Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Holiday
“Ooh, what about this guy?”
I didn’t bother looking up from my task of unboxing a shipment of new books to acknowledge the phone my friend Naomi was waving in front of my face.
“Pass.”
“But you didn’t even look,” she said with a pout.
I was sure the man in the picture she was so eagerly trying to show me was handsome—Naomi had good taste, and all that—but it didn’t matter if he was the sexiest man on two legs. “I don’t need to look. The answer is always going to be no.”
She let out a disgruntled huff, dramatically tossing herself back in the plush chair closest to where I was currently working. “You’re no fun at all. Online dating is totally safe.”
“It’s not the online part of it that I’m opposed to.”
Ever the drama queen, Naomi crossed her eyes and blew out an obnoxious raspberry. “Boo. You’re no fun,” she declared as she clicked out of the dating app she’d been scrolling through and shifted in the chair to stuff her phone into her back pocket.
I smiled, unable to help myself. Naomi Sheppard’s craziness was just one of the reasons we all loved her so damn much.
Gypsy liked to joke that Naomi’s wild streak was a gift from Karma to test her father, Lincoln.
And to hear her mother, Eden, tell it, she was responsible for every single gray hair on her father’s head.
“Shouldn’t you be at work right now?”
She lifted her shoulder in a careless shrug and threw a leg over the arm of her chair like she was settling in.
“Ugh. I’m taking a mental health break. If I don’t, I’m liable to beat one of those pains in my ass senseless.
” Her eyes came to mine. “No offense. I know your brother is technically my boss.”
Naomi had made a career at her father’s company, Alpha Omega, coming in to wrangle the men who worked there when the previous woman who held her position, Roxanne, retired a few years back. When Lincoln decided to retire for good, he’d handed the business over to my oldest brother, Rhodes.
“No offense taken. I grew up with him, remember? So I know exactly how punchable his face can be at times.”
She pointed her finger at my face. “See? You get it. Now, back to this whole dating thing . . .”
My head fell back on my shoulders as I groaned up at the ceiling. “Are we really back on this? I told you, I’m taking a break from dating.”
“Come on. You can’t just give up because of a couple lousy relationships.”
I snorted, shooting her a look of disbelief. “A couple lousy relationships? Are you forgetting about Gregory?”
She pulled her lips into a wince. “Okay yeah. He wasn’t so great.”
“Not so great? Naomi, he stole my underwear! And not for the reason you’d think.” My brows pulled into a frown. “He stretched four pairs to hell. And they were my expensive lacy ones too. Not laundry day panties.”
As much money as that jerk had cost me in replacement undergarments, he still wasn’t the worst. I’d dated men who gaslit, attempted to cut me off from my family and friends, verbal abusers, and rounding out the suck-fest was my last boyfriend, Blane, a manipulative cheater.
If there was a loser out there, it seemed they were drawn right to me. And my radar on spotting them was seriously defective.
As if reading my mind and knowing exactly who I was thinking about, Naomi let out a noise of disgust. “Ugh, Blane.” She said it with the same passion someone might say Ugh, I stepped in dog crap.
“Should have known the bastard was evil, based on his name alone. I mean, who’s named Blane?
What is he, the high school bully in every eighties movie ever made? ”
I really wished she didn’t have a point, but sadly, she was right.
I thought I’d been so careful when it came to him.
Having been burned one too many times in the past, I’d insisted on taking things slow when we were starting out.
He’d been so supportive and understanding that he tricked me into thinking I’d finally landed a good one, a man I could have a future with.
Then I showed up at his house one evening with chicken soup because he told me he was sick.
Turned out, it wasn’t so much the flu he’d come down with as another woman going down on him.
The door to the shop was pushed open right then, setting off the gentle bell. I glanced up with a smile that quickly fell from my face at the sight of who’d just walked into my sanctuary.
“Holiday, hi,” the venous woman chirped way too brightly.
The sound of my name coming out of her mouth was grating, like nails on a chalkboard.
The only people who used my full name were those who barely knew me.
And this vicious bitch, of course. “Rebecca,” I offered flatly, my tone void of any emotion.
I swallowed down the acidic taste in my mouth and forced on a professional mask. “Welcome to One More Chapter.”
She looked around the space I’d put so much time and effort into. “I’ve never been in here before. It’s just so . . . quaint.”
“Wait. Rebecca?” Naomi shot up on her seat, twisting around to give the woman a vicious glower. “You mean the skank you caught on her knees, going to town on that Vienna sausage your ex called a dick?”
I did a terrible job of masking my snort, but did my best to school my features and not laugh at my friend’s apt description. I waved her off, silently miming at her to zip her lips before shifting my focus back to the Vienna sausage lover. “What can I help you with, Rebecca?”
She wiped the vicious narrow-eyed glare she was casting Naomi off her face and pasted on a saccharine sweet smile that was fake as hell as she looked back to me.
“I was just stopping in to see if you had a section on wedding planning.” She held out her hand and wiggled her fingers, causing the diamond on her ring finger to sparkle.
My stomach dropped at the sight of it. Not because I missed him or wanted him back—Rebecca was welcome to the cheating, lying piece of crap—but because, once again, I hadn’t been enough for a ring. Or even monogamy, for crying out loud.
“Blane and I are thinking an outdoor ceremony next fall. You know, when the leaves are starting to turn. It’ll be so beautiful.”
I made it my mission in life to never hate anyone. Hate was like a poison in your bloodstream. But damn this woman was making it really hard.
“But looking around . . .” She trailed her gaze through my store, curling her top lip up like she found it lacking. Bitch. “I’m not sure your little shop will have what I’m looking for.”
“You little—” I acted fast, reaching out and placing my hand on Naomi’s shoulder and shoving her back down in the chair before she could pounce and scratch Rebecca’s eyes out.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I lied through my teeth. “Maybe you’ll have more luck in Grapevine or Hidalgo.” Any of the surrounding towns outside of Hope Valley would work. “But it was nice of you to stop in.”
When Naomi pushed to her feet again I didn’t bother trying to stop her. I’d never been good with confrontation, so I was all too happy to leave it to her to usher that she-devil out of my store.
“All right, you human blister, that means it’s time to go.”
Rebecca let out an affronted huff. “Excuse me?”
Naomi continued forward, waving her arms and forcing her to stumble backward toward the door.
“You heard me. And just a heads up, you might want to find a new person to do your Botox and filler before the wedding. Your face is starting to look like a Barbie doll after thirty seconds in a microwave.”
I couldn’t hold my giggle in that time, not that I wanted to. As soon as the door closed behind the wretched woman, I blew out a breath of relief. “Thanks for that.”
Naomi turned back to me and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re too nice,” she said in a scolding tone.
I moved back to the boxes of books I still had to unpack and display. “I’m not sure there’s such a thing as too nice.”
Naomi returned to her chair, snatching up one of the copies of the latest romance release I had set up on a special endcap.
She flopped down into the seat, sitting sideways with her legs dangling over the arm as she fanned through the pages.
“There is when you smile at the vicious bitch your ex cheated on you with instead of snatching the gaudy ring off her finger and chucking it down the storm drain.”
“It was gaudy, wasn’t it?” I jabbed my finger at her. “And if you break that spine, you’re buying that book.”
“Already planned on it. Mom’s reading it for their book club and wouldn’t stop going on about it so I figured I’d see what all the hype was about. And don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing. You’re trying to change the subject.”
I blew out a sigh. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m trying to run a business here. I can’t just go around alienating anyone who makes me mad. Besides, you know confrontation makes me break out in hives.”
Naomi rolled her eyes, but there was no heat behind it. “Fine,” she relented grudgingly. “Act like a responsible adult, see if I care.”
I shot her a grin. “Thanks for the permission.”
“But I still think you need to set up a dating profile.” Her hand shot into the air to silence me before I could argue.
“At the very least, you need to get laid, because Blane cannot be the last guy you had sex with.” She fake shivered like the idea repulsed her, and honestly, given how things had ended between us, I got it.
If I could go back in time and undo it all I would.
As it was, I’d considered smacking my head into a wall a couple of times in the hopes a brain injury would erase the memory.
“Look, I’m not going to find some random guy to sleep with just so my loser ex is no longer my last.” I wasn’t opposed to a one-night stand or a casual hookup—not that I’d ever had either—but I wasn’t going to search one out either.
“That seems a little desperate. I’m off men for the foreseeable future, and that’s that. ”
Naomi gave me a scrutinizing look. “You know, karma’s going to get you for that one. For all you know, the next time that door opens it could be the future Mr. Holiday Bradbury waltzing in, and you’d miss out.”
My eyebrows lifted toward my hairline. “The future Mr. Holiday Bradbury?”
She lifted a single shoulder in a shrug. “I’m progressive like that.”
I let out a laugh at my friend’s ridiculousness. “Whatever. I can assure you that the future Mr. anything won’t be walking through my door. And I’m fine with that.”
I wasn’t sure if she’d called on karma personally, but at that very moment, the door swung open, setting off the bells, and the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen—in real life and in pictures—came walking into my shop.
“Holy shit,” Naomi whispered, her eyes nearly bulging out of her skull. “I love when I’m right.”