Page 46 of Four Steps to the Perfect Fake Date

The three older ladies let out interested hums and leaned back in their seats, watching him with piercing eyes.

“Why do you ask?” He nodded his thanks as Greta pushed the platter of snacks closer so he could grab a cracker and a slice of aged cheddar.

“I knew your grandmother, you know,” Mabel said, voice casual. “I remember she had a beautiful cast-iron Dutch oven that was her pride and joy. She used it to make the crustiest, most wonderful bread I’d ever tasted.”

“Perfect crumb,” Greta added with a solemn nod.

“It was okay,” the third lady grumbled.

“Harry,” Mabel chided. “Please. The bread was perfect.”

“Oh, all right. It was delicious,” Harry replied, scowling at Calvin like he’d personally offended her.

“We all wished we had a pot like Brenda’s,” Mabel said, folding her hands on her knee as she smiled beatifically.

Daphne was very still beside him. When he glanced over, she was giving her grandmother a strangely intense look. What kind of madness had he stepped into? Were all Daphne’s family members this weird? And he still didn’t quite buy their explanation for why they’d been staked out in front of his mother’s house. At a stretch, he could buy that they were curious about the event venue. But that wouldn’t justify them speeding off as soon as they’d spotted him. They’d panicked, according to Greta and Mabel. But these were women who had egged Daphne on whenshe’d attacked a thief at the farmers’ market. Women who hadn’t been shy about taunting Bobby Troy about his precious truck in front of the entire sheriff’s department. They didn’t get nervous in front of law enforcement. They certainly didn’t panic.

“So?” Mabel asked, smiling encouragingly. “Do you remember the pot?”

“Uh, maybe,” he said, frowning. “Actually, yes. A sort of ugly thing, right? And horribly heavy.”

Mabel let out a noise that might have been one of outrage. Calvin frowned as Harry reached over and put a hand on her arm, as if to hold the other woman back. There was something going on here, but Calvin couldn’t quite figure out what it was. His instincts were screaming at him. These women were digging for something. They’d been watching his mother’s house, and now they were trying to get information from him.

But what? It couldn’t be about an old pot. Had they been wanting to rob the house? But Daphne would never do that, and these ladies didn’t look like they could move fast enough to commit a burglary. Stranger things had happened, though ...

His mind whirled. Daphne understood what the ladies were asking about, and she wanted them to stop. That was evident by the tightness of her shoulders and the way her lips were pinched into a bloodless line. That only happened when she was trying to hold herself back from saying something she’d regret. He knew, because that was the expression she had on her face whenever Calvin was doing his best to needle her into a reaction.

So she felt strongly about this—whatever “this” was. And Calvin was on the outside, scrambling to figure it out.

He decided to play along and give them a little crumb of information to see how they’d react. “I think my mother brought that pot home when we cleared out my grandmother’s house,” he said, “but I’m not sure what became of it. She’s a bit of a pack rat, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she still has it stashed somewhere.”

The older ladies—and Daphne, strangely—inhaled so sharply they sucked nearly all the air out of the room.

Calvin frowned.

It was Mabel who recovered first. She smiled at him and said, “Well, isn’t that wonderful? I love a good pack rat. Say hi to your mother for me, won’t you? And Daphne was just telling us how excited she was to be able to go to her vow renewal. I heard it’s going to be a beautiful ceremony.”

“Was she?” Calvin mused, turning to meet Daphne’s gaze. “How excited are you really, Cupcake?”

She leaned back against the couch, closed her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose like she was one second away from giving up on life, finding an uninhabited island away from everyone she knew, and becoming a hermit. She opened her eyes and met his gaze unblinkingly. “I’m thrilled,” she told him. “Can’t wait.”

His smile was sharp. “That makes two of us.”

“You’ll need a dress,” Mabel said. “What’s the dress code?”

“Cocktail,” Calvin answered, eyes still on Daphne. Her cheeks were flushed. He wondered what color her bra was today.

“I have a dress,” Daphne said, tearing her gaze away from his to look at her grandmother.

“Good. That’s settled,” Mabel said, and there was something in her demeanor that made Calvin’s instincts sit up and take notice. A note of triumph in her tone, or maybe a gleam in her eyes.

Something was definitely going on here. Daphne hadn’t agreed to go with him out of the goodness of her heart, and he wasn’t sure it had anything to do with quieting down the island gossips. She might be looking to lay some groundwork for her future exit plan, but that didn’t ring entirely true. There was something more.

Still, he couldn’t help the feeling of satisfaction that was coursing through him. She’d agreed to come with him. Out of everyone on the island, he couldn’t think of a better date. Even if she was hiding something from him.

To his left, the side door opened. All eyes turned to the woman who strode in. Ellie, Daphne’s sister, dropped her purse and blew a raspberry, pushing her disheveled brown hair off her forehead. “You willnotbelieve what just happened!” She crashed into a chair and regaled them with a story involving a run through the forest and a supposed cougar that turned out to be the neighbor’s dog, and all the old ladies in the room hooted with laughter.

Beside Calvin, Daphne seemed to shrink into the couch. All the attention in the room had been sucked up by Ellie’s entrance, but his eyes were drawn to the wrinkle in her brow and the way the sparkle had faded from her eyes. She listened to her sister’s story, and something like sadness entered her expression.

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