Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BIANCA
It’s a gorgeous, jaw-dropping day. The trees’ canopies are more vibrant after the cold snap last night, the mountains already donning their coats of many colors.
This has always been my favorite time of year—crisp as the inside of the perfect apple and full of color. Even the air carries a scent that I can only describe as fall, the sweet perfidy of decaying apples and leaves, seasoned with fir from our Christmas forest.
But I don’t have time to sit around and appreciate Apple Ridge at its peak. We’ve got too much to do.
First, Giovanni and I drop the baked goods off with Isabella and greet her guests at the B&B.
To my surprise, I actually know two of them—the bass player from Garbage Fire and his girlfriend.
My former patient doesn’t recognize Giovanni, but his girlfriend certainly does. It seems to put Giovanni on edge.
Afterward, we head to the apple barn, and as Theo warned us, dozens of people are already there for Giovanni.
They came for him, and he puts on a playful show of greeting them—as if he wanted to be ambushed. He promises no less than six people that he was not kidnapped, and when Eva St. Claire herself shows up, her phone already out and recording, he gives her a hug like they’re old friends.
“Thank you for pushing me to be an honest man,” he says ironically as he releases her and wraps an arm around me. “We’re grateful to have our love out in the open.”
She looks as sour as a Granny Smith apple as she observes the easy way he’s embracing me. “And how can your fans be sure you don’t have Stockholm syndrome?”
“Oh, I definitely do.” He winks at me. “When I came here, I thought I’d only stay a week, maybe two, but Bianca changed all that. If she’s my prison guard, I want to be locked up forever.”
Eva looks unamused, but after she lingers awhile and buys nothing, she eventually leaves.
The other fans seem to eat up our story, and some of them stick around for a long time. They buy apples, the nonnas’ baked treats, and Great-Uncle Theo’s pumpkins. All of them ask Giovanni to sign their pumpkins, and he does so with an obliging smile. He also poses for dozens of photographs.
I’ll admit, I’m probably a little too invested in my role as fake girlfriend.
When a woman grabs his ass during a photo opp, I chase her out of the pumpkin tent, telling her she’d better run.
Another woman tries to slip her number to him, but I grab it from her instead, tear it into confetti, and throw it at her.
Giovanni grins as he watched me deal with his stalkers, and after the second woman stalks out, muttering angrily but not daring to call me all the names she’d like to, he pulls me to him for a kiss.
It doesn’t feel like the one we shared outside last night—that kiss was for us, and this one is for an audience. But I’d be lying if I said I felt nothing. Hell, the brush of his lips seems to light a fire in me that I thought was snuffed out forever.
Giovanni’s fans aren’t the only ones who show up. Several people I know stop by to meet him too. It turns out Rhett wasted no time announcing that Giovanni has been crowned our town’s first ever Mr. October.
People want to know what it means, of course, and Giovanni obliges their requests, telling them the story of finding Sir Gala-Head in entertaining detail.
I watch him in amazement, marveling at the way he makes each person he greets feel heard and special.
He’d be a good boyfriend, a voice in my head whispers.
For someone other than me.
Not only is he much too beautiful for me to want to date, but he’s also not staying. Apple Ridge will only be a blip in his life, and it’s the entirety of mine.
Fiona, Giovanni, and I keep the pumpkin patch and apple barn open longer than usual, because Giovanni doesn’t want to turn anyone away, not when many of them have traveled for hours to see him. After we close up, Fiona counts the money in the register with an expression of disbelief.
“It’s more than we’ve made in the last two weeks combined,” she finally says.
I wrap my arms around Giovanni, laughing, and he whirls me around with a grin on his face. For a moment, the energy between us crackles like it did last night. But the moment ends, we go home, and it’s as if a shutter has closed within him.
We eat with the nonnas and Theo, but Giovanni barely says a word, and after dinner he goes straight up to his room and shuts himself in.
I’d hoped to talk to him more about his future as the Shirtless Chef—like dozens of other people—and ask about that interview he agreed to do, but he obviously needs space.
Still, and I’m ashamed of this, I take out my toy again, and let myself pretend he’s touching me in the dark of my room, with nothing but moonlight filtering in through the window.
When I report to work at The Rotten Apple the next day, I discover an enormous orange banner has been slung across the front desk.
Mrs. October works here.
Smiling jack-o’-lanterns bracket the words.
It takes me approximately five seconds to tear the banner down, and another five seconds to learn from my co-workers that Rhett, the bastard, came by yesterday and encouraged the residents to make it and hang it up. He won’t miss a single opportunity to torment me.
Luanne rolls up in her chair as I’m stuffing the banner into the trash can underneath the coffee carafes in the rec room.
“You’ve been holding out on us,” she says before taking another bite of the donut she’s carrying. She must have bartered for it, given she’s on a strict, sugar-limited diet, and the cafeteria doesn’t serve them.
I give the banner another shove. “You heard about Giovanni?”
She points to the tail end of the orange polyester as it disappears into the bin. “I made that banner.”
I laugh. “Why am I not surprised?”
She finishes the donut, her expression full of who me? innocence.
“And where’d you get that donut?”
“I got a box of them as a prize for making the banner.”
“So you sold me out to Satan? I’m going to have to confiscate the rest, Lu. You’re not supposed to be eating this much sugar. Emily would have my head.”
She grins back at me. “Too late. I had a few and gave the rest to Stuart.”
Stuart is the most popular bachelor in The Rotten Apple. Leave it to Luanne to edge out the competition with sugar.
She clucks her tongue and rolls her chair closer to me. “Now, are you going to tell me what in tarnation happened, or do I have to take out your toes? One minute you were refusing to kiss that beautiful boy, and the next you’re dating him? Not that I blame you.”
She’s obviously not going to back down, and telling Luanne is as good as telling everyone, so there’s no point in saying no.
Sighing, I say, “I have to start my rounds, but I might as well start with you.”
“That’s a relief,” Luanne says. “I was going to roll around after you all day until you told me everything.”
Of course she was.
Five minutes later, we’re closed up in her room. I’ve told her the whole story, more or less, while searching the room for any donuts she might have tucked away.
“Why does he care so much about saving your farm?” she asks as I remove a sugary donut from her dresser drawer with a scrunched nose. I set it on top of the battered piece of furniture and turn toward her.
“For Miles. They’re still close.”
She gives a knowing nod. “Yes, maybe he cares about Miles.”
“He definitely cares about Miles,” I say tersely. “We all do.”
“Of course, but that’s not the whole story. That boy wants to get into your pants.”
I put a hand on my hip and stare her down. “Luanne, you’ve been reading too many of those books with Emily.”
She wags a finger at me. “I was married over forty years, but that doesn’t mean my husband was the only man who ever seduced me.
We all saw that man playing with your hair on that live video like he thought it might turn into gold.
He wants you, and you’d be a fool not to enjoy him. You’re no fool.”
“You watched that?”
“We broadcast it onto the big screen in the game room. Helen’s got one of those fancy kitchen units. She made us all stovetop popcorn the way he does it on his program.”
I groan and lower onto her sofa, sinking into the soft, worn seat. “So everyone knows?”
“The girls and I have been watching his videos all weekend. It put all of the men into a jealous pout, let me tell you. Even in Stuart’s heyday, he didn’t have near as much hair as that Italian boy. Anyway, we’ve decided to form a new club.”
“Am I dreaming? Because this feels a lot like a nightmare.”
“Imagine being stuck in a wheelchair most of the time and forced to deal with a bunch of young people who don’t know their ass from their elbow.”
A laugh gushes out of me. “Someone’s feeling feisty this morning.”
She purses her lips and nods toward the dresser. “You found my drawer donut. I had big plans for that donut.”
“So did the ants. Look, Luanne, I’m grateful for your advice, but Giovanni thinks I’m using him to keep the farm going. He’s not happy about it.”
“So use him for something that will make him happy.”
I shake my head. “The last complication either of us needs is to start sleeping with the person in the room next door.”
“Sounds pretty uncomplicated to me. You won’t have to go far. If you really think about it, it’s the ultimate in convenience.”
“I think you should stick to romance in books.” I hesitate before adding, “Did Rhett say anything about the apple pie bake-off?”
She turns her eyes skyward. “As if he’d talk about it around me. That man’s been a sore loser his whole life, and he knows my pie is better than any of the Gallagher pies.”
“Giovanni’s needs to be better too,” I say, my heart thumping hard. I lower my voice. “He’s pushing Rhett to hold the bake-off at our farm, but you know how that man holds a grudge. I can tell Rhett’s got it in for Giovanni now. He wants to make him look like a fool.”
“I believe that,” she says with a grunt.
“Luanne, is there any chance you’ll give us your recipe? With the secret ingredient? I’d like nothing better than to upstage Rhett.”
Luanne’s apple pie recipe is the stuff of lore around here, almost as much as the story about the apple seeds and the bench at the peak of Gallagher Park.
They say she wouldn’t even share her secret ingredient with the chef who took over The Clean Plate Club, which is why it’s not as good now as it was before she retired.
She watches me for a long moment. “You’re going to leave that donut in here.”
“I see.” My lips twitch as I fight off a smile. “So you want Rhett to suffer and you want the donut. What else?”
Because there’s no way Luanne’s handing over her recipe this easily.
“I’m not giving you the recipe written on paper,” she says, her voice steady. “That’s not happening. If you want me to teach him, you bring the boy here. We’ll do it in Helen’s kitchen. She might just have a coronary, seeing him in person, but she’ll go out happy.”
I lift my fingers to my lips. “I don’t know how he’ll feel about that, Luanne. He’s a little squeamish about old folks’ homes.”
“He’d better get unsqueamish then, don’t you think? He’ll be spending a lot of time here if he wants to win that bake-off.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I vow.
“And you’ll consider enjoying your time with him?”
She pours plenty of insinuation into the words, and I roll my eyes, even though I feel a spark of excitement at the thought.
In some ways, she’s right. It would be easy to carry on with the man in the room next door, especially since most of the town already thinks we’re sleeping together. There are also a million ways it could go catastrophically wrong.
“I’ll think on it,” I say tightly. “Now, when was your last bowel movement?”
“So it’s like that, is it?”
“It is if you want me to leave that donut.”
My phone buzzes several times in my pocket. It’s my personal phone, and the messages are from Emily.
Just saw the update to the noticeboard.
They moved S’mores to next Saturday, after the scarecrow competition. They’re calling it the “First Fall Festival.” Every business in town can rent out tables. Mr. Campbell already said I can get one for us.
Get this, though, the s’mores making is a competition now, and the prize is a dinner made by the Shirtless Chef.
Did Giovanni seriously agree to that?
Of course he didn’t.
Fucking Rhett.