Page 1 of Holidate Fail
Chapter 1
The open field in front of the Inn at Fountenoy Hall teemed with people, and Dahlia Pesch didn’t recognize a single one of them. Which was kind of the point of having moved away. No one could call her Dumb Dee or Duh-lia or one of the many throngs of non-affectionate nicknames that followed her around her hometown, even more than a decade after graduating high school.
“Fun seekers and friends!” A dark-haired woman with a microphone stood on the landing of the bifurcated staircase in front of the four-story inn. It was the perfect place to be seen and address the crowd. “Are you ready for the Tri-Shine Stills and Dash?”
A cheer rose from those participating in the scavenger hunt. Dahlia hollered along with everyone, following the pack but decidedly alone.
No. The old Dahlia felt that way. The new Dahlia was bold and brave and had used the Holidates app to find a partner to celebrate National Scavenger Hunt Day instead of working through the weekend and analyzing dye in a water trace study for an upcoming court case.
Her water samples could wait. Her life could not.
The woman at the top of the staircase wore a vintage black dress with a wide white collar and a little bow at the neck, adding a touch of 1920s history to the annual event. “I’m Wendy Marsh, owner of Fountenoy Hall, and we’re honored to be the home base in O’Hara County for this year’s scavenger hunt. We have a half hour before registration ends and the all-day adventure begins!”
Groups of people shrieked to each other in greeting while families milled about and teams started gathering. Dahlia had stumbled across the May holiday while studying potential dates for the Fourth of July. According to the Holidates app about the Tri-Shine Stills and Dash, the scavenger hunt participants would follow bootleggers’ escape routes from the agents pursuing them during Prohibition.
Some people had embraced the era, wearing flapper dresses or waistcoats and dress pants. Dahlia had tried to come up with clothing reminiscent ofThe Great Gatsby, but she couldn’t find anything that didn’t accentuate the parts of her she wanted to remain hidden. So she settled on jeans and her favorite purple t-shirt. According to the video tutorials she’d watched on fashion, the color was supposed to bring out the green flecks in her eyes.
She’d also watched videos about styling her hair, but without the clothes to back up the glamour waves, she’d braided it like a thick headband and tucked up the ends in the back, her short bangs a fringe across her forehead. As a concession to 1920s headwear, she’d tucked flowers in the braid across her head.
Wendy Marsh finished her registration speech, and Dahlia fidgeted with her phone for the time. Heath, her blind Holidate, was five minutes and fourteen seconds late.
But she wasn’t counting.
Instead, she inhaled a controlled breath, expecting to catch a trace of peach blossoms in the breeze. What she got was the pungent remnants of a dog waste station. The large live oak where she and Heath agreed to meet had blocked her view of that and the morning Georgia sun.
She adjusted her cross-body satchel, ignoring the turtles snapping in her belly. She and Heath should have picked a less fragrant spot, like by the dogwoods casting long shadows in the field or closer to the parking lot or near one of the vendor booths bordering Fountenoy Hall’s large lawn. Even a trek to the peach orchard bordering the building would have been more pleasant.
The turtles began a no-holds barred game of badminton when she spotted a man crossing the grassy field. He smiled and waved, a wide, sweeping overhead motion designed to get someone’s attention. She waved back, even though the man’s resemblance to Heath’s picture was minimal.
“Hi!” She practically had to shout to be heard over the other adventure seekers on the grounds of the inn.
He angled his head in her direction but swiveled it back again in time to clap his friends heartily on the back as they did some macho handshake thing.
So. Not Heath, then. The heat on her face could have roasted a marshmallow. Covering her discomfort, she hiked to a table displaying buckets of peaches and a placard about the peach whiskey brewed at Belle’s Medicinal Brewery. The peaches were round and ripe, but she didn’t take one for fear of dripping juice down her carefully cultivated outfit.
Heath still hadn’t arrived. Dahlia turned to go back to her car. Those Pange River water samples for the court case wouldn’t put themselves into the tubes, and being here was a mistake.
“This is not a mistake,” she argued out loud. “I deserve to meet someone. I deserve good things. I deserve to be here. No one can tell me otherwise.”
Even as Dahlia recited the affirmations, panic threatened to flood her nervous system and send her fleeing. Who was she to fight basic biology?
“No. No, no, no!” She stopped herself from sprinting to her car. “It doesn’t matter how uneasy you feel. Running is something Dee Dee would do. You’re not her anymore. You’re smart, and you’re strong, and you’re going to knock his socks off. Now go back to the air conditioner vendor’s table, and get yourself a stress ball.”
“You okay?” There was concern in the smooth tenor voice that popped up out of nowhere.
Dahlia took a step back from the hard-muscled god in front of her, her skin getting all tingly. He wore a blue t-shirt with a little raft and waterfall logo for Georgia Adventures. She’d seen that vendor’s booth across the field, so why was this man here now? And though he didn’t look like her Holidate, his moss-green eyes and the cowlick in his chestnut hair looked familiar.
Really familiar. Something stirred in her memory.
Maybe it was Heath, and she had pictured him wrong. She squashed the sudden flare of lust at his crooked smile and immediately channeled the cinematic heroines she’d studied in her quest to shed her old, scared self. She pushed aside the self doubt and slouching shoulders, added a brilliant smile and dragged her eyes up from his impressive shoulders to make direct eye-contact. “Heath?”
“No, I’m Kelly.”
“Kelly?” she parroted back. No wonder he’d looked so familiar. “Kelly Brannigan?”
The courage she’d mustered to greet him immediately soured into mortification. Her brother’s best friend. She’d had a crush on him back when his family had moved to town when she was a freshman in high school.
“Dee Dee? Dee Dee! Wayne’s little sister!”
