5. Lila
CHAPTER FIVE
Lila
“Two inches to the left.”
I cling to the top of a ladder with one hand and clutch a twelve-foot stretch of coral bunting with the other.
“Your left or mine?” I call down.
From the center of the Frosting Queen stage, Candi stands facing me, which means her left is my right, and I refuse to guess when I’m dangling off the top step of a ladder with an armload of bunting.
She’s dressed for festival setup in a pristine white romper and pale pink sandals that have remained untouched by the sand, paint, and dust covering the rest of our scrappy band of volunteers.
With a sigh, she tilts her head and plants one hand on her hip as though I’ve asked her to explain physics to a sea sponge. “The correct left.”
“Excellent clarification,” I grumble and move the decoration a bit to my left—a direction I choose entirely out of spite.
The Crescent Cove Summer Festival doesn’t officially open until tomorrow, but the beachfront park is already humming with activity.
White tents rise in rows along the boardwalk.
Mayor Wren and his husband wrestle folding tables across the grass while Neve strings lights between weathered wooden poles.
Mrs. Abernathy and Mrs. Delaney test the sound system on the main stage, sending a high-pitched screech across the festival grounds before they cut it off.
The air smells like salt and sugar and fryer oil from the food vendors testing their equipment.
Farther out, waves crash against the shore near the volleyball sand courts.
It should be impossible to be completely and totally annoyed in such a beautiful setting. To my mounting displeasure, Candi is determined to prove otherwise.
“It’s drooping!” she hisses. “The banner. Not your face. Although…”
“Wow, thank you,” I chime, giving her my best eat shit grin.
Being an only child to parents who were also only children, I’ve often wondered if this is how siblings or cousins behave—sniping at each other for no reason other than the fact that you just really dislike everything about the person but can’t seem to get away from them completely.
If so, I’d like to file a complaint with the universe.
I don’t want a sibling or a cousin. It can take Candi Honeycut and drop her back into whichever caldron of acid from whence she came.
“Drooping, Lila. Do you know what that means?”
I grit my teeth and reach higher.
The Frosting Queen stage occupies a prime patch of grass overlooking the beach and is decked out in a winner’s platform, microphone, and the throne Mrs. Abernathy insists we use every year and Candi insists on decorating.
This year, she outfitted it in ballet slipper pink silk roses and arranged her previous Frosting Queen sashes across the back. All of them have her name embroidered along the bottom in curling gold thread.
I tie the end of the bunting around a nail and take a few steps down the ladder to inspect my work. Coral, turquoise, and sunshine-yellow flags swoop across the front of the stage, matching the oversized paper flowers I spent the last five nights making.
I press my palms to my cheeks as I dismount and back away from the ladder. “It’s bright and summery and cheerful,” I beam. “It’s perfect!”
Pink light shimmers around my handmade decorations. The coral flags fade to whisper pink. The turquoise dissolves into rose gold. My pop of sunshine-yellow melts into a shade of champagne so pale it may as well be white.
“Oh, come on.” I glare at her. “We agreed on cheery summer sunrise colors.”
“They are cheery summer sunrise colors.”
“Maybe on planet Boring,” I mumble.
“The Frosting Queen competition is the centerpiece of the festival. It should look elegant. It’s not my fault your taste isn’t more refined.
” Her gaze drifts over my dusty denim shorts and the bright yellow tank top I bought because the color makes me happy.
“I have tried my best to help you. I practically spent all of senior year trying to improve your style, but it’s clear you just aren’t a learner, Lila. ”
“You spent all of senior year hosting a lunchtime workshop called If Lila Can Look Good, So Can You.”
“Right.” Candi flashes a pageant perfect smile. “That’s literally what I just said.”
My eye twitches. It hasn’t fully recovered from the frosting slip and slide she caused at Max’s. Neither has the rest of me.
Worse, I can still feel the breeze caressing my bare ass while Max Lark crouched directly behind me. The memory of the strangled noise he made sends a flutter through my stomach.
Not that that was the last time Max left me breathless.
For nearly two weeks, I’ve manufactured an impressive number of completely accidental encounters with Crescent Cove’s newest resident.
I delivered blackberry hand pies because I’d “made too many,” recruited him to haul tables and hang lights for the festival, and stopped him on the boardwalk to ask several urgent, judge-related questions about frosting.
Every interaction has technically been competition related.
Every interaction has also ended with me staring into his brilliant green eyes while suppressing my raging hormones.
At this point, I’m pretty sure Max knows what I’m doing.
I’m also pretty sure he likes it.
His fingers brush mine when I hand him things. He finds innocent reasons to move closer. And every time he inhales near my neck, his pupils swallow his green irises while a low, hungry rumble rolls through his chest.
No, brain. We are not lusting after the fox shifter.
Not with Candi feet away and in possession of the supernatural ability to sense weakness. Or maybe that’s bears… Either way, I’m not risking it.
“I hope you managed to recover from your fall over at Max’s.
” She smooths her fingertips through her sleek ponytail, lips twitching.
“Don’t worry. I’ve seen him many times since and explained how difficult first impressions can be for you.
It was a tough day, staying back to help him clean up every hard, sticky inch. ”
“I need a rehydration break,” I announce.
“Again?”
“Candi, you have to drink water to stay alive.” I frown. “I’m worried about your kidneys.”
She blinks at me. Before she’s able to fire off another cutting retort, I march toward the nearest table and retrieve the hot pink notebook and matching pen from my bag before heading to the hydration tent set up on the far side of the festival grounds.
I flip past my to do list, frosting flavor combinations, day job virtual-assistant passwords I should absolutely store somewhere more secure, and a rough sketch of Mr. Biscuits wearing the Frosting Queen tiara to a page with OPERATION: BUTTER UP THE JUDGE in blue glitter gel pen.
Clearly I’m in my bribery era, but this seems a little too incriminating.
I cross out JUDGE and replace it with FOX.
OPERATION: BUTTER UP THE FOX
I wince. That sounds dirtier.
Beneath the title, I’ve already plotted out my plan.
Establish friendly, neighborly relationship.
Demonstrate superior baking skills.
Make him forget cake-face-plant-foyer incident.
Do not flash ass. Again.
Win vote.
Defeat Candi.
I tap the tip of my pen against the page, thinking.
Do not climb fox shifter like a sun-bronzed tree.
Maybe that point should be higher…
I nod at Judith standing behind the refreshment table, setting up rows of paper cups.
“Going after Frosting Queen again this year?” She tilts her head, and her silver-streaked braid slides off her shoulder.
“Am I that obvious?”
“Determined, more like.” She hands me a cup and gestures toward the orange sideline cooler set up on the edge of the table. “Candi can’t win ‘em all.”
“Tell her that,” I sigh as I fill my cup with ice cold water.
“If they let members of the historical society vote, you’d win by a landslide.”
I smile at her as a masculine laugh drifts over from the sand court.
My muscles tense, cold water gushing over the lip of the cup. I know that laugh.
Slowly and stealthily, I creep around the side of the hydration tent. On the beach beyond it, a group of men gathers around the volleyball court, stretching and knocking the ball back and forth as they warm up.
And Max is with them. Shirtless. Sweaty. Sun-kissed.
His white-blond hair gleams beneath the sun. Sand clings to his calves, and his loose black shorts ride low on his hips. The lean muscles across his back shift as he lifts his arms, preparing to serve.
“Holy halibut,” I groan.
This is that scene from Top Gun but with a sexy fox shifter instead of pilots.
“What was that, dear?”
I jerk my attention away from the volleyball game and back to Judith.
“Oh, nothing.” I glance at Max again before returning my attention to her. “It’s just a beautiful day.”
Judith follows my gaze to the beach.
“Yes,” she hums. “It certainly is.”
Heat floods my cheeks, and I snap my notebook closed before she can read over my shoulder.
Max leaps. His palm connects with the ball, sending it sailing over the net hard enough that one of the firefighters dives face-first into the sand trying to return it.
The men cheer, and Max laughs again. Even from this distance I feel the low timbre of it hum between my legs.
Goodness gracious.
My insides liquefy. Without thinking, I lean one shoulder against the thin aluminum pole supporting one corner of the refreshment tent. But there’s no way this flimsy metal was designed to support the full weight of a grown woman. Particularly one actively melting from arousal.
The tent shudders as the pole shifts. I shift along with it, falling sideways as the pole slides out from its footing and lands on the sand. On the way down, my elbow slams into the refreshment table. Cups launch into the air around me like plastic coated confetti before they rain down on me.
The sideline cooler tips, and Judith and I grab for it. We both miss. The dispenser tips, the lid slides off, and ten gallons of ice water surges over the edge.