Grand Romantic Coup #2
Selma nodded, tilting her head to the side, looking a little confused. “She said that’s what he prefers.”
“Yes, no, yes, he does. She’s right.” I nodded.
“I was thinking about getting him a cactus, because he’s so prickly and strong.”
She wasn’t wrong. “I think he’d love that.”
A grin of satisfaction pulled at her lips before she took a step back, as if to examine me for signs of wear or distress. “And how about you, Sadie Rose? You holding up?”
I smiled, hoping that she couldn’t see any distress that was simmering right beneath the surface. “I’m good, yeah, fine.”
She nodded slowly, understanding more than she let on. “How much longer do you think they’ll keep him?” She was asking about Buddy, but the question felt booby-trapped, as though she were really asking about me.
“I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be able to,” I relayed. “He’s already threatened to sneak out the second he gets his hands on shoes.” I tried to keep my tone light, but I wasn’t kidding. I honestly didn’t know how much longer the hospital would be able to keep Buddy admitted.
“That’s pretty much what Gio said when he stopped by the ranch,” Selma interjected, with a sly little glance. “What’s the next step for Buddy, once he’s out?”
“Technically, he should be moving into a rehab facility. But you know Buddy. He’d rather die than admit he needs help.
” I felt my face flush with the impossibility of getting an eighty-two-year-old man to change his ways.
“He told the hospital social worker he’s ‘allergic to being supervised’ and that he’d rather take his chances at home. ”
Selma chuckled, not unkindly, just amused. “He’s a tough old bird. But that’s not fair to you.”
I shrugged, trying to minimize it. “I’m fine, I’ll figure it out.” Figure out my job, my lease in New York, and a life I’d spent years building from the ground up.
Before Selma could press further, she rested her hand on my arm. “Listen, hon. If you want, you can bring Buddy out to the ranch. The spa girls have all sorts of therapies, stuff for pain management and mobility. You know he wouldn’t be the first stubborn old cowboy we’ve patched up out there.”
From my understanding Buddy needed daily PT, not red-light therapy and deep tissue massages. But the truth was, I could totally see him perched on the porch swing of the Lockhart ranch, making the staff laugh and pretending he hated every minute of the attention.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Thank you. Really. That’s generous, but…I don’t think a spa is going to cut it. He needs medical care.”
Selma squeezed my arm. “You let me know if you change your mind. We’ve got resources, and if he needs a nurse or an aide, I know people.”
She meant it, too. One of the reasons Selma was both beloved and low-key feared in Valentine Bay was that she had an almost supernatural ability to get things done—meals delivered, roofs patched, funerals organized, all before anyone even asked for help.
Selma took a breath then her voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur. “So, how long are you planning on staying in town?”
My eyes widened, caught off guard by the shift in conversation. “I…don’t know.” I looked away, blinking against the sting behind my eyes. “I have to see how Buddy does, and after that, I don’t really have a plan.”
Mainly because I have no clue what’s going on with your son.
We’re behaving like we’re back together, but we haven’t talked about it, and it’s driving me crazy.
I would bring it up, but I wasn’t sure I knew what I wanted, so what was the point in trying to nail his intentions down when I wasn’t even sure what mine were?
“Is that so terrible?” Selma asked, her tone softening. “The not knowing?”
It was, actually, but I couldn’t say that out loud. Instead, I pasted a smile on my face and lied, “I guess not.”
Selma’s gaze didn’t waver. “You know, sweetheart, you’re allowed to change your mind about things.
Sometimes we think we’ve got a life mapped out, and then—” She glanced toward the bachelor auction stage, where a shirtless man in a construction hat was currently flexing for the crowd while a bachelorette party screamed.
“—something happens, and all of a sudden, the map’s useless. ”
I followed her gaze, and for a crazy second, I imagined myself buying a raffle ticket and bidding on a night out with one of the bachelors, mainly because I didn’t want anyone else winning a night with Dawson. The thought made me inhale a shaky breath, and Selma’s eyes brightened at the sound.
“See? Not so bad.” She nudged me gently.
A woman in a black tank top jostled past us, nearly spilling her entire cup of sangria on my skirt. I barely managed to sidestep, and Selma giggled and reached out to steady me.
“You want a drink? They’ve got some cute non-alcoholic options at the cider truck,” she offered. It sounded like she was offering more than just a drink, maybe a little shelter from my own uncertainty.
I was about to answer when my phone buzzed again—this time with a text from Peter.
Peter
Are you downtown at the summer festival?
I stared at the text, rereading it, wondering how he even knew about it and why he would be asking if I was there. I responded yes. In seconds another message appeared.
Peter
I thought that was you, I just wasn’t sure.
The text remained on my screen, incongruous and faintly menacing, like a spiderweb in the corner of a well-lit room. I stared at it, waiting for it to morph into something else, something more plausible, but it stayed there. I felt my pulse in my teeth.
“Everything okay?” Selma, who had the maternal intuition of a seasoned bomb-sniffing dog, turned toward me with those light, quick eyes. “You look pale. Do you need to sit down?”
I almost said yes, but I had the sense that sitting down would only create a smaller, more stationary target for whatever was barreling toward me.
Instead, I shook my head and made a show of straightening, stretching my spine so I looked less like a hunted animal.
I tried to focus on her, to steady myself with the warmth of her voice, but my eyes kept drifting over her shoulder, scanning the crowd for a familiar silhouette.
I told myself I was being paranoid, that Peter was in Midtown, that he had a standing Thursday meeting at the firm and a burning need to be seen at his regular after-work bar.
That he would never, could never, show up here, of all places, in the middle of some tie-dyed, small-town festival.
But as I scanned, almost immediately, I saw him: jaw set, mouth slightly open, striding through the crowd with the up-tempo focus of a man who thought the universe might actually have been laid out as a series of obstacles just for him to overcome.
His navy slacks were sharply creased, his white button-down a shade too bright for the setting, as if his body still clung to New York’s fluorescent-lit logic.
The sleeves were rolled to his elbows in an attempt at casualness, but the look was all wrong, like a vice president who’d come to shut down the fun.
The effect was so jarring, so cosmically opposed to the tie-dyed and ironic-mustached energy of the festival, that I heard a distant commentary of incredulity from a group of teens at a funnel cake stand.
Peter, of course, was oblivious. He was moving with purpose, eyes locked on me with the kind of optimism only the truly delusional can achieve.
I managed a smile for Selma, who’d followed my gaze. Her eyes, sharp even in her warmth, flicked from Peter to me and back again, assessing the situation with the brisk efficiency of someone who’d once run herd on four unruly sons and a husband.
“Oh,” she said, the “oh” dense with meaning.
I braced myself.
Peter reached us, smiling with all the white-collar assurance of a man who’d never once considered that a woman might not want to see him.
“Sadie!” he called, as if I might have missed him otherwise.
He stopped less than a foot from me, then hesitated, apparently unsure if a hug was appropriate.
After a tense beat, he went for it, pulling me into the kind of embrace that’s meant to be sweet but feels more like a financial acquisition.
He smelled faintly of cologne and ambition.
I fixed my mouth into a neutral line. “What are you doing here?” I asked. My voice, famously unreliable in crisis, came out both too loud and too incredulous.
Peter’s smile faltered for a millisecond—the human equivalent of a buffering wheel—then returned to full strength.
“I thought I’d surprise you,” he said. “I, uh, had some vacation days, and you didn’t respond to my last few messages, so…
here I am.” He gave a little jazz-hands flourish, like a bad magician revealing a limp bouquet.
“Everything okay?” Selma cut in, her tone deceptively even.
She placed a comforting hand on my elbow, her thumb making tiny, anchoring circles.
The way she said it—each syllable crisp, each vowel perfectly weighted—made it clear that she’d already assessed Peter as a possible threat and was mentally sorting through her network for a nearby Lockhart males.
If necessary, she could summon all four in under ninety seconds.
Peter was a lot of things, but I didn’t think dangerous was one of them.
Persistent. Self-involved. Egotistical, sure.
But I was certain this was not a case of him stalking me, he probably thought him showing up like this would be some grand romantic gesture, like in the movies.
For context, one of his favorite films was Friends With Benefits starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, and his favorite scene from that movie was the flash mob at the end when they, spoiler alert, get together and profess their love for one another.