Page 15 of Her Hometown Man
“Hello, Mrs. Dorsey.”
“You know, the actress who played me in the movie looked nothing like me. She was way too old, to begin with.”
Stifling what would have been a long and very beleaguered sigh, Gwen resisted the urge to point out the actress in question was a good fifteen years younger than the woman in front of her. “She wasn’t playing you, Mrs. Dorsey. You weren’t in the movie because you weren’t in the book.”
“Of course I was. She worked at the town hall and the front door of her house was painted blue and everybody knows I painted my front door blue because it matched my new car.”
Gwen was fairly certain she was already trying to find an agent for her completed manuscript when the Dorsey door was painted, but then she’d be stuck explaining how publishing worked and Mrs. Dorsey would only point out she could have added her in the revision stages. “A lot of people have blue doors.”
Mrs. Dorsey sniffed. “At least I got to live to the end. Poor Tony.”
She was still making thattsknoise and shaking her head when she walked away, and Gwen resisted the urge to abandon the cart and leave the store. People’s reaction to thinking they were in her book hadn’t been as bad over her last several visits as it had been in the months followingA Quaking of Aspens’ release, though she hadn’t gone into town a lot and her last trip had been for the funeral. But she hated it just as much.
“That’s why,” she said to Evie in a low voice. “That’s why I don’t like being here.”
“Gwen! Evie!” The female voice echoed through the store, making Gwen wince. There was no flying under the radar in this town.
But when she turned and saw Molly Cyrs practically skipping down the aisle toward them, her mood brightened. Molly had that effect on people. With her dark hair pulled into a long ponytail that bounced as she moved and a grin that lit up her face, it was almost impossible not to feel instantly happier the second she entered a room. “Molly!”
After Mallory’s lifelong best friend had hugged each of them, she stepped back and held up her hands. “I’d heard you were back and I was going to stop by sooner with a welcome-home pie, but you guys know I make the absolute worst pies, and my mom’s been really busy and I didn’t want to bring shame upon all future generations of my family by showing up with a store-bought pie, so...hey, welcome home!”
It was on the tip of Gwen’s tongue to ask what was keeping Mrs. Cyrs—who loved to bake—so busy she couldn’t make a pie, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question. Molly’s parents owned the Cyrs Funeral Home, so she wasn’t sure she actually wanted to know why they were busy.
“We should have a girls’ night out,” Molly continued. “I mean, it won’t be super fun until your bar opens because we don’t actually have a bar yet, except at the restaurant, and the manager shushed me for laughing too loudly.”
“That was at least six years ago,” Gwen pointed out.
“There’s no statute of limitations on trying to stifle my joy, Gwen.” Molly sighed. “The important thing is that we get together before you two leave again.”
“Definitely,” Evie said. “And soon. There’s no reason we can’t have a little fun while we’re in town, right, Gwen?”
Gwen thought of the manuscript still sitting unopened on her laptop and sighed. “No reason at all.”
“And if you need help working on the carriage house, just let me know,” Molly said. “I can usually sneak away for a while as long as nobody...well, you know.”
“You might regret saying that when it comes time to paint all the walls,” Evie said, and they both laughed. Gwen smiled, but she had a hard time mustering up their level of humor. She hated painting, and it was a reminder of just how long the list was of things they had to check off before she could get back to Vermont where she belonged.
By the time they’d spoken to several more people they ran into—thankfully none of whom seemed to care aboutA Quaking of Aspens—and bought the groceries they were after, Gwen was exhausted. She wasn’t used to that much social interaction all at once, so after they’d gotten home and put everything away, she told Evie she was going for a walk.
She didn’t, though. Instead, she went to the carriage house and made her way up the stairs. It felt a little like hiding, but she just wanted to chip away at a mindless task while she thought about her book on the off chance a scene would pop into her head. Sorting through decades of family debris cluttering the future office space would be perfect.
All she had to do wasnotthink about Case.
Case wasn’t even sure where to start. Despite his reassurances to the Sutton women that it wasn’t so bad, the carriage house was in pretty rough shape. The actual brewing area in the cellar was perfection, of course, since that had been David’s and Lane’s priority, but they’d left the rest of it a mess.
The first thing they’d need was a worktable, he thought. Standing in the middle of the open space with a coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other and no place to set them down wasn’t ideal. The steps to what would eventually be the office seemed to be the only place to put them, so he walked over and dropped the clipboard onto a stair before taking a sip of the coffee. He probably should have brought an entire thermos if he wanted to get through this.
That’s when he heard the noise upstairs.
Somebody was up there and he knew it wasn’t Lane. Case had come straight over after work, but Lane had to do a few errands first. A glance over his shoulder told him Boomer had opted to stretch out on the granite step right outside the open door rather than join him inside, and he’d be content to stay there awhile, so Case started up the steps to see what was going on.
He wasn’t sure who or what he’d expected to find, but it wasn’t Gwen covered in grime and attacking the corner of the room with a broom. Apparently she was just moving boxes around and cleaning the floor for some reason. And she wasn’t even using a good shop broom, but a regular kitchen model.
“It would probably be faster to use a Shop-Vac, you know,” he said, and she whirled to face him, hand going to her chest.
After she’d glared at him and made some kind of growling sound that probably translated roughly todon’t you ever do that again, she went back to sweeping. “I do know that, but I can’t even hear myself think with one of those running. It’s less about the cleaning and more about the mindless chores so I can think about plot and whatnot.”
“So what’s next in your plot?”
