11. Astrid
ASTRID
I meet Nora on the steps to City Hall. She’s got a coffee cup from Perks and Rec in hand and a huge I-just-said-goodbye-to-Alex glowy smile on her face.
I want to roll my eyes, but I can’t. I love that my brother is in love and proved that he’s intelligent and has amazing taste by falling for Nora. She’s amazing and, more, she’s amazing for my brother.
“Good morning!” The perky brunette beams at me. “How are you today?”
Uh-huh, she’s using that knowing tone that suggests she thinks I should be especially happy today because Declan showed up last night.
“Arranged marriage,” I remind her.
Nora knows even more details about just how unusual and unreasonable the whole thing is from Alex. He felt, rightly, that she should understand the eccentricities and history of the family she’s getting involved with.
“I know,” Nora says as she bounces up the steps to the front of the building. “But now he’s here, and the way he was looking at you last night? Whew!”
I trip on the top step, but she’s in front of me and doesn’t notice. How was Declan looking at me last night? And it was so obvious that other people noticed? What does that mean? It doesn’t matter anyway. But still… what does that mean?
Nora pulls the heavy wood and glass door open. “Doesn’t matter how it started. It only matters how it’s going, right?”
“Wrong,” I say, following her into the building. “That’s why I stopped by. I need to see what the event calendar is like this week and potentially… tweak it.”
“Tweak it?” She doesn’t act concerned by the suggestion, just curious.
Nora is the queen of adjusting on the fly. Being in charge of pretty much every social and community event in this town, she has to be. You never know what’s going to happen. Or how things are going to go off the rails.
She leads me to her office. It’s the first door on the first floor for multiple reasons.
Primarily because she and a myriad of other people are in and out all day, often with paraphernalia ranging from beach balls to toolboxes to cooking grills.
Being the first stop inside the building keeps the traffic and noise away from the other offices.
The Parks and Rec Department in Rebel also acts as a de facto welcoming committee and communication hub.
If something is happening in this town, this office knows about it.
That includes festivals and holiday events, of course, but also anniversaries, birthdays, hospitalizations, even people who are just having a hard time.
They know when someone needs their garbage disposal fixed, when someone has extra zucchini in their garden, and when someone needs some zucchini for a recipe.
It’s actually a beautiful system in a charming, big-hearted, loving place.
And now they’re going to help me make sure Declan absolutely does not want to stay.
“Hi, Astrid,” Sutton Moore, Nora’s assistant and the local dance teacher, who also choreographs everything for the hockey teams, greets from her desk inside the colorful, crowded offices of the Parks and Rec department.
“Hi.” I give her a smile. Sutton is just as sunny and sweet as Nora, but in a quieter, gentler way. She and her brother, Beckett, who plays for the Revelers, are both from Rebel. Beckett got all the extroverted genes, though, it seems.
“I heard there was some excitement at the shrimp tasting last night, and it wasn’t the sassy shrimp,” Sutton says with a grin.
I shake my head. Of course, she’s heard already. And clearly not from Nora, who hasn’t been into the office yet. “Yeah, yeah, Declan’s in town.”
“And he couldn’t wait to get you alone and literally swept you up into his arms!” Sutton gives a dramatic sigh. “I can’t believe I missed it.”
“Well, you won’t have to miss anything else,” Nora tells her. “He’s here to stay. Or so he said.”
Sutton turns wide eyes with hearts in them to me. “Really?”
“Arranged. Marriage,” I say firmly.
These two know the situation. I’ve been clear that Declan and I are not in love. That our marriage isn’t “real” in the sense that we met, fell in love, and decided to spend our lives together because we couldn’t live without one another.
Sutton was so worried about us living apart initially until I explained it to her.
Now she just thinks it’s strange.
Which, I suppose, it kind of is. From the outside.
“But maybe he wants it to be more now,” Sutton says, literally batting her eyes at me.
Yeah, clearly, the sweet romantic still hopes that something more will come of my arrangement with Declan.
She and Declan’s grandfather should become friends. They can talk about it.
And leave me out of it.
“He doesn’t,” I say. “We’re heading to Cara next week to annul the marriage.”
Sutton frowns. “What? Oh no.”
“It’s a good thing,” I assure her.
“But,” Nora asks. “Why is he here until then?”
I sigh. These women are my friends. And I need their help if I’m going to make Declan’s week in Rebel not welcoming and fun. So I have to be honest. “He doesn’t want the annulment and he’s here to convince me to say no too.”
Nora and Sutton both grin.
“But,” I add. “I want to use this week to convince him that he does want to end things”
They both sigh, and Sutton’s shoulders slump slightly.
“So we will be spending time together, but how we spend our time will be important.”
Sutton sits up straighter again. “Romantic stuff?” She clicks on her keyboard, focusing on her computer screen. “We could come up with something.”
I want to come up with something. A few somethings. But not romantic somethings. Unless they are bizarre, annoying romantic somethings. I think about that for a moment. That might have some potential.
Nora heads into her office for a moment.
Through the doorway, I can see the space is just as stuffed full as always.
She’s got boxes, plastic totes, and cartons full of everything from frisbees to caps to T-shirts stacked up along every wall.
Her desk is covered with papers and folders.
There’s barely enough space to walk in there.
I can also see one of her most prized possessions at the corner of her desk—the otter lamp, a replica of the otter statue on Main Street.
It looks like the little statue I have on my front porch, but with a patchwork lampshade in Mardi Gras colors.
And Nora’s is holding a plate of beignets.
Mine is just an otter standing on its hind legs as if watching over everything going on in and around my yard.
Most homes in Rebel have one. Either on the front porch, in the front flower beds, or by a front tree or bush. They’re believed to bring good luck and to be guardians of the house and its people.
That myth has to do with why this town is obsessed with otters to the point of having a twenty-foot statue on their Main Street and an otter haven in the park.
And an otter club. And a huge World Otter Day celebration.
And a festival celebrating the birth of the first litter of otter pups in the town. And a few other things I’m forgetting.
They even sell little “outfits” and accessories at the Everything Shop downtown that people use to dress their otters up for holidays and various occasions.
The otter mania around here is real.
My phone dings with a text message, and I pull it out of my pocket. Maybe the caramel corn supplier is getting back to me…
But no, it’s about Declan. Of course.
Wilson: Things are going great. Declan seems to like this idea. Beth is totally charmed.
I frown.
Things are going great?
Declan isn’t supposed to like what he and Wilson are doing.
It’s supposed to be annoying. The man spends his time in meetings with the CEOs of big companies, influential leaders in multiple areas—science, tech, industry—and political and social leaders.
He should consider it a waste of his time to sit around my kitchen table with citizens of Rebel asking for money for things like a new playground, their son’s film project, or a new used car for their mother-in-law.
I’ve been doing that exact thing with Wilson as a part of the O’Grady Foundation, using Declan’s money to fund things great and small in Rebel and the surrounding area, but posting on Rebel’s website that people can meet with Declan himself today was just one more thing I added to the Repel Declan Plan.
Sutton notices my frown. “Is everything okay?”
I shake my head. “Declan is…not responding the way I expected.”
“To what?”
“Anything.” I sigh. “I keep expecting him to be irritated or confused or annoyed or turned off by things. Like… my ducks,” I say as an example. “Instead, he’s fine with it all. Interested in it, even. He doesn’t seem irritated at all. He almost seems…like he likes it?”
Sutton nods. “My aunt’s cat, Pepper, was like that.”
“Your aunt’s cat?” I repeat.
“She would try to keep the cat from doing things like climbing the curtains and chewing on her plants. She would squirt him with water from a spray bottle. Most cats hate that, but Pepper loved it. He’d get up there by the plants and then look at her, waiting for the squirt of water.”
I just stare at her for several seconds. Nora laughs as she comes out of her office with a bright yellow binder she dug from a pile on the floor next to her desk. Then I feel myself start grinning, even as I shake my head.
Dammit. Declan likes the ‘squirt bottle’ that’s supposed to be the deterrent. That’s the perfect analogy.
“What about a romantic movie in the park?” Sutton suggests, looking at her computer screen.
Still smiling about the water bottle, I shake my head. I don’t see Declan as a movie-in-the-park guy and definitely not a rom-com guy, but that is way too normal. “Something bigger. Something way more annoying than that,” I say.
“I don’t love the insinuation that the activities we do are annoying so that something can be more annoying,” Nora says.
“Not to me. Not to most of us,” I assure her. “But to a stuck-up perfectionist like Declan, I mean. I need a bigger squirt bottle.” I shoot Sutton a grin as she giggles.
Nora narrows her eyes. “Give me an example.”