Unlikely You (Sapph in the City #5)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Bren

“Dammit,” I said under my breath as I stopped in front of my table at the Maine Marketplace. I’d been running late this morning and hadn’t arrived in time to have a nice quiet set up the way I preferred. Everything had gone wrong, starting with not being able to sleep last night. This morning I’d been out of coffee, my cat Arson decided to puke in the middle of the living room rug, and I’d found a hole in my favorite shirt. I could mend the hole, of course, but it was just one more thing that I’d have to deal with.

And then I’d arrived at the marketplace and they were here. The Holloways. The family who’d had the table next to mine for weeks now and it had been a nightmare every single day we’d had to share space.

I set my bag down and tried to block them out, but it was impossible.

The happy Holloways were singing. They were actually fucking singing. If this had been the first time I’d heard it, I would have stared in shock. But this wasn’t the first time, or even the fiftieth.

They were so loud, there seemed to be a million of them, but I’d worked out that there were two parents and four kids. Well, one adult, two teenagers, and one that was younger.

The Maine Marketplace ran Thursday through Sunday from April to October, so I didn’t have to see them all every single day.

Unfortunately, today was Saturday, and they were all here. Singing. Like the fucking Von Trapp family.

I shoved my noise-canceling headphones on my skull and went through my mental checklist. The marketplace was a temporary set up, so each night we covered our displays and every Sunday we carted everything out to bring it all back in on Thursday again. It was grueling, but it was one of the ways I made money, and it had been pretty lucrative for me the past few months.

My table was at the beginning of a row, right near one of the doors, which was a prime spot. If only I wasn’t next to the Holloway Apiary table.

I went about my business, making sure everything on my table was perfect, pulling out more book sleeves, stickers, bookmarks, and other bookish items that I made in my apartment and sold here, on my website, and on consignment at a few local shops.

The podcast I’d been listening to drowned out the singing from the table next to me ended and I checked the time. Doors would be opening soon, and I’d have to slip into my customer service persona. I rolled my shoulders and prepared. Selling at the marketplace was not only physically grueling, it was mentally exhausting too.

“Go ahead, I’ve got this,” a voice said, cutting through all the chatter and sounds of other sellers setting up their tables.

She was here. She was always here.

“You sure, darling?” The Mom asked. I knew her name, but I just thought of her as The Mom. The Mom, The Dad, and the kids—with one exception.

Honey. Her goddamn name was Honey . Honey, and her family kept bees. Adorable, right?

Not in my opinion. It was so cutesy it made my teeth hurt.

Honey was always here, wearing her little shirt with the Holloway logo on it. Honey and her bright smile and her cheerful energy that was enough to make me want to shake her and ask what the hell was wrong with her. Was she just like that? Was she on drugs? Was she in a cult? No one was that bubbly and sweet in real life. It wasn’t possible. I’d watched her too. Looked for any slip of that smile. Any moment where she dropped the mask and revealed how she really felt.

Never saw it. This woman must have had happiness injected into her perfect ass every morning. Oh, and it was a perfect ass. In addition to being the personification of sunshine and light, she was annoyingly gorgeous. Disgusting attractive. Nauseatingly beautiful.

Her body had curves and softness just where you wanted. Her hourglass was more than half full, and if she were anyone else, I would have already tried to get my hands on her and wrapped her legs around me.

And that was just her body . Her face was just as devastating. Full lips and blushing cheeks and long very light brown hair with golden (dare I say honey?) highlights. And her eyes. Her eyes were wide and you could never quite pin down the dominant color. Blue? Green? There were also flecks of brown and gold, the color on her driver’s license was probably listed as hazel. What an inadequate word for her eyes. They required something more. Something that was too many letters and hard to pronounce.

I did my best not to stare at her as she spoke to her younger siblings. Anyone could see from a quick look that she was the oldest. The Louisa. Wait, was that the oldest Von Trapp daughter? I couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. Honey was in charge when her parents weren’t around, and she was also kind of in charge when they were.

The Mom and the Dad were obviously the owners of the business, but they didn’t necessarily have the best-selling instincts. Either they were so wrapped up in each other that they ignored customers, or they spent all their time talking to one person who was only going to buy one jar of honey and probably never come back again.

Honey kept things moving smoothly, sharing her lovely smile and offering to answer questions and drawing people in who might not have drifted closer to the table. I’d heard her pitch about how her parents had founded the apiary at least a thousand times, but I still listened to the sincerity in her voice every time she told it again. You couldn’t help but be drawn in and more than one customer found themselves buying jars of honey or beeswax candles with a somewhat bewildered look on their face as if they hadn’t been in complete control of their actions.

Honey was like that. She wove a spell around people. She could sell ice in Alaska if she put her mind to it.

She was everything sweet and I couldn’t stand it.

My own sales skills left a lot to be desired, but I held my own. I managed to keep my business going even in a shitty economy which I was pretty fucking proud of. I didn’t have the option to fail. Unlike my neighbors, I didn’t have a family supporting me. I had no one.

My parents had pretty much ignored me my whole life and the minute I graduated from high school, they gave me moving boxes and told me to get out. I think they’d assumed that I would have fallen flat on my face and might have taken some satisfaction in that, but I’d been planning for the day they were going to kick me out since I was ten. I’d started working as young as I could, saving as much money as possible until I had enough to take care of myself until it was time to start college. In the three years (I’d expedited my bachelor’s degree to save money) it took to get my graphic design and marketing degree, I’d barely slept. Between paid jobs and internships, I’d managed to graduate with job offers already in my inbox.

I’d busted my ass in the corporate world as long as I could stomach it and worked on my real passion until I could justify quitting my job. That was just over a year ago and I was exceeding all of my meticulous projections.

Taking one last look at my display, I looked toward the doors and prepared myself for the next seven hours.

“Thank you so much, have a wonderful day,” Honey said, handing the paper bag over to the customer. It was stamped with the Holloway Apiary logo. Cute and rustic. I had to hand it to them, their marketing and branding was perfect. I wondered if the parents or if Honey was responsible. The parents didn’t seem like the type to worry about things like logos or brand cohesion, so I had the suspicion it was more her doing. The font was sweet and charming, with a little watercolor bee. I would have tweaked a few things, but overall, it looked nice.

I turned around and dropped my smile, massaging my jaw. I had a natural resting bitch face that I had to fight nearly every single day by forcing my face into a smile. Sometimes it even gave me headaches. One of my indulgences was a massage whenever my body decided I’d had too much. My massage therapist always did a lot of work on my face and jaw and that helped.

Honey probably didn’t need medical attention after smiling all day. Her face was built for smiling. Literally, because she had a dimple in each cheek. A matching set. And to add insult to injury, she was one of those people who smiled and made you want to smile in return. I’d seen people with straight-up frowns on their faces leave the Holloway Apiary table with grins.

What the hell did they put in that honey? They were always giving out these little sample sticks that people lost their minds over.

“Busy day,” Honey called over to me.

That was the other thing. She wouldn’t stop trying to be friends with me. No matter what I did, she always acted like we were besties. Or coworkers in the trenches together.

I let out a grunting noise that was supposed to make her smile falter and not want to talk to me anymore.

It didn’t, though.

“Would you like some tea? We’re brewing lavender chamomile today. It’s very soothing.”

Jesus fucking Christ. That was another thing they did. Gave away free cups of tea (dosed with liberal drizzles of their honey of course) to anyone who wanted one. Obviously, I knew that giving away free shit was a marketing tactic, but they gave away a lot of free shit.

They were just so… nice .

We were smack dab in the middle of the mid-afternoon lull that I absolutely hated. The energy ebbed and flowed with the crowds and I would have much preferred it to be busy as opposed to quiet with just browsers who were bored and weren’t going to buy anything.

All I wanted to do was sit down, but that could signal bad energy, so I kept standing and tried to ignore Honey. Her parents were who knew where and her siblings were either kidnapped, missing, or behind the table on their various electronics. I couldn’t blame them. If I was a kid, I wouldn’t want to be here on my summer vacation either. Why the hell weren’t they at camp? My parents had loved camp. An excuse to get rid of me for weeks at a time when they could mostly forget I existed?Sold.

Yet here they were, bored out of their skulls and only doing something when Honey goaded them. As an only child, I didn’t really get her dynamic with them, but it was pretty obvious that the mom and dad were kind of off in their own world and didn’t really concern themselves with much.

I had to give Honey respect for that, at the very least. Respect and nothing more. She still annoyed the living hell out of me.

“I’m fine,” I told her because I couldn’t not respond. I could be a bitch, but I didn’t want to be an asshole. Most of the time. I could be an asshole if the situation warranted and sometimes when it didn’t.

Honey just kept smiling and filled up a cup. “Suit yourself.”

I clenched my teeth and went to rearrange my display. Again.

At last, it was time to close down for the day. I rolled my tight shoulders and thought about a bathtub full of water and Epsom salts that was calling my name. Maybe I’d have an edible too. Or at least a half of one to take the edge off.

That would all have to wait until I’d eaten, fed Arson, and had caught up on some admin work. I did my best to take care of that earlier in the week, but it didn’t always happen. No matter how much I did, there was always more work that could be done.

At least Arson would be happy to see me, even if she was only happy that I was there to feed her.

I covered up my table and made sure everything was as it should be. The marketplace had excellent security, so I didn’t have to worry about leaving everything overnight.

The kids were all yammering at Honey that they were hungry and asking her what they were having for dinner. The parents had swanned in and out about an hour ago.

“We’re having taco lasagna, remember?” she said, fixing the ponytail of the youngest girl. One of these days I was actually going to learn their names.

“Why can’t we have pizza?” the only boy whined. The sound grated on my ears after hearing so many voices all day. I couldn’t wait to get home to my quiet apartment. Arson was a vocal cat, but that didn’t bother me.

“Because we had pizza on Friday night, remember? Pizza is for Fridays, buddy.” The boy didn’t look impressed as he crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.

“You love taco lasagna. And you can put tons of sour cream on it,” Honey said, putting her arm around him and ruffling his hair. There she was, working her magic again. Her voice was soft, but firm.

“Come on, Arch. It’ll be good.” She kissed his forehead and I could sense he really wanted to argue, but she’d mollified him somehow.

Arch. His name was Archer, I recalled. The girls were…Emily? No, something fancier than that. The other one they called Ellie, but that was a nickname for something probably. I really was bad at paying attention to them. To be fair, their names were ridiculous. Naming a baby Honey was all cute when she was young, but what about when she was an adult and had to get people to take her seriously? You couldn’t take someone named Honey seriously.

“See you tomorrow,” she called to me as she shoved the kids toward the door.

Ugh, I guess I’d have to.

Arson was inconsolable when I arrived home, but that was nothing new.

“Oh my god, I’m going to trip over you one day and fall down and die and then who’s going to feed you?” I asked as she wrapped herself around my legs and screamed her head off.

I set everything down and leaned down to pet her.

“Yes, yes, I missed you too. Even though you’re so loud. Please stop being so loud.” She answered by screaming again.

I filled her bowl and watched as she acted like she had never eaten in her life. I’d found her wandering outside a house that had burned down and been abandoned and she was orange, so naturally I had to name her Arson. She lived up to the name, adding other petty crimes to her rap sheet every single day.

Arson was an absolute pain in the ass, but I loved her anyway. Maybe even loved her more because of it. That cat didn’t let anyone tell her what to do. Not even me.

Once I fed the orange demon, I sorted out my own dinner, throwing some chicken tenders in the air fryer and tossing a frozen bag of pasta, sauce, and veggies into a pan and throwing it all together in a big bowl. Good enough.

Once I was no longer ravenous, I put my hair up into a messy bun and checked my emails and comments on social media. I did my best not to be on my phone during the days when I was at the marketplace. Seeing a salesperson with their eyes glued to their phone wasn’t a good look.

So that meant I had a million things to do when I got home and all I wanted to do was nothing. This job was still better than working in corporate arguing for hours about two different nearly identical sans serif fonts for the new website. Never again.

I waded through as much as I could stand before making myself a cup of tea, soaking in the tub for a while, and then curling up on the couch with Arson and a new ebook that I’d been saving. It was only a matter of time before I passed out and had to drag myself to bed, but as long as I could keep my eyes open, I was going to read.

Wild Saturday night.

They were singing again on Sunday. It was a good thing I wasn’t hormonal or else I might have said something not so nice. But I was just my regular annoyed self, so I clenched my teeth and did my best to block it out with my headphones and another podcast.

Could they just…not? For one day?

Honey was her radiant self, as always. Hair in a perfect ponytail, her Holloway Apiary T-shirt fitting her curves perfectly. No one should look that good in a generic T-shirt. Maybe she’d tailored it to fit her curves. Her shorts certainly were designed to make her generous hips and thighs drive me to distraction.

It wasn’t fair to have all of that so close to me for so many hours in a day.

I had to keep my eyes on my own table and focus. I wasn’t going to make any money ogling the beautiful beekeeper.