“You’ll be back then? Do you want to do something over the weekend? I’m sure we can find something. Even just strolling through the farmer’s market will make a pretty great photo.”
“Right, yeah, brilliant,” he says, leaning further back in his seat. He looks away and is…is he blushing?
“Benedict?”
“Ben.”
“Why are you acting weird?”
He huffs, “I’m not acting weird, you’re acting weird.”
“Real mature.”
“I’m too pretty to be—”
I whack him gently in the chest to cut him off. “Come on, tell me.”
“I suppose I…just expected you’d want to come by and see the house I bought y—er, us, er myself. The house I bought for myself for this ruse.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling bad. He did buy a house here, even though he’d rather be in the city. And he bought it just like that, like it was nothing, because I don’t want to leave my job or move away from Gran yet. “Sure, I can come by.”
“No need, it’s not as if we’ll really use it anyway. I can stay in the city, it’s just a quick drive over.”
“I can—”
“Stop. It’s done. Now, tell me what we’ll be doing next. You texted you had a good idea for a harvest fest something or other?”
“Yes, the first festival,” I say, deciding to just roll with him. He still seems off, but I tend to agree that the house is unnecessary and irrelevant. Why would he come back to town again in a couple days just for me to look at it? I go on, “And I hope you’re ready.”
“For the harvest?”
“For the town. The people—aaaallll the people. Up our butts with questions and selfies and barely any filters and even worse boundaries.”
I open the car door and give Nigel a wave in the rearview mirror.
“Ah, the townies! Lovely. And what will we be doing with them?”
I shudder, “Let’s just say I hope you’re good with a hot glue gun.”
As I shut the door I hear him call out, a little concerned, “I’m absolutely not!”
I sigh as I enter the first set of doors.
Brilliant.
Wait, what? Now I’m thinking in Benedict?! I mean, great.
Just freakinggreat.Because I’m not really crafty either.
I chuckle as I head in and see Gloria sit down, to cover the fact that she was just standing to peer at us—at Benedict—through the front windows.
Well, this is going to be interesting.
16
BEN
“Don’t I pay you ungodly amounts of money to be both silent and invisible?” I huff at Nigel. “I can see and somehowhearyou staring at me.”
