Page 124 of Driven Daddy

“We’re thrilled to have you guys.” She waved us over to the long tables. “We’re going to bring in some more tables from the basement and push a few of the shelves over for the day.” She motioned toward the shorter shelves full of magazines and craft books.

The long wooden tables looked as if they could easily hold fifty people. I held up a hand. “Wait, this should be more than enough for what we planned.” I glanced around. “More than enough. You could probably fit seventy-five people or more.”

Colette twisted her fingers. “About that.”

“Col…” Rita began.

“I know, I know.” Colette came forward with a folder. “I tried to keep it at fifty but then I kept getting people emailing me that they’d love to pay for the workshop.”

“We don’t want to get paid for this.” Rita set her book down. “The taxes and insurance would be insane.”

“I know. That’s why we’re going to donate it all.” Colette smiled widely. “We’re going to give half to Saving Hearts like the calendar and the other half to the library since you both are such a proponent for literacy.”

“Just how many people are coming, Colette?” Rita asked.

“It’s not so bad. I mean, fifty would be great, but there were really so many that wanted to come. I finally capped it at two hundred.”

“Two hundred!” Rita pulled out a chair and sat down—hard.

I hurried to her side and laid a hand on her shoulder. “That’s not exactly what we prepared for.”

“I know. But I have a semi-formed itinerary here for you.” She handed me the folder. “I’ve been talking to Rita about what she wanted to do, and of course, we included the notes you had, Penn. I think three separate workshops would be great. See,” she pointed to the middle of the sheet inside, “this would be your combined one about storyboarding, then in the morning, Rita could do hers about genre fiction, and then the afternoon would be yours about art and storytelling.”

The structure was a more organized version of what Rita and I had come up with in the last few weeks.

Darby picked up the thread from what Colette was talking about. “If it goes well, we’ll look into more workshops?—”

“One and done for me,” Rita interrupted.

Darby laughed. “It’s okay. I’ve been talking with Colette about what she wants to do with the expansion of her shop. We want to work together as well to get more authors to do small library workshops as well as signings. We think this ended up being a crazy, but amazing plan.”

Relief rolled through me. I didn’t mind doing this, but I had no future plans to be a teacher in any way.

“This is going to be great!” Colette went over to sit next to Rita. “You don’t have to get too in-depth. Just make it fun.”

“Oh, sure. I give fun vibes off to you?”

She laughed. “You were very badass at the signing. So, yeah.”

Rita stacked her arms over the book and put her head down. “I am not fun. I am a mess of a romance writer who is just trying to start over.”

I rubbed her back. “You’re not a mess, and you’ve been writing like a lunatic.”

She sighed and sat back, then she glanced up at me. “You really think so?”

I crouched down next to her. “I know so. We got this.”

She wrapped her arms around me, and I held on.

I wasn’t quite sure about that, but I’d lived by thefake it ‘til you make it way of lifesince I’d started this crazy career.

And I wasn’t going to let her down.

TWENTY-TWO

The restof October flew by in a blink.

The infectious Halloween decorating next door had bled over to the cottage. The witchy flamingo had moved down to be paired with a few other birds. We had quite the collection going in the barrel near the French doors.

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