Page 1 of To Have and to Scold

Chapter One

Dallas Olivia

Eating at a cutesy local diner is great and all, but when you accidentally start screaming like a stuck pig, you leave an unfortunate first impression. And first impressions are all I’ve got going for me at the moment.

Looks like my whole plan of wooing the people of the beachside town of Willow Cove is going to have to wait until tomorrow.

If you’d had a…a llama—I think it’s a llama—splatter his spit through a fence all over your left arm, you would have screamed, too.

With one eye on the beast behind me, I grab the napkin dispenser on my outdoor table, hold it down with the hand of my suddenly half-paralyzed and dripping bare arm, and with the other hand rip as many paper napkins out of the dispenser as I can. I fight the urge to scream again, or hurl, as the case may be, while I wipe off my arm, wadding up the napkins so I don’t get any of the offending camelid saliva on my hand.

“Ma’am! Ma’am. Are you alright?” my teenaged server says, rushing over from one of the other half dozen tables.

My scream was pure reflex. I’m not generally a screamer as a rule—I’m not some helpless ingenue in a movie. It’s just that a mini camelspaton me from between his large, yellowed teeth.

During the commotion, a bunch of kitchen staff stream out of the kitchen like we’re about to be lambasted by a ten-foot tsunami wave. Bless those poor people’s heart rates.

Are there tsunamis in Willow Cove? Thankfully, I won’t be here long enough to find out because my new job here is temporary.

I hurriedly retrieve my bag, catching a whiff of grassy cud in the air, and hand my credit card to the waiter. “There’s a llama or alpaca right there,” I breathe, my gaze pointing at the beast, who is now waddling down the boardwalk on the other side of the short fence that encloses Witty’s Café’s outdoor eating area.

The server looks alarmed. He’s a nice kid with bleached blonde hair sticking out in every direction and a little matchstick mustache. “I’m so sorry.” He frowns. “Did Prince Harry spit on you?”

“Prince Harry?” I offer the brightest smile I can manage. “Yes, he did.”

“Oh, honey,” another server, this one a middle-aged woman with purple hair, says. “That llama is a little weird.” She steps out from the small crowd of employees that has gathered. “He spits as a sign of affection.”

“Is he, like, all y’all’s mascot or something?” My parents are Northerners, Boston bred. I was raised in Atlanta, but my Northern roots mean I don’t use “all y’all” much. The fact that I did just now shows how off I am.

The purple-haired server laughs. “No. He belongs to King Kingston now, ever since his uncle passed on.” She scratches her head and scans the boardwalk row of shops along the horizon. “I don’t see King.” She turns to a co-worker. “Tell Witty I’m walking Prince Harry down to the surf shop. I’ll be back in a bit.” She offers an apologetic smile and walks along the inside of the wrought iron fence until she reaches the gate. She opens the latch and turns onto the boardwalk. “Prince Harry! You come here now.” Her voice fades as she reaches the llama, speaking in baby talk to him, gently grasping the harness around his neck.

My gaze darts around at the various customers staring at me. I turn to the server, who’s watching all this with a lazy smile. “If you could just bring my receipt, I’ll leave, and you can just…” I make a sweeping motion with my hands at the little wad of grassy cud deposited on my table. “Have at it!”

After hastily signing the receipt to pay for my bread bowl-housed tomato bisque, I put my light-blue blazer back on over my blouse and pick my way through Witty’s Café’s outdoor tables to the exit gate, apologizing left and right.

Maybe if I’m the perfect mix of confident, delightful, and apologetic—if I do enough head bobbing and “sorrys” and make eye contact—people might think,Hey, you know that new, auburn-haired wedding planner in town? By golly, she’s got moxie!

That’s it. Moxie. That’s why I screamed so loud. That’s why I’m here in the first place, getting my mojo back after a very unfortunate incident at work got me…unemployed.

I refuse to say “fired.” Dallas Olivia Cardon doesn’t get fired.

And let’s also say it was moxie that caused me to come here, sight unseen, to work as Willow Wood Mansion’s new wedding planner.

Not sheer terror at my reputation in Atlanta being tarnished by accidentally mixing up two wedding cakes. Not fear that I’ll never get said reputation back. Not even the ever-present knowledge that I have to do something amazing here so I can go back to Atlanta and re-enter my meticulously designed five-year plan—known in my brain as “The Plan.”

We’re calling it “moxie.” I kinda like that.

Moxie.

And it’s in this moxified state when, right as I’m about to exit the outdoor seating area for the boardwalk, I seehim.

Holden Dougherty. My ex.

And, oh yes, there’s my cousin, the lovely, tall, lithe McKenna Cardon.

Of freaking course.

They’re both staring at me. McKenna’s a beachy goddess basking in a lounge chair. She’s got enormous sunglasses on top of her blonde pixie cut, which, by the way, she totally rocks. Both the shades and the hair.

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