Page 5 of Bad Luck Club

Blue shook her head again. “No, really. It’s okay. I used it as a learning experience.”

Adalia’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “With the Bad Luck Club?”

Blue’s face transformed into a mask of forced congeniality. “Just a general life lesson. I’ll let you two get back to your lunch. I’m actually here to meet a client for a project, and I just saw her walk through the door. Bye.”

Then she hurried away without a backward glance.

Lee felt a small amount of relief when he saw her greet a middle-aged woman near a table at the other side of the room, although he couldn’t figure out why. Because she actually had a reason to run away from him? Because she was meeting a woman and not a man? Why would he care if she were meeting a man?

“What’s the Bad Luck Club?” Lee asked, his gaze still on Blue. Something about her called to him. She was an enigma that intrigued him. He wasn’t interested in her, of course. He was just so bored in this town it felt good to think about something besides the brewery.

Adalia started to say something, then stopped. “Nothing you need to worry about. Now where were we? Oh, that’s right. We were talking about you replacing Phil.”

Then she went on to give him more details.

Before Blue’s appearance—was that really her name?—he would have stopped his sister, insisting it would be another disaster if he took Phil’s job, but half of his attention was on the woman on the other side of the restaurant. A woman who probably preferred to never see him again.

Honestly, it was better that way. So why did that disappoint him?

Chapter Two

Some people had a drink when they were nervous. Others tapped their toes until they drove the people around them insane. Blue knitted. Or crocheted. (She was “bistitchual,” as her mother called it, someone who enjoyed both knitting and crocheting, because of course her mom had a colorful word for it.) Creating something with her needles or hooks had become her answer for everything in this new life she’d carved out for herself. She finished hooking a stitch in the octopus she was creating—a commission from the Asheville Art Display at Buchanan Brewery—and set it aside gently.

“That made me feel better, Buford, but not better enough.”

Buford, her Flemish Giant rabbit, nuzzled her leg but did not respond. Not that she’d expected him to offer up a solution for the problem of Lee Buchanan.

The man’s soul was out of balance, as her mother would have said.

He wasn’t her responsibility, but she couldn’t stop thinking of the look in his eyes the day of Georgie and River’s Christmas Eve engagement party, which had become infamous in Asheville, particularly since Prescott Buchanan was arrested soon afterward. Lee had looked more broken than the found objects Adalia used in her art.

He wasn’t going to shake this on his own. He needed help. She knew that not just from the look in his eyes, or the more direct evidence of her ruined shoes, but also because Adalia had shared her worry about him over the past several weeks.

Lee needed the Bad Luck Club, maybe even more than Blue did.

Shewantedto help him, and that was her goal this week, in her own voyage toward self-realization to find someone shewantedto help.

But there was Rule #3 to consider:You bring ’em, you bought ’em.

If she brought him to the club, she would have to become his sponsor…and that would entail spending a lot of time with him.

She wasn’t sure why she objected to that. Dan, the man she was seeing, wasn’t the jealous type—part of his appeal—and it wasn’t like she was interested in Lee like that.

Sure, he was handsome in a way she admired from an artistic perspective, tall with thick sandy hair and hazel eyes that were warmer than he probably realized, framed with lashes several shades darker than his hair, and a jaw that would make a Roman god jealous, but the manhadvomited on her shoes.

Maybe that was it. Maybe she was worried about losing more of her nice shoes now that she couldn’t afford to splurge on new ones.

She hadn’t said anything, but the ones he’d ruined were Valentino. But that was part of her old life, and truthfully she’d been happy to throw them in the garbage. Most of the things she’d brought with her from Philadelphia had memories attached, and sometimes it was hard to shake the things free of their former context.

Her friend Maisie understood that, although she’d had the opposite problem—she’d kept things for years because of the good memories attached to them.

You’re practicing avoidance, Blue. You know better.

She did. She’d learned the hard way that ignoring problems tended to multiply them.

Sighing, she texted her sponsor for the club.

Bear, there’s someone who needs our help. I’m thinking about inviting him to our next meeting. Just how strict is Rule #3?

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