Page 54 of Like A Daydream
“That sounds familiar,” Danielle says, looking up at him.
“No wonder she was so pissed off,” Andrew says, laughing. “If I’m right, her brother is one of my Alternate Captains, and one of my best friends. She wanted the win as bad as we did. Wow, so many things make sense now.”
He tilts his head back against the boxes, and releases a deep breath. She sees, and feels, the tension leave him before he turns and looks at her. The look in his eyes tells her the conversation is over, but only for now.
“This is probably a weird time to ask this,” he says, “but JT, Ainsley, and I are going jet-skiing this weekend. Would you want to come?”
She studies him for a minute, pretending to think about it, before breaking into a smile.
“I’d love that, actually,” she says, “it’s been a long time.”
Andrew grins and, not for the first time, she wants to kiss him. To call him hers. To hold his hand and shout from the rooftops that he’s her man, and nothing else matters because she’d found him and he’d found her.
The way he’s looking at her, she thinks he might want the same thing, and she swears that he’s leaning in, and she can’t wait to tell Emerson –
The thought of her best friend makes her look away from him, standing up before he can even say a word.
How can she even be thinking this way when that loss is still so fresh?
She holds out a hand for Andy, pretending that she’s going to do anything to help him stand. He looks at her, confused.
“The customers await, Fisher,” she says, forcing a smile, “we can’t just leave them.”
He takes her hand, and she helps him up before heading out of the stock room and to the sales floor. She immediately jumps into a conversation with a regular who has come in, and tries to push any and all thoughts of kissing Andrew out of her mind.
If he thinks it’s weird, he doesn’t say anything, but she notices he intentionally avoids her for the rest of his shift. That is completely on her, because shutting down after someone with anxiety shares something that deep with you is not the right move.
She feels like she could kick herself for it, but she doesn’t get the chance to say anything else until the end of his shift. The store gets chaotic at around noon, and doesn’t ease off until he’s heading to the door.
“Andy,” she says as he makes his way out the door. He turns, eyes meeting hers. “I need you to know that I am not freaked out by what you said earlier.”
He releases a breath and a relieved smile lights up his eyes.
“Thank you for trusting me with it,” she adds. “I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Am I bringing coffee?”
“Duh.”
On Friday, Andrew stays late to help her close for the weekend, one of the rare ones that she takes off, even though the village is swarming with people for the Fourth of July. She promised herself that, this year, she would close so she could spend time with Harper, take her to the carnival in town, and then to the fireworks if she wanted to go.
She heads back to the stock room, a pile of returns in her arms, and her eyes land on a box that came earlier marked SOS. Strict-on-sale titles for Tuesday that would be illegal to put out on the sales floor until Monday after closing when she put them on the shelves, so they would be ready for release day.
The box, technically, isn’t even allowed to be opened, and if she does open it to put on a shelving cart, she’s supposed to cover them so that no one can see what books they are.
But sheknows, for a fact, that the latest cowboy romance book from one of her favorite authors is in that box and really, she owns the store, so she can’t be expected to justignorethat a potential five-star read is just… sitting in that box.
So, she does something that, in six years of running this place, she has never done.
She grabs a box cutter, slices through the tape, and opens up the box.
Ten copies ofRoped Instare back at her, just wanting to be read. She picks one up, careful not to crack the spine as she turns to chapter one and starts reading, Tripp Walker and his mail-order bride, Josie, bounding off the page and into her heart with every word she eagerly devours.
A throat clears behind her and she jumps, hiding the book behind her back and whirling around, eyes wide.
“Whatcha got, there?” Andrew says, smirking. “That box definitely says ‘strict on sale’ and for someone who’s a rule follower, you’re certainly breaking a bunch of them.”
“It’s nothing,” she says as he strides across the room toward her. “I was just checking the packing list.”
