Page 17 of Not Exactly a Small-Town Romance

She looks up. “Should I create a good runaway story? Brides are the most popular.”

“Do you really want to start a lifelong commitment with a lie?”

She frowns. “Okay, fine.”

“Next.”

“Get caught doing something embarrassing.”

“That will be no problem for you,” I tell her.

Her leg shoots to the side to knock my foot off her ottoman. “Hush.”

“Okay, what are the rest?”

“Get the wrong luggage or food order.”

“That’s an easy one to pull off.”

“Right?” She’s got that happy gleam going. “Then bumping together in elevators.” She makes a note on her list.

“Might be fewer of those in small towns.”

“Oh, right. Hmmm.” She frowns and crosses that one out. “Intervening in a confrontation.”

We saw one of those. “That seems risky.”

“I better be careful who I do that with.”

I elbow her. “I thought you used to move hay bales with pitchforks.”

“Point taken. And the last one is reaching for the same item in the store.”

“That’s a good one,” I say. “Easy to force, with the bonus that it establishes that you like the same things.”

She tilts sideways to lay her head on my shoulder. “See, this is what I love about you. You get me. You’re on my side.”

“Team Kelsey all the way.”

She feels good there, even if we’re talking about all the ways she’ll meet someone else, surrounded by the clothes she’ll wear to impress him.

This is good. It’s what I wanted for her when I took the fortune teller aside. She only needed a little shove.

“I should pull a card before I go,” she says, jumping up to search her bookshelf.

“Pull a card?”

“Tarot card. The things that tell me what I already know, remember?”

Oh, that. “Sure.”

She brings a small box to the table and tugs off the lid. Inside is a stack of cards, larger than playing cards, and each with an illustration in luminous color.

She shuffles the deck in her hand. “I’m going to do a single pull for this one. A message from the universe.”

This is overly woo-woo for me, so I sit back against the cushions to watch.

She closes her eyes, shuffling through the cards until she suddenly stops, sets the deck on the table, and cuts it in half.

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