Chapter 3
Presley
Sunrise on the lake was a thing of beauty, and I had a front-row seat to it. Every day for the rest of my life, if I wanted it.
I’d woken up at quarter till five, even though I had no reason to be awake until West and his crew arrived. Old habits died hard.
New habits were going to take a bit.
Like sleeping. Relaxing. Plus filling my waking hours with…something.
I’d texted Chloe, my best friend since business school, and asked her if she could get away for breakfast at the Dragonfly Diner.
Breakfast was something. It would fill an hour.
Baby steps.
Just after I was seated at a booth along the front windows with a view of the heart of town, Chloe came in, glanced around, greeted Patrick—one of the servers—by name, and headed toward me.
I stood and hugged her.
“God, it’s good to see you,” I said.
Chloe laughed. “I just saw you Saturday. Because you live in town now,” she said with pronounced enthusiasm.
“I’m still getting used to that,” I said as we slid into opposite sides of the booth.
“Good morning, ladies.” Patrick came up to our table with a coffeepot. “Do we want coffee?”
Chloe flipped her mug over. I eyed the pot, knew it would be mediocre, and turned my mug upright anyway.
“Yes, please,” I said in case my face had revealed my thoughts about standard diner coffee. Normally I liked my coffee black, but that was when it was the good stuff and I wanted to savor the true flavor. “Could we get real cream too?”
“You bet, sugar. Do you need some time with the menu?” Patrick asked as he poured.
Chloe looked at me in question.
“Those waffles…” I said.
“Dragonfly Dust,” Chloe said.
“Those. Please.”
“That’s really why you moved to town, isn’t it?” Chloe said.
“Definitely a perk,” I said.
“Oh, new resident?” Patrick asked. “Welcome to Dragonfly Lake. The waffles are a marvelous reason to move here. What can I get you, Chloe?”
She hesitated.
“You want the waffles,” I said, knowing my friend’s sugar tooth.
“We’re celebrating your move. I want the waffles.”
“You got it.” Patrick hurried off to another table.
The place was filling up fast, despite it being barely six thirty.
I eyed my mug, knowing the java was subpar. I’d had it before. With a sigh, I glanced around for Patrick to see if the cream was on its way. The bowl of artificial creamers on the table… No.
“You’re such a snob,” Chloe said, laughing.
“I like good coffee.”
“Bronson’s spoiled you.”
“I miss Bronson’s.”
The indie artisan coffee shop was across the street from my condo in Nashville.
Chloe had lived two floors below mine until she and Holden hooked up, and Bronson’s had been our daily routine for years.
I’d kept it up even after she moved out.
Bronson’s specialized in craft-brewed coffee.
Once you started drinking the high-quality stuff on the daily, it was impossible to go back to standard fare.
“Is there really not one place to get”—I lowered my voice—“even halfway decent coffee in this town? Like, even somewhere off the square? Anywhere?”
She tilted her head and shot me a look that said, Sorry but no. “You have money. Go online and buy the nicest home coffeemaker you can find.”
“I’m on it. At least the waffles are going to be amazing.”
“Nothing compares,” Chloe said as Patrick delivered an individual-sized cream pitcher.
“Your waffles just came up,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
We thanked him, and I poured cream into my coffee.
“Where’s Sutton this morning?” I asked as we waited. “I figured you’d bring her with you.”
“Holden’s taking her to Quincy’s at her usual time. It’s hard to pivot with a one-year-old. She was just waking up when I left.”
“I didn’t think about that when I invited you out. I’m confusing Mom Chloe with Single Chloe. Sorry about that. It’s okay to tell me no.”
“I didn’t want to tell you no. Holden can handle it just fine today. You sounded a little…desperate in your text.”
“You can’t hear a text.”
“You know what I mean. Something about the please tell me you can save me from myself and meet me for breakfast.”
“Ah,” I said. “I might’ve felt a little desperate.”
Patrick returned with our waffles, saving me from having to say more.
“You’re amazing,” I told the server who was probably in his late forties.
“All I do is deliver,” he said dramatically. “These waffles speak for themselves.”
Dragonfly Dust Waffles were thick Belgian waffles that had blue, green, and purple sprinkles in the batter.
On top was a generous tower of homemade whipped cream and more sprinkles, these in the shape of tiny dragonflies in the same colors.
They were a thing of culinary beauty, a treasure at this unassuming diner.
Almost enough to make up for the blah brew in my cup.
Once Patrick left us, I poured pure maple syrup on my sugar-laden waffles and took my first bite. The sensory pleasure of sweetness on my tongue was instant.
“Between this and donuts from Sugar, I might become diabetic before I hit thirty-six,” I said.
Chloe laughed. “They do have eggs here.”
I made a face that showed my opinion of eggs, particularly as I dipped my next bite into the thick, fluffy whipped cream.
“So what’s up with the desperation?” Chloe asked.
My waffle-induced endorphin rush faded. I chewed and stared at my food, organizing my thoughts.
“Things sort of caught up with me over the weekend,” I said. “I finally got all the moving details and real estate stuff taken care of. I’ve been consumed by that for the three weeks since I quit, you know?”
“You basically overhauled everything in your life in three weeks,” Chloe said empathetically, nailing the issue like only my best friend could. “And now you have time to think.”
“What have I done, Chloe? Like, I threw away more than a decade’s worth of career. All my life goals were tied up in that job. Now suddenly I have this blank slate, and I don’t know what to do with it.”
“You said you don’t want to go back to investment banking, right?”
I let the idea roll around in my head while I ate another bite.
The thought of starting a new position with a different company doing what I’d done since grad school…
There was a part of me that missed the challenge, the thrill of success, the sense of accomplishment, but… “Honestly? It sounds exhausting.”
“I’ve thought you were nearing burnout for the last year or two.”
“You might be right. I didn’t see it while I was in it. I didn’t have time to see it.”
“You didn’t have time to do anything but work, eat carryout, and hit Bronson’s every day.”
“Fact. I thrived on it for so long…”
“But you’re human, and that job required a superhuman effort always. Plus your boss…”
I made a face. “Toad.”
Rob Landers was the one part of my career I’d detested. He was twenty years older than me, had been in the industry forever, had been good at the job in his day, but he sucked as a manager. Throw three parts barely veiled misogyny into the mix, and I’d been at a slow boil for the past few years.
From the day he’d become a partner and been put in charge of my division, my love for the job had slowly leaked out of me.
The final straw came when I’d expressed interest in becoming a partner.
He’d assured me I had no chance, even though I was the youngest VP in the firm’s history and had the numbers to back up my competency.
Normally when someone told me I couldn’t do something, I put my head down and proved them wrong, but between years of friction with Landers and other old-schoolers in the industry, the extreme demand of the career itself both in terms of time and stress, and my doctor’s advice, his condescension had snapped something in me.
I think I’d been working toward making changes in my life on some level for months. He merely fast-forwarded me.
“You were a badass superhuman investment banker for more than a decade. You gave it everything,” Chloe said with admiration in her tone. “But I don’t know how much longer you could’ve sustained that, even without the toad. You haven’t had a life since undergrad.”
She didn’t lie. To succeed at that career, you had to eat, sleep, and breathe it. To succeed as a woman, you had to give up the sleep part and basically hustle for eighteen hours a day.
“It’s time for you to have a life,” she continued. “Maybe meet a guy, fall in love, start a family.”
I scoffed. “Should I take cooking lessons first so I can be a good housewife?”
Chloe laughed. “I’m getting you an apron for your birthday.”
“You know me better than that.”
“I know you’re not the relationship type or the ‘stay at home and look at the lake all day’ type.”
“And I’ve been at home looking at the lake for two days straight now.”
“Thus the desperation.”
“I’m losing my mind.” I dared a drink of coffee, then chased it with a bite of waffle.
“Didn’t the remodelers start yesterday?”
“They did. Demolition is loud. I spent most of the day outside. I even planted flowers.”
Her brows went up as if she couldn’t believe it.
“Twenty pots,” I told her. “I set them around the deck and along the steps going down to the water. They’re gorgeous, but next time I’m hiring a landscaper.”
“Gardening is supposed to be relaxing. Therapeutic.”
“I’m not the right girl for that. It turns out I don’t like dirt.”
Chloe laughed. “That’s an important thing to learn about yourself, I guess. Cross landscaper off the list of possible new careers.” She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “So demo. Remodeling. Have you seen West yet?”
I tried to hold back a smile, but the thought of him made that difficult. “Eight a.m. yesterday, he was the one at my door.”
Chloe’s brows rose. “Not Levi?”
“Levi had an emergency of some kind, so it was just West at first, then three of the other guys joined him with all the equipment.”
“And?”
“They demoed half the main floor down to studs. The kitchen is today.”
“Yay, demo,” she said dryly. “You know what I really want to hear about. Or rather who.”
I finished the food in my mouth. “I’m unreasonably attracted to him,” I said in as unbothered a voice as I could manage. Inside, I was bothered just thinking about him. “That guy-in-a-tool-belt thing? It’s for real.”
“Yeah,” she said, making it a two-syllable word with the tone of du-uhh.
“He’s not my type,” I said. “Just like you said at the party.”
When I’d spotted West Aldridge at Rowan and Chance’s gender-reveal party, something had happened to me. There was almost an actual click of lust locking into place. I’d never experienced anything like it before. Not on that level.
“And yet?” Chloe prompted.
I shook my head. “He made it clear we’re business only.”
She tilted her head. “Understandable. Your project is big. He’ll probably be in your house for weeks.”
I couldn’t deny the way my blood heated at that thought. “I might’ve had a handyman-nailing-me fantasy or two last night,” I said, grinning. “Another reason I need something to occupy my mind and my hours. In his mind, I’m his client and nothing else.”
“Rowan said he’s all about his little girls and doesn’t do relationships.”
“I wouldn’t want a relationship, just a mutual relieving of tension. A satisfaction of curiosity. I doubt we have anything in common.”
Chloe shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll get to know more about him if he’s spending eight hours a day in your home.”
“Possibly,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure. We’d talked a few times yesterday, but it was only about the project. That and I’d given him the garage code so they could get in whether I was home or not. “Ideally I won’t be sitting around at home all day every day.”
“Which brings us back to, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?”
I shoved the last big bite of waffle into my mouth, hoping the sugar rush would compensate for the unpleasantness her question aroused.
“I used to like that you were so direct,” I grumped once my food was gone.
“You still like that I’m direct.” Chloe pointed at me with her fork. “Sitting around, planting flowers isn’t doing it for you. What would? A part-time job somewhere like the boutique? A gym membership and a personal trainer?”
“No and no,” I said easily, though I should definitely consider the trainer.
“What about finance stuff? Could you open a personal financial-services business?”
I had the background for that, but advising individuals on saving and investing sounded like torture. Some people were made for nurturing, hand-holding, and teaching, which would be a lot of what a small-town financial-services business would entail, but that wasn’t me.
I’d gone into finance to make big money. I didn’t care if people judged me for that. It was who I was, who my background had made me, and I wasn’t going to apologize for it. But I was going to be honest with myself about what called to me.
I made a gagging sound as I automatically reached for my mug, then stopped myself from taking a drink.
Chloe laughed. “Okay, so we know what you don’t like. What do you like?”
“Coffee,” I said, staring at the butterscotch-colored, diluted joe in my mug. “Good coffee.”
“So you said,” she said indulgently. “Talk to Monty, the owner here. Suggest some better coffee.”
My mind was off and running in a different direction. “What if I opened my own coffee shop instead?”
Anyone else might not’ve taken me seriously, but my business-school bestie took the baton and went. “You’ve got the money, the coffee knowledge, and the business background.”
I sat up straighter, my sad mug forgotten, and met Chloe’s gaze. Without words, we shared the understanding that this could be exactly what I did for my next career.
“Wow,” she said.
“Wow. I need to think through everything, but I haven’t felt sparked like this since I quit. Since before I quit.”
Patrick slid the bill tray onto our table and kept on going, as if he sensed there was something big going on with our discussion, and he didn’t want to interrupt.
Distractedly I pulled out my card and set it down to cover the bill.
Chloe took her purse out, but I waved her away.
“I’ve got this one. You can get the next time. Chloe!” Excitement zipped through me at the coffee shop prospect.
Our eyes met again, and my brows shot up. It was all I could do to sit still.
“I have to get to work, but tell me what I can do,” she said. “I can help you research or taste test or whatever.”
I laughed, because this was sort of crazy and yet sort of awesome.
“I’ll definitely keep you posted.”
By the time I walked out the diner door, I was absolutely buzzing with possibilities.