Page 30 of Driven Daddy

“Good eye.”

“Vintage December gets a lot of my cash when I splurge. She’s got such cute stuff. I almost went down to see her for some retail therapy. I fought with my distributor for half the afternoon.”

“Is it going to be too difficult to get the books in? I don’t have to do it this weekend. I can do it next week or the one after. I’ll be in town for a while.”

“Nope. I already sent a newsletter out and updated my fliers. We are so doing this. I always get my way.” She smiled behind the rim of her glass.

“I’m getting that.” I took a sip of my own and let myself relax again. I wasn’t being interrogated, and I also had to learn how to do this stuff on my own. I couldn’t just shove all of the interviews or signings over to my co-writer.

I was the sole writer.

“So, when I was sixteen, I worked at another gift shop. One of those Hallmark kinds. I loved setting up displays and finding all the treasures hidden away in the back. But they ran it like shit. I knew I could do better.”

“Even at sixteen?”

The only thing I knew how to do when I was sixteen was how to hotwire a car.

“School was pushing for college visits and applications, so I just decided I’d go for a business degree. I majored in marketing and got out of my small town—not far from here, actually. Turnbull is close by. But it turns out I didn’t want to do the big corporate marketing. What I really wanted was Every Line.”

“So, you rented the space?”

“Nope. I bought it.”

I froze with my glass halfway to my mouth. “I’m sorry?” Owning was such a foreign concept. In Manhattan, you couldn’t afford to buy unless you had hundreds of thousands at your disposal, at a minimum.

“I know. My mom thought I was nuts too. I’d inherited my grandmother’s farmhouse when she passed away, and I didn’t need the farmland, so I sold it off and kept the house. The marketing firm I was working at was doing layoffs, and I volunteered to take a severance package. Between that and the land, I had the capital to buy the property—then the rest is history.”

“So, you don’t live in the Cove?”

“Oh, I do. My grandmother was from here. I’m on the edge of town, but I’m definitely a Coveite.”

Rami came back, and we both snagged the menus off the table. I ordered the shrimp scampi and Colette went with grilled salmon.

We chatted about various ideas for the store as well as her expansion as the sun set on the water, and we finished off the bottle of wine and our dinners. It had been a damn long time since I’d had such fun with someone other than Jenelle.

For a few hours, I forgot about my problems and the nerves about doing the signing.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to do this writerly adulting thing, after all.

I managed to dodge more of Colette’s cleverly worded questions and figured I wouldn’t be so lucky the next day, so I didn’t feel too guilty about it.

We paid the bill—or Colette did, since she wouldn’t let me. We headed out with plans for me to meet her at the shop the next morning.

I should have gone right to the cottage. I was right on the lake, for God’s sake, but the night was so nice, I ended up driving back into town. There weren’t many places open, but I wasn’t quite ready to be all the way alone.

I drove down Main Street, charmed that Halloween was a part of every one of the stores. From delightfully painted pumpkins to a scarecrow that reminded me of the Raggedy Anne & Andy books.

I’d always gotten hand-me-down books while in foster care. While kids in school had the latest and greatest, I had ancient toys and Nancy Drew books by the box full. When I’d been old enough for a library card, I had read everything I could get my hands on.

I’d been a little too old to get adopted out easily and ended up bouncing from foster home to foster home until I had finally managed to age out enough to slip away.

I was tired of getting dumped on families and starting over at schools. Instead, I had just done the GED thing and bounced.

Shaking off those old memories, I focused on the quaint town and the quiet. I lived close to Times Square because I loved the noise and the life—or at least I had used to.

This pervasive quiet was taking some getting used to.

Even the businesses had shuttered early. The sun had set only an hour ago, and most of the stores were closed. I was tempted to stop into the small wine shop near the park, but I knew the half bottle I’d shared with Colette through the night would haunt me.

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