Page 64 of The Fiancée Farce
Never mind niceties. Gemma reached out, tangling her fingers with Tansy’s atop the table, feeling oddly grounded when Tansy squeezed her hand. “We met at Tansy’s bookstore. Belltown Books. It’s a great store. It used to be a silent-era film exchange in the forties, right?”
Any opportunity she could take to plug Tansy’s bookstore was a worthwhile one.
“Right.” Tansy nodded, smiling. “It’s been in my family for years. We host local authors for signings and book launches and we’ve got a number of book clubs. But we’re always looking to expand our reach.”
“Great. So you met at a bookstore.” Ronnie scribbled something inside her notebook. “Was it love at first sight?”
Gemma snorted, earning curious looks from Tansy and the reporter.
Well, shit. She coughed into her fist and shrugged. “Love at first sight is sort of trite, isn’t it?”
Ronnie gestured for her to go on. “Could you expand on that?”
“For starters, I don’t believe in it. It’s kind of bullshit, you know?” Great, she’d just said the wordbullshiton the record. Fucking beautiful. “You don’t know someone at first sight, so how can you love them?” She reached for her drink, taking a sip. “I know some people think it’s romantic—eyes locking across a room, calling it love—but personally, I think it’s cheap, conflating love with lust. In order to love someone, you need to know them. Know them at their best and their worst. You can’t possibly glean that from a single glance.”
“It wasn’t love at first sight,” Ronnie said. “Got it.”
“It wasn’t,” Gemma confirmed. She wasn’t going to lie. But everything she had said, it didn’t do justice to the moment her eyes had locked with Tansy’s. “But I was sharply curious.”
A blush crept across the crests of Tansy’s cheeks. She smiled down at the table, running a finger through a drop of water atop the wood.
“And you, Tansy?” Ronnie asked. “Was it love at first sight for you?”
“Um, no. It was a little more complicated than that.”
Gemma muffled a laugh against her palm.
“Care to expand?”
“I—okay. I had seen Gemma on the covers of plenty of romance novels.”
“Right.” Ronnie nodded, taking notes. “Your modeling career.”
She detected a hint of derision.
“My modeling career, yes. Had to pay the bills somehow.”
“Sure.” Ronnie scoffed under her breath.
Gemma frowned.Bitch.
“Anyway, I recognized her. So I was a little...”
“Starstruck?” Ronnie supplied.
“Um, no. I wasn’timpressed.” Tansy’s flush deepened. “I wasn’t unimpressed, either. I was more dumbstruck than anything. Kind of struggling to believe my eyes. And when she... you know, asked me out, I thought it was too good to be true.”
“So you thought it was too good to be true.And?”
“And... Gemma was persistent.”
“What can I say?” She laughed. “I know a good thing when I’ve found it.”
“So you didn’t take no for an answer?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Tansy frowned, gaze flickering to Gemma, frantic and fleeting.
“What was it like, then?”
