Page 24 of Off the Beaten Path

“Beats me,” she says, shrugging. “Myra called me on my way over here to ask about it. Smokey the Beans was absolutely silent, so I bet she had me on speaker.”

“She wouldn’t.”

Wren pats my shoulder soothingly, her thumb tracing up the line of my tricep so softly I’m not sure she knows she’s doing it. “She would, babe.”

I give her a flat look. “Don’t call me babe.”

“But I told your mom that’s what we call each other,” she says, her voice sticky-sweet, like adding sugar in cereal.

My jaw hinges open. “You didn’t talk to my mom.”

Wren nods, her eyes widening. “She was the third person to call me.”

I step back, running my hands down the length of my face, a headache forming at the base of my neck. “Please tell me you’re lying,” I say.

The grin she gives me is evil. “Afraid not, babe.”

“Thankyouallforagreeing to participate in the bachelor event,” I say to the group of men assembled before me. Between Myra, Melissa, and Stevie, they managed to bully ten bachelors into signing up for the auction. There are a couple of guys, like Grey, who had no intention of signing up, a widower who is ready to get back out there, Sam Jenkins, who is hoping to lure some single men to the auction, and a couple of repeats from last year. All in all, I think it’s going to be a really good group, and if they don’t manage to raise enough money to fix the bridge, I plan to take photos of them working on it shirtless to sell as a bachelor calendar to raise the rest of what we need.

“The auction is in three weeks,” I continue. “I need all of you to send me a photo you’d like me to use for promo, and I’ll get those listed on the website later today.”

Sam raises his hand, and I have to stifle my smile. We’re in the meeting room at Smokey the Beans. All the bachelors are seated at the long table while I stand at the front, addressing them.

“Yes, Sam?”

“Is it fine for me to promote the event on my podcast?”

He lives on a homestead on the opposite side of town and hosts a very successful podcast, where he talks about sustainable farming and interviews a wide range of people in related fields. Promoting the auction on his podcast would garner a lot of publicity.

“Please,” I tell him. “That would be amazing.”

Sam flashes me a grin, and it buoys my spirits. Since getting the phone call from Jimmy a few days ago, I’ve experienced a wide range of emotions. First was panic, followed quickly by guilt for panicking about my situation when Jimmy and Miss B were struggling. When I got home and saw the growing stack of bills on my counter, guilt turned to dread. And dread turned into panic once more.

And then Holden showed up. I’m still not sure what to make of that entire encounter. I can’t believe I cried on him. I can’t believe helet me. I’m not sure whether it was subconscious or whether he remembered that time I spilled my guts to him about being too tired to cook for myself or build a fire in my fireplace, but then he started doing those things for me, and all I could do was watch, transfixed.

Holden moved with such an effortless grace, especially for someone who is way too big for my tiny, cramped cottage with sloped ceilings and compact appliances. I can still picture the way his flannel pulled tight over his shoulders as he built a fire in my grate, one that burned for longer than mine ever do. How his brow wrinkled when he found my cupboard of junk food and not a single vegetable. I thought that discovering Holden isuser6872was going to be the only revelation I had about his character, but he was even different then than he was in his messages.

Then there’s the deal with Charlotte. I still don’t know what to think about that.

One of the reluctant sign-ups raises his hand with a question, and I spend the next twenty minutes going over the ins and outs of the event. Despite tourism being slow in the winter, the bachelor auction is one of our biggest town events, a last hurrah before the tourists arrive in the spring, and there’s a lot of work left to be done.

When the meeting is over and I’ve secured headshots from each of the bachelors, I have just enough time to grab lunch with Stevie before I have to meet Holden at the hardware store to pick out samples.

There’s a little café in an old, renovated cottage just a few blocks from Smokey the Beans, on the main street that leads in and out of the square. In the spring and summer, hydrangeas spill out from around the perimeter, and you have to let yourself through the white picket fence and walk up the cracked sidewalk to reach the cherry red front door. The whole place constantly smells like berries and sugar and feels like stepping into the pages of your favorite fairy tale. It’s my favorite business in town. Stevie says she feels like she’s going to break something and that she can’t speak at a normal volume, but she always agrees to meet me here for brunch or lunch anyway.

I find her at a table in the back, her mass of dark hair sticking out from under a dark teal beanie and her hands folded primly on the table. Her foot is tapping quietly against the floor, though, and I can practically see the energy vibrating off her. I was made for dainty teacups and barefoot picnics in the sunshine. Stevie was made for dirty hiking boots and wide-open spaces and never staying in one place for too long.

“How long have you been here?” I ask, settling into the chair across from her and reaching for the glass of sparkling water on the table. Miss Janet, the owner, doesn’t serve flat water, and it’s one of my favorite things about the place.

“Got here right before you did. How was the bachelor meeting? Did Oliver give you any trouble?” Oliver is the owner of the hardware store in the square, and he used to date Stevie’s cousin and the third member of our trio growing up, Hazel. When Stevie told me he approached her about being a bachelor for the event, I was a little surprised, since we were never his biggest fans in high school, but she said he seemed sincere enough.

“No, he seemed really interested. Asked lots of questions.”

She nods and takes a sip of her coffee. “Good.”

Her nose and cheeks are pink and her lips are chapped from the cold, and I can see mud caking her booted foot sticking out from under the table. “Did you go hiking this morning?”

“Yeah, just a quick hike up The Mountain.” The Mountain is the tallest peak in Fontana Ridge city limits, and although it has an actual name, the residents have called it The Mountain for so long that I don’t even know what the real name is. Stevie makes it sound easy, but in reality, it’s fairly strenuous—a narrow, steep trail leading to an old fire lookout tower. In high school, we used to sneak up there after dark, risking the trek with flashlights and contraband bottles of liquor packed in our backpacks, but there’s very little that could convince me to make the hike now, especially in the dead of winter.

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