Page 46 of The Wedding Twist

Celeste grimaced. His voice was laced with bad news. “Yes,” she said. “Hello, Stephan. How are you?”

“I’m well—thank you. We appreciate you coming in yesterday. Celeste, the reason for my call is that I’m speaking on behalf of the team here to say we were really impressed with your interview. But…” he said and hesitated.

But what we actually think is that you had no business applying for this job, she predicted and squeezed her eyes shut, ready to absorb the blow.

“We did have another internal candidate apply from one of our partner hotels in the US and have offered him the job.”

“I appreciate you calling,” Celeste said. She knew she would be disappointed, but what she hadn’t anticipated was the contradictory sense of relief. She wasn’t ready to take on a job of that scope. She needed more experience. She needed to go back to school. She needed—

“We have another opportunity to offer you, however,” he said. “It’s…a bit different. But we think you’re up for the challenge, with your experience at a smaller property. We’re opening a boutique resort on Lagoon Island, just off the northeast side of Vancouver Island. You would be part of the team leading the opening. Helping to train the staff. Establishing systems. It’s a short-term contract with the possibility of extending, if we’re happy with your work.”

Celeste was speechless. “Thank you,” she said. “I—”

“We’d like to invite you for a site visit. It will need to be early next week, though. We’re eager to move forward on this, so we’ll need your decision as soon as possible. I’ll have my assistant make arrangements for you.”

Early next week? The lodge had a number of bookings, an art show opening in the gallery, and the pub was hosting a trivia night. She’d barely have time to think, never mind leave for an island hours away.

“I’ll need to think about it,” she heard herself say, butterflies doing whatever was the butterfly version of a cartwheel in her stomach. “Can I call you by the end of the weekend to confirm?”

The other end of the line was silent for a beat. “We really are eager to get plans in place. Please let me know by Sunday at the latest.”

“I’ll speak with you then,” Celeste said. Her nerves quickly morphed to excitement as the details of the conversation settled. Lagoon Island. It sounded kind of dreamy.

She opened the map app on her phone and input the island’s name to calculate the distance from Keystone Ridge, then grimaced when the app couldn’t calculate a route. She zoomed out from the map, the vast distance between it and her home staring back at her. The vast distance between her and Jack.

Her mind whirled. Okay, so it was far away. But it wasn’t on the other side of the world. Ava managed to get home when she could, and Celeste would have two days a week off.

If it was real, this thing between her and Jack, they’d make it work.

*

Half an hourlater, Jack had changed out of his wet clothes and packed away the rest of his gear.

He glanced at the clock on his dashboard as he approached town. It was just before six and most of the shops would be closing soon, but he only needed to make a quick stop.

The shop attendant at Petal Pusher was pulling in the sandwich board in front of the store. “Mind if I grab something real quick?” Jack asked the young woman.

“Sure thing,” she said. He held the door open for her, then followed her inside the small shop, which was filled with an earthy warm smell and buckets of all kinds of different flowers. He scanned the selection and felt pressure to pick quickly, to let the attendant get on with her night, but there was too much to choose from.

“Who are they for, and what’s the occasion?”

“Uh, a woman, and no occasion, really,” he said.

“Give me five minutes,” she said. “I’ll put something nice together.”

As he stood waiting for the bouquet, he glanced at the community bulletin board to the side of the cash register. A flier caught his eye, with an image of a man and a woman in a float boat, the woman pulling a catch out of the water with a smile plastered across her face.Special introductory price, said the text across the top of the page. He read on to see that the flier was advertising yet another new outdoor-adventure company in the area.

Was no one doing market research? Or was he just bleeding dry for the benefit of all these new startups?

He had to figure out something, fast, before these new operations wiped him off the map completely.

“Here you are,” the florist said. “What do you think?”

“Great,” he said and handed over his credit card, knowing full well he was buying flowers for a woman he wouldn’t be able to afford to date soon.

*

On the shortdrive over to the lodge, Jack played through a few scenarios in his head. Hopefully Celeste would be the one to greet him at the front desk. How would he explain the flowers to her parents or her sister? He knew one thing she found challenging about working at the lodge was that her whole family knew her business.

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