales call would be the cowardly thing to do. And Caleb was no coward.

As Eleanor showed him to an empty desk in the back corner of the office, which was really two offices combined, a deep voice echoed from somewhere down the hall.

“Who washed my goddamn coffee cup?”

Handing him a pen, Eleanor said, “And that’s another thing. Don’t ever wash Gerald’s coffee cup. He doesn’t like that.”

Great, Caleb thought. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

By noon Snow had scheduled a consultation with an art dealer out of Nashville, who sounded skeptical about the authenticity of her painting, but she’d agreed to travel to Ardent Springs to see this miracle find for herself. She’d also answered two inquiries about the handsome man who’d accompanied her to the auction the day before.

Social media had nothing on small-town gossip lines. Busybodies had been passing along rumors and conjecture far and wide long before the term going viral was even a concept. Snow usually observed the speed with which news spread in her adopted town with rapt fascination, until the news involved her personal life.

Now this small-town quirk didn’t seem so quaint.

Nitzi Merchant had been the first to ask, when she’d stopped in to put her new bits of lace for sale in her booth. The doilies were priced at more than they were worth, but Snow knew full well that Nitzi always started high before making drastic price cuts, which led the customers to feel as if they were getting a deal. The practice was as old as time, and Nitzi knew how to make it work in her favor.

To Snow’s surprise, the second inquiry had come from Priscilla Winkle. The first lady of Ardent Springs didn’t have much time for Snow after she’d befriended Lorelei Pratchett, against whom the Winkles had waged some kind of personal vendetta. Priscilla’s daughter, Becky, was best described as Lorelei’s arch-nemesis, but Snow had never liked the snarky blonde with the bouffant hair.

When Mrs. Winkle had approached Snow near a stack of vintage suitcases she’d been straightening and asked whom she’d been with at the auction, the woman’s tone implied that said man might be new meat for the local marriage market, and therefore her daughter’s next matrimonial victim.

“He’s my fiancé,” Snow had informed her. “We’ve been in a long-distance relationship for a while and have decided to take things to the next level.”

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