Page 5 of For Butter or for Worse
I gasp, my stomach doing a flip. The woman I’m jealous of is me!
The man on the other side of the counter whistles low. “I’m not sure I can top that.”
“Oh, you can.” King’s eyes meet mine, his expression falsely nonchalant. “See, when I asked her to marry me, she panicked.”
“No!”
“Yes. And I get it. The proposal came out of nowhere. She needed time to process. But for her, that meant forcing the pilot to fly her back to Willow Cove without me.”
“Wait, she left you on the island?”
King nods, still looking right at me. “The plane came back for me later that night, but not until after she packed up and left town.”
“For how long?”
“About ten years.”
The man laughs uncomfortably. “That’s rough. Maybe I’ll keep my proposal nice and simple. Nothing that’ll scare her off.”
“That’s a great idea. And I’m sure you’ll have better luck than I did. Thanks for coming to King’s Surf Shop!” King smiles and waves as the guy heads out. The instant he’s gone, King’s smile drops and his eyes jump to me.
I try not to scowl at him, but I’m pretty sure my attempts get lost in the feelings of guilt that bubble up. I already spent plenty of time feeling guilty over the way I left things, and I don’t need more of it now when I’m still reeling from the news that Bill died. “That was a fun story,” I grumble.
“That was a true story.”
“I didn’t think Coop would take that long to go back for you.”
“Yep, that makes it all better.” He comes over and starts lifting all the wood plank shelves, popping them back into place with ease. “You really shouldn’t be back here, Georgie.”
He’s probably right. “I had nowhere else to go.”
“What about your parents?”
I keep my eyes on the shirt I’m folding. “You know I love my parents, but if I go crawling back to them, they’ll smother me with love and pie and try to set me up with some accountant who will provide me with a cushy, quiet life.”
“The horror!”
I ball up a shirt and throw it at him, though I can’t blame him for his sarcasm. He lost both his parents before he turned fifteen, so I really shouldn’t complain that I have both of mine. “I thought I might find a fresh start in Willow Cove, you know? Away from it all.”
The thought makes me tired. All the hard work of the last ten years of my life was taken away from me in an instant, leaving me craving something stable and familiar, something that wouldn’t make me a burden to someone else. Something like Kingston’s, where I always felt like I was a part of something magical. Thoughts of that bakery were the only thing that kept me sane the last couple of weeks, knowing I would have a soft place to land as everything in New York crumbled.
Icouldgo back to my parents’ house, but now that they’re both retired, there’s only so much they can do to help me get back on my feet. Being biology professors didn’t exactly set them up with wealth, so I’m going to have to rely on myself going forward. I haven’t even told them yet that I had to leave New York because they would probably try to give me a chunk of their limited retirement fund.
To my surprise, King stops rebuilding his shelves and sits on the floor next to me. Though he keeps his gaze down at the shirts in front of him, I know his focus is really on me. “Bill talked about you all the time, you know.”
I smile, wishing he would look at me. “I bet you hated that.”
“With a passion. He was always proud of you.”
I sense a ‘but’ in there, but I’m too afraid to ask. Too bad for me, King keeps talking.
“But I don’t know what kind of fresh start you’ll find in a place like this. Willow Cove is too small for a big city girl like you.”
He’s probably right, but summer is coming quickly. This town gets crazy in the summer. Or, it used to. Maybe all that has changed over the last decade. “Like I said, it would just be temporary.”
Actually,he’sthe one who said that, and if I had my way, it wouldn’t be temporary at all. At least, I would stay long enough to get the bakery thriving and under the right manager. That could take months, maybe even a year, and then I would hang on to it and use the profits to start something else in a bigger city. I made a whole plan as I drove down here.
“I was really hoping to take over the bakery for Bill,” I say carefully. Something tells me I’m going to have to tread carefully here.
