Page 1 of Unlikely You

Chapter One

Bren

“Dammit,”I said under my breath as I stopped in front of my table at the Maine Marketplace. I’d been running late this morning and hadn’t arrived in time to have a nice quiet set up the way I preferred. Everything had gone wrong, starting with not being able to sleep last night. This morning I’d been out of coffee, my cat Arson decided to puke in the middle of the living room rug, and I’d found a hole in my favorite shirt. I could mend the hole, of course, but it was just one more thing that I’d have to deal with.

And then I’d arrived at the marketplace andtheywere here. The Holloways. The family who’d had the table next to mine for weeks now and it had been a nightmare every single day we’d had to share space.

I set my bag down and tried to block them out, but it was impossible.

The happy Holloways were singing. They were actually fucking singing. If this had been the first time I’d heard it, I would have stared in shock. But this wasn’t the first time, or even the fiftieth.

They were so loud, there seemed to be a million of them, but I’d worked out that there were two parents and four kids. Well, one adult, two teenagers, and one that was younger.

The Maine Marketplace ran Thursday through Sunday from April to October, so I didn’t have to see them all every single day.

Unfortunately, today was Saturday, and they were all here. Singing. Like the fucking Von Trapp family.

I shoved my noise-canceling headphones on my skull and went through my mental checklist. The marketplace was a temporary set up, so each night we covered our displays and every Sunday we carted everything out to bring it all back in on Thursday again. It was grueling, but it was one of the ways I made money, and it had been pretty lucrative for me the past few months.

My table was at the beginning of a row, right near one of the doors, which was a prime spot. If only I wasn’t next to the Holloway Apiary table.

I went about my business, making sure everything on my table was perfect, pulling out more book sleeves, stickers, bookmarks, and other bookish items that I made in my apartment and sold here, on my website, and on consignment at a few local shops.

The podcast I’d been listening to drowned out the singing from the table next to me ended and I checked the time. Doors would be opening soon, and I’d have to slip into my customer service persona. I rolled my shoulders and prepared. Selling at the marketplace was not only physically grueling, it was mentally exhausting too.

“Go ahead, I’ve got this,” a voice said, cutting through all the chatter and sounds of other sellers setting up their tables.

Shewas here. She was always here.

“You sure, darling?” The Mom asked. I knew her name, but I just thought of her as The Mom. The Mom, The Dad, and the kids—with one exception.

Honey. Her goddamn name wasHoney. Honey, and her family kept bees. Adorable, right?

Not in my opinion. It was so cutesy it made my teeth hurt.

Honey was always here, wearing her little shirt with the Holloway logo on it. Honey and her bright smile and her cheerful energy that was enough to make me want to shake her and ask what the hell was wrong with her. Was she just like that? Was she on drugs? Was she in a cult? No one was that bubbly and sweet in real life. It wasn’t possible. I’d watched her too. Looked for any slip of that smile. Any moment where she dropped the mask and revealed how she really felt.

Never saw it. This woman must have had happiness injected into her perfect ass every morning. Oh, and it was a perfect ass. In addition to being the personification of sunshine and light, she was annoyingly gorgeous. Disgusting attractive. Nauseatingly beautiful.

Her body had curves and softness just where you wanted. Her hourglass was more than half full, and if she were anyone else, I would have already tried to get my hands on her and wrapped her legs around me.

And that was just herbody. Her face was just as devastating. Full lips and blushing cheeks and long very light brown hair with golden (dare I say honey?) highlights. And her eyes. Her eyes were wide and you could never quite pin down the dominant color. Blue? Green? There were also flecks of brown and gold, the color on her driver’s license was probably listed as hazel. What an inadequate word for her eyes. They required something more. Something that was too many letters and hard to pronounce.

I did my best not to stare at her as she spoke to her younger siblings. Anyone could see from a quick look that she was the oldest. The Louisa. Wait, was that the oldest Von Trapp daughter? I couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. Honey was in charge when her parents weren’t around, and she was also kind of in charge when they were.

The Mom and the Dad were obviously the owners of the business, but they didn’t necessarily have the best-selling instincts. Either they were so wrapped up in each other that they ignored customers, or they spent all their time talking to one person who was only going to buy one jar of honey and probably never come back again.

Honey kept things moving smoothly, sharing her lovely smile and offering to answer questions and drawing people in who might not have drifted closer to the table. I’d heard her pitch about how her parents had founded the apiary at least a thousand times, but I still listened to the sincerity in her voice every time she told it again. You couldn’t help but be drawn in and more than one customer found themselves buying jars of honey or beeswax candles with a somewhat bewildered look on their face as if they hadn’t been in complete control of their actions.

Honey was like that. She wove a spell around people. She could sell ice in Alaska if she put her mind to it.

She was everything sweet and I couldn’t stand it.

My own sales skills left a lot to be desired, but I held my own. I managed to keep my business going even in a shitty economy which I was pretty fucking proud of. I didn’t have the option to fail. Unlike my neighbors, I didn’t have a family supporting me. I had no one.

My parents had pretty much ignored me my whole life and the minute I graduated from high school, they gave me moving boxes and told me to get out. I think they’d assumed that I would have fallen flat on my face and might have taken some satisfaction in that, but I’d been planning for the day they were going to kick me out since I was ten. I’d started working as young as I could, saving as much money as possible until I had enough to take care of myself until it was time to start college. In the three years (I’d expedited my bachelor’s degree to save money) it took to get my graphic design and marketing degree, I’d barely slept. Between paid jobs and internships, I’d managed to graduate with job offers already in my inbox.

I’d busted my ass in the corporate world as long as I could stomach it and worked on my real passion until I could justify quitting my job. That was just over a year ago and I was exceeding all of my meticulous projections.

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