Page 5 of There I Find Happiness

Regardless, he thought that they’d get along well together if she’d ever pay any attention to him, but most of the time, she refused to look at him, although she was friendly with everyone else.

“Oh. Maybe it wasn’t twelve o’clock,” Norma Jean said as they reached the bandstand which was completely deserted. She turned and blinked her big blue eyes at him. “How about we go and get some of that strawberry cream cheese cobbler? That sounded really good. I’ll even let you sit beside me.” She winked at him. And he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do or say to that.

It felt a little...weird.

“I think I don’t really want to do that. But you go on ahead.”

“Oh, but I need you to help me. Plus, you just told Sally you loved it.”

“I forgot that I wasn’t hungry.”

“Oh, you always have room for dessert.” She wiggled her brows at him.

He wondered if there was supposed to be a second meaning to the word “dessert” and he was missing it. Surely she didn’t mean—

“I’ll let you nibble on my neck,” she said with a giggle that he thought might have been faked, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

He tried to suppress his shudder.

“No, thank you.” His mom had taught him to be polite, and he thought that the only thing he could have added would have been a “ma’am,” which in Michigan, “ma’am” was often considered an insult. It made young women feel old, and he’d almost been slapped twice before he quit saying it.

Still, what he said still offended Norma Jean, and she wrinkled her nose, putting her hands on her hips and planting her feet.

“Fine. I didn’t want to spend any more time with you, Peter Slessing, anyway. You’re going to have to do a lot of groveling if you want me to forgive you for this,” she said, and she stomped her foot for good measure.

His brows furrowed as he looked at her. She was kinda cute, with her big blue eyes and her long golden hair. Beautiful actually. Sweet and curvy in all the right places, he supposed, but she just didn’t do anything for him. He didn’t really like the way she tried to manipulate him into doing whatever it was that she wanted him to do, and he really didn’t like the way that she didn’t even care that Sally might have been hurt. She wanted all the attention to herself and actually tried to keep him from helping Sally.

Of course, Sally’s mouse brown hair and her nondescript eyes that weren’t gray, but weren’t really brown either, were far more interesting to him. Even if she wasn’t classically beautiful the way Norma Jean was. He loved her willingness to help and her loyalty. Anyone who could be friends with someone like Norma Jean as long as Sally had been friends with her—and at least from the rumors around town, he’d heard that they’d been friends since elementary school—had to be loyal. She also had to be willing to put up with a lot.

Norma Jean was enough to grate on his last nerve.

But Sally seemed to love her. Seemed to be protective of her and seemed to help her however she could.

Good for Sally, but not so good for him, since he ended up stuck with Norma Jean when he’d rather be with Sally. Now Norma Jean was looking at him, giving him the hairy eyeball, and he had no idea what he’d done. He’d been polite.

“I’m sorry that you’re going to be mad at me for a while. Let me know when you’re done.” He nodded his head and turned and walked back toward the ladder that she had fallen from.

Sally was nowhere in sight, and while he was disappointed, he hoped she’d hobbled off and gotten some help for that ankle. At the very least, she needed to sit down, take her weight off it, prop it up, and put some ice on it.

As he walked by the diner, he peered in, checking to see if Sally was sitting in there, but she wasn’t, so he walked on up the street, then took a left and walked toward his brother’s hotel.

He needed to talk to Franklin. That was the whole reason that he’d come into town. He hadn’t realized there was going to be a big shindig that evening. He’d been so busy on the farm he hadn’t made it into town for more than two weeks, and being that it was summer and everything was busy, he wasn’t in a big rush. Now that the tourist season was officially over, he’d be around more. As much as the farm would let him. Which, honestly, wasn’t much.

Seems like the more he did, the more there was to do. But he was slowly turning the farm profitable. At least he thought so. If he could make sense of his books.

His brother’s hotel appeared as he walked past the buildings that lined Main Street, and he admired the landscaping around it, happy for his brother that he seemed to be able to make a business out of nothing. He also had been able to snag a really great wife, somehow.

Peter still didn’t know what Eleanor saw in Franklin, but they seemed happy together. Maybe something had happened when they were snowed in that made Eleanor feel like she had to marry him out of pity.

Peter laughed to himself a little. He’d been ribbing his brother about that for a long time, and his brother just smiled. Which made Peter believe that there was some truth to the idea.

Really, though, he was happy for his brother.

He didn’t need to go the whole way to the hotel, since as he was walking up, he saw his brother and his wife sitting on a bench outside with their lunch in their laps.

It was a beautiful day to eat lunch together, and for some odd reason, Peter felt a frisson of jealousy go through him.

He was happy for his brother, truly he was, but he supposed it would be really nice to be able to spend a day like today with someone he loved.

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