Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Oh, hey Eleanor,” Diana said as she picked up her phone.
She was grateful for the distraction. She was supposed to be working, but instead she’d been staring listlessly at her inventory software for…
she checked the clock. Ten minutes. She’d been staring at nothing for the better part of ten minutes.
“What’s up?” she asked friend.
“Morning!” Eleanor chirped back. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything. I just wanted to see how your date went the other day.”
“Ugh,” Diana said, which really did more or less sum it up.
That date was the source of her persistent funk. She wasn’t even really sure why. The guy had been… fine. Okay, yes, the blueberry pie thing had been a misstep, but other than that, he had been… fine.
Underwhelming. But fine.
Fine, fine, fine.
It didn’t even sound convincing in her head anymore.
“That bad, huh?” Eleanor’s tone was sympathetic.
“Oh, gosh, it was so bad,” Diana said on a sigh, no longer able to even put up a good front. “So, I get there, and he had ordered for me.”
“Oh, that’s bad form,” Eleanor said. Something about her voice made it very easy for Diana to picture Eleanor shaking her head. “Like, I get ordering for a longtime friend, or someone you’ve been married to for years. If you know what they’re going to get, I mean. But a first date? No. Ick.”
“Ick!” Diana agreed. “And then, to pile on, he blew his nose right at the table. Not once. Over and over again.”
“Nooooo,” Eleanor moaned.
“Yes.” Diana scrunched up her face. “If I’m going to commend this guy for one thing, it’s that he has an iron stomach, because then he spent practically half the date talking about fish guts.”
“How does that even come up?”
Diana massaged the place between her eyebrows. She’d been doing that a lot the past few days. Maybe it was built up from all the times she’d resisted doing it during the date.
“I guess he’s a fisherman,” she said. “And they make good… chum? For the fish? I don’t know, I had to stop listening, otherwise I was going to throw up the few bites of blueberry pie I’d choked down.”
Eleanor gasped. “Blueberry? You hate blueberry!”
“I wish you had been there to order for me,” Diana said with a laugh. She was already feeling better about this. It was just one more piece of proof that friends were the best antidote to pretty much anything that ever went wrong.
“Did it go on forever?” Eleanor asked.
That made Diana think of the only part of the whole wretched experience that had made her smile.
“It would have,” she admitted, “except then I ran into Anthony and his daughter, Eloise, and we got to chat books.”
Eleanor gasped again, but this time it was in mock affront. “Are you in a secret book club with the handsome accountant?”
Diana decided to avoid the comment about Anthony’s looks, mostly because she also needed to avoid thinking about how true it was.
“No, I’m in a secret book club with Eloise. I lent her Little Women. She’s loving it, obviously.”
“Obviously. Is she done yet?”
“Not yet. I was very careful about spoilers. But anyway, getting to chat with them was nice, and then my date was so annoyed that I’d stepped away that he cut the date short. I think he thought I would be mad about it? Suffice to say, I was not.”
“Woof,” Eleanor said in commiseration. “You’ve had a real run of duds lately, honey. I’m sorry. I promise it will feel funny one day.”
“Today isn’t quite that day.” Diana made a face. “But I am going to remain hopeful that I’ll get there soon. Anyway, distract me. How are thing with you? Your happy relationship is sadly bereft of interesting gossip, so tell me about the bookstore.”
This time, Eleanor was the one who grumbled. “Oh, man, don’t even ask. My happy relationship is the one thing keeping me sane at the moment. Garrett keeps reminding me that it’s highly unlikely that I hallucinated my bookshelf, that it really is coming, all that good stuff.”
“Oh no! It’s still not there?”
“You should see the tracking history,” Eleanor said with a mirthless laugh. “Apparently it was Texas, then Wyoming, then Maine. Then it was in Boston, which felt promising, and then out for delivery in some town called Whale Harbor in Rhode Island—”
“Rhode Island is close!” Diana said encouragingly.
“Yeah, but the latest has it in Florida, so who can say what will happen next. I don’t know if they have the craziest shipping situation in the world, if there’s an error in their system, or what.”
“Goodness gracious,” Diana said.
“I confess that I have been thinking some words that would have had my mother washing out my mouth with soap,” Eleanor said with a chuckle. This laugh sounded a little more genuine. Apparently, Eleanor was also benefitting from the reparative effects of complaining to a friend who was on your side.
“It will all work out,” Diana reassured her. “It will arrive eventually. And if it doesn’t, well. We’ll rally the team to get the best bookshelf this town has ever seen. None of us is a carpenter, so I’m not sure how, but I wouldn’t bet against Miriam at basically anything.”
“We will never know the full extent of her powers,” Eleanor agreed, a smile in her voice.
Diana’s computer screen turned black from inactivity; when she moved the mouse to wake it back up, she noticed the time.
“Oh, shoot,” she said. “Ellie, I have to go. I have a meeting with Anthony.”
“Oooh,” Eleanor crooned.
Diana laughed. “What are you, twelve? It’s about accountant stuff.”
“Uh huh.” Eleanor did not sound convinced. “Report back!”
“It’s about taxes!”
“Sure it is, sweetie. Love you!”
And then she hung up, leaving Diana laughing and shaking her head.
She was late, however, so she quickly gathered her things and hurried over to Anthony’s office. When she got there, he was on the phone. She waited in the small entrance area as he held up a finger in the universal sign for I’ll just be one minute.
She waited, smiling when she saw that the side table boasted a picture of Anthony and a younger Eloise. The frame had been decorated with painted macaroni and sparkles.
“This is a masterpiece,” Diana said when Anthony opened the door to his inner office, a welcoming smile on his face. “I assume the asking price is… one billion dollars? I am prepared to pay.”
“Well, one, as your accountant, I cannot recommend that,” he said. “Although, of course I recommend the value of a good investment piece. And, two, I’m afraid that particular multimedia chef d’oeuvre is not for sale.”
“Man.” She snapped her fingers. “Well, sir, that’s a disappointment.”
He laughed and she was struck anew by just how easy it was to talk to him.
If only her dates could go like this…
She brushed that thought under the mental rug as quickly as it came.
“Well, madam,” Anthony said, his silly grandness making it really hard to not think about how much she liked talking to him. “I have something that just might cheer you up despite this blow.”
He beckoned her into the office, then pulled open a drawer…
And pulled out a box from Honey Bee Bakery. A smile spread across her face, and that was before he opened it and revealed a pecan sticky bun and a strawberry donut.
“What’s this for?” she asked, delighted.
“You said you liked our order the other day,” he said, shrugging bashfully. “Or, you said you liked Eloise’s order. But I tried that strawberry donut and, phew, Diana. It’s maybe the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”
“Yeah, exactly,” she said. “That’s what makes it so good.”
He gave a playful shudder. “My teeth still hurt, but that just means more for you.”
“I will fall gallantly on my sword.” She took the seat that he indicated that she should take, then gratefully accepted the donut and took a hearty, delicious bite.
He took an equally hearty bite of the pecan bun. For a moment, they just chewed in silence. Diana had no doubt that they looked silly but it was…
Nice. It was just so nice.
“Anyway,” Anthony said with a chuckle as he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “I was just hoping that I could give you a good memory to take away from that…” He hesitated. “Date?”
She grimaced. “First and last date,” she said. “And it is very, very sweet of you to offer treats, but I’m afraid that nothing will ever dim the horror of that date.”
He gave her a comical expression of dismay that she suspected was a hit with the ten-year-old set.
It was, alas, a hit with the thirty-eight-year-old set too, as far as she was concerned.
“That bad?”
“It depends,” she said.
“On what?”
“On how much you like talking about fish guts.”
His eyebrows rose. “Um. Not very much, I have to admit.”
“I’m right there with you,” she said, taking another, daintier bite of her donut. “It’s definitely not a talk that goes well with food.”
“Yeah. Ick.”
She grinned. “That’s exactly what Eleanor said.”
“She sounds like a good friend,” he commented.
“Oh, absolutely.” Diana didn’t even need to hesitate. “I have a great group of friends, even if I am seriously questioning their judgment in encouraging me to try online dating.”
He ran a hand through his hair. It left her unable to avoid noticing that he had really nice hair. The silver at his temples made him look really distinguished.
“Some of my friends back in Cleveland encouraged me to try online dating a little while back,” he said. “I wasn’t ready to get back into things yet, but your experiences aren’t exactly warming me up to the idea either.”
She tried to look cheerful and upbeat, but, judging by his laugh, it definitely came off as a wince.
“Yikes,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, laughing. “It’s mostly been a disaster. But I spent so long focused on building up my business that I never really had time to dedicate to finding my person, you know? And that’s something I’ve always wanted. A family. And… and I am giving you so many details.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he reassured her. “After my wife died, I found that mentioning being a widower makes everyone immediately get squirrely.”
“I’m really sorry for your loss,” she said.
He gave her a small, sad smile. “Thank you. I’ve done a lot of healing, and obviously I don’t regret any of it, but losing Shannon was really hard. Cleveland ended up having too many hard memories for Eloise and me, so we decided that a fresh start was in order.”
“Well, you obviously know her way better than I do, but from what I can tell, she’s an incredible kid,” Diana said. “And not just because she has a great taste in books.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I think moving was absolutely the right choice. She seems to be opening up a lot here. She’s already making new friends, and everyone in town has been so welcoming.”
“Please be advised that people have been fully holding back,” Diana said, pointing at him with the remaining half of her donut.
“They are trying to pretend that they’re normal.
It’s a thin facade, though. The longer this goes on, the more you’re going to realize we’re a bunch of super-welcoming weirdos. ”
“Gosh, how awful of you,” he deadpanned.
“Yeah, we’re the worst,” she teased back.
For a moment, his smile was so handsome that she had to physically look away.
“Anyway,” she said, feeling suddenly bashful. It was wrong to think how attractive someone was right after they’d just finished telling you about losing their spouse, wasn’t it? “I shouldn’t take up too much of your time today.”
He looked startled, almost like he had forgotten they were supposed to be working. Well, that made two of them.
“Right. Your paperwork. Of course.”
The awkward moment was fleeting; Anthony began going through the work he’d done on her books, and the ease between them returned.
Diana could tell, even without knowing much about accounting, that Anthony was great at his job. He pointed out a few ways for her to streamline her processes and noted a few mistakes that he’d caught in her records.
“You are really good at this,” she said.
“Well, I am a professional.” He gave her another one of those sun-bright smiles. “So, you could probably do this yourself if you really wanted to—”
“No!” she interjected, the word a little too loud and hasty. “Sorry, no. Please keep helping me. I definitely, definitely need it.”
“I can do that too,” he said kindly. “So, at the beginning, we would probably meet pretty often as we get our system put together. Then, after that, we could set up a regular meeting, maybe once a month or so? And I have a packet of instructions for how to get new clients onboarded, so that I’m in the loop with all the information I need.
It should be easy to use, but obviously let me know if you have any questions. ”
“I will,” she said. It was clear that the meeting was over, so she began gathering her things, despite the slight pang of disappointment that they would be going their separate ways.
“And avoid any more app disasters, huh?” he said, smiling kindly. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed that things are on the upswing.”
“Yeah, me too,” she said.
She headed back to the boutique, a smile still lingering on her face. Anthony was just so nice and decent. She felt lucky just getting to spend time with him.
She really was glad that she would get to see him again soon…
For professional reasons, of course.