Page 60 of One Week Wingman

15

ROXY

We’ve only been backin Ashford Falls for five minutes when Daisy arrives in the middle of a new disaster.

“Thank God you’re back!” she cries, pushing past me into the house. She’s wearing paint-stained dungarees, with her hair tied up with a red dotted scarf, like an Instagram version of Rosie the Riveter. Daisy charges into the kitchen and dumps an enormous box on the table. “Did you hear about Ginny Whittaker?”

“No?” I peer at box. I don’t know what’s inside it, but I’m guessing it’s nothing good. “I’m not even sure I know who Ginny Whittaker is.”

“You do!” She scrolls through her phone. “She’s head of the decorating committee for the reunion. Married to Greg Charles. Two kids, dated Ashley Eversley all through senior year, and broke his heart at Homecoming?”

I’m still drawing a blank when Daisy announces, “She fell off a ladder, decorating at the high school, it turns out she’s broken her back!”

“That’s awful,” I gasp. “The poor woman.”

“Not properly broken,” Daisy admits, “Just, you know, painkillers and ice packs. She can’t lift anything for a week. But it’s the worst timing, we still have so much to do for the reunion!”

“We…?” I echo, that bad feeling growing. “It’s not even your class.”

“I got talking to Megan and Jessica and Courtney the other week,” she explains, “I pitched a couple of ideas, you know, because of my experience with events and sponsorship, and all that jazz, and before you know it, they’d recruited me!”

Ah yes, the lovely trio of high-school frenemies. I’ve managed to avoid them so far this week, and I plan on keeping it that way.

At least, until Daisy fixes me with a wide-eyed, imploring look and announces, “So we need to make two thousand paper rosettes in school colors, and also do you know where I can get two hundred mason jars? And have you ever made a flower crown?”

I leaveSeb working on his laptop, dealing with some financials to do with the vineyard. On the drive to her cottage, I manage to talk Daisy out of both the mason jars and the flower crowns, and I also convince her to stop for alcohol and Nita.

If I’m doing this, I’m not doing it alone or sober.

“Welcome to the work in progress!” Daisy announces, pulling up at her Instagram-famous abode. Structurally it’s pretty much finished - there’s a downstairs bathroom that’s currently just plaster walls and a half-tiled floor - but everything else is a jewel-box of comfy furnishings and pretty patterned wallpaper. “The girls should be set up in the kitchen.”

“The girls?” I ask, as we follow her inside. Sure enough, she’s already recruited a handful of other poor souls to help with rosette folding. Her toxic frenemy, Lottie, is already deep in tissue paper, and Jessica (of the second husband) is also folding, dressed in an enormous cream knit sweater and braids. I blink. Guess she’s not physically attached to her co-bitches, after all.

“It’s a crafting party!” Daisy declares, waving her camera-phone around. “Jessica, Lottie, say ‘reunion!’”

“So.” Nita begins, after we’re settled a safe distance away from the photoshoot. “You want to tell me what really happened on this vineyard trip?”

“What do you mean?” I say, trying to play it cool.

But Nita snorts. “You have a whole post-coital glow going on, don’t even try and tell me otherwise. The kind that silicone alone can’t make. Spill!”

I glance to make sure the other women are distracted, then drop my voice. “It happened,” I admit.

“Damn right it did.” Nita searches my face. “And?”

“And… You were right about his skills.” I blush.

“Yes!” Nita holds up her hands for a high-five. I roll my eyes, but she doesn’t drop them, so I finally clap them back. “I knew it. The man has that look about him, like he knows how to go down on a woman.”

I snort with laughter. “There’s a look?”

“Sure there is. Why do you think I went out with Evan?” Nita says smugly, and I have to giggle.

“What are you two laughing about?” Daisy pipes up, from across the kitchen.

“Nothing!” I blurt.

She grins. “It’s Stefano, isn’t it. You should see her boyfriend,” she tells the others. “He ishot.”

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