Page 31 of To Have and to Scold

He frowns and gives a nod.

My mind is swarming with questions. Does the illustrious Mr. Billingsley have a complicated past? Maybe I could ask Mary. She did allude to some personal troubles recently.

No. What do I care? I’m going back to Atlanta soon. Office gossip? I’m better than that.

Except, can it be simple office gossip if it’s about a guy I can’t stop stewing over in my head?

I do the responsible thing and start my car.Back away from the handsome and infuriating man, Dallas.“Hey, despite what you may think, I’m an optimist,” I say. “This is going to work, Beck. It’ll be a great summer for Willow Cove.”

He grins broadly, looking at me expectantly, like he’s in on some joke that I’m not privy to.

I rub my nose, wondering if there’s something on my face.

“What?”

He presses his lips together before flashing another smile and raising his chin in the air. “You called me Beck.”

Chapter Eleven

Beck

She finally called me Beck.

It’s been a couple of days since and maybe we’re making some sort of progress since she called me that.

Not that I can even imagine what we’re progressing to. Not killing each other before the mansion’s done? It was reallygetting under my skin that she kept insisting on calling me Mr. Billingsley. What is this? Victorian England?

We like to keep things simple and non-formal here in Willow Cove. It’s part of our charm. Case in point? Our standing Sunday dinner with friends and family. It’s about as relaxed as you can get, as is made clear right now by my friends, Duke and Perry, turning their volleyball game into a wrestling match.

Even though it stops the game, the members of the opposing team, my other two oldest friends, Coop and King, don’t seem to mind. It’s a common occurrence for things to go off the rails with the guys around, which is why I often turn down their requests to play with them. Even though they’re my best friends, volleyball’s too important to me to be reduced to these antics. I’d rather watch from my sister’s patio set.

My intensity for volleyball makes me think of someone else who’s intense: Dallas. She’s been working here in town for two weeks now and one thing’s clear: she’s good at what she does. Like a cross between a tiger and a vulture, and she doesn’t take no for an answer. Ever. From anyone. Plus, she’s always in my business, wondering and worrying about how things are going on my end.

It’s annoying.

But in the week since Dallas booked the couple we met with at the mansion, she’s totally redone Walter’s former office. It smells good now—a mixture of tropical juice and coconut. Which lingers on Dallas even after she’s left the office.

It’s a nice scent. Not overpowering or too floral. Just enough to fill my nose and get in my head. The way she tucks her hair behind her ear right before she’s about to respond to someone in a meeting gets in my head, too. And the way she laughs. All this might be why I change my shirt and sometimes out of my steel-toed boots and into something else for administrator meetingsnow. I might peek into my truck’s visor mirror now, too. I can’t charge in there with hardhat hair and sweat stains, now can I?

Plus, Dallas has managed to get two more bookings for this summer, a fact that impresses my sister, Kate, Willow Cove’s postmaster.

“So, she’s booked four new weddings since she got here? For this summer?” Kate asks. “Why are couples booking their venue so late in the season?”

“We still have to book our venue,” Portia, my brother Elliot’s fiancée, says while sitting on his lap in the wicker chair across from us, wrapping her arms around him as she scoots herself closer to him.

Kate looks at Portia. “Have you picked a date yet?”

“We didn’t want to have the wedding right before we move to New Jersey for Portia’s master’s. But at this point, we won’t be ready until August at least.” Elliott focuses on the ring he put on her finger only a few weeks ago, sliding it around and around her finger with his own. “We need to set a date.”

Sounds like me after I proposed to Chloe. She wasn’t in any hurry to finalize wedding plans and I didn’t understand that until she dumped me and sold the ring on Craig’s List.

A good thing, it turns out. But everyone in town has something to say about it, which has become the worst part. I feel like I’ll never escape the scrutiny, the attempts to set me up with other people, the solemn and frequent, “How ya doing?”

“I’ve been exploring some ideas,” Portia says. “I do know it’s happening on the beach at sunset, and I’ll be in my Eowyn dress, all flowy and magical. And Elliot’s been practicing blowing into a big conch after the ceremony.”

Wow. I figured their wedding was going to be unconventional, but a big conch?

We’re temporarily interrupted by another scuffle in the grass between the guys. This time, Coop and Perry are going at it over a missed call. I’m putting my money on Perry. The guy’s a beast.

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