She put her hands on her hips. “I’ve got the redesign well in hand, and you know it. The expansion is no excuse for you sticking to me like glue these days.” Erin kept her voice low even though there was no one else in the store, and probably wouldn’t be, since closing time was five minutes away. After her mother’s legendary tirades, Erin tended to keep a tight rein on how she displayed her emotions. “You have to admit you’ve been hanging out at my house every day after closing time. And we never talk about the store.”
Erin loved her hometown for a lot of reasons. But theshoulder-to-shoulder proximity of her brother’s, mother’s and sister’s homes was not really one of them. However, since the Finley land had been free for building and gifted in parcels to each of them, that’s exactly how things had panned out. A couple of acres separated each house, and the farmland nearby was still mostly vacant.
“So sue me for preferring to share a bottle of wine.” Heather rearranged the silk daisies tucked inside the bicycle basket, her hot-pink manicure showing off metallic emerald stripes. Erin had painted her sister’s nails earlier in the week while sharing one of those bottles. “It’s been nice having both of us in town for a change. I get tired of doing the dutiful daughter thing here by myself.”
For years, they’d traded off time in Heartache to keep tabs on their mom’s health. It was no different now that they owned the store. They each traveled to scout new items for the store or to sell on their website. Last Chance Vintage had cornered a niche market on antique linens and silverware, catering to numerous independent decorators who liked doing business with smaller companies. Sometimes, in their flea market scouring, they found genuinely valuable antiques, as well, and they’d been in business long enough that they knew which of their clients would love them.
Still, Erin knew she’d done the lion’s share of the traveling in the past two years while Heather had been at home to weather more of their mother’s crises. Heather deserved to get out of Heartache more often. She’d stifled her own dreams as a musician for the sake of a job that kept her in town.
“I’m planning to stay closer to home in the future, so I’ll be here when you get back. And clearly, someone needs to do some buying if we’re going to fill the new floor space.” She gestured at the heavy plastic sheet hanging betweenthe old store and the new expansion. “It’s definitely your turn to rack up the frequent-flier miles.”
It was stupid, but the thought of setting foot in an airport again practically made Erin hyperventilate. She hadn’t left town since returning six months ago. She’d methodically cut every reminder of Patrick out of her life, from giving away the landscape painting he’d done for her to dumping every card, memento and shared concert ticket in the trash. After chucking her cell phone and changing her number—overkill, but that’s how she rolled these days—she’d also gotten rid of her landline in the Heartache house because Patrick had that number, too. She had planned an extended hiatus from dating and men since she didn’t trust her judgment anymore.
Sometimes, she woke up punching her pillow in a fury, and it had been half a year since she’d found out he was a lying cheat. If she hadn’t loved him—hadn’t thought for sure he’d been about to propose and seen for herself how gooey and blind that had made her—she might have been able to control the anger better. But knowing she’d been played for a fool, that she’d been in love with an illusion, rocked her.
“I know.” Heather sighed, removing one of the silk daisies to wrap around her wrist in an impromptu bracelet, an accessory that actually looked pretty cute with her sunshine-yellow blazer and jean capris. “But I’d gotten into a good groove with my students here and part of me worries you’re only sending me out to shop because you don’t want to end up on the same plane as Patrick or something weird like that.”
A gifted singer and musician, Heather had never pursued her love of music other than to give lessons to locals. Erin hoped that one day her sister would make the trip north to Nashville to live out her own dreams.
“Thatisvery weird.” Although no stranger than hyperventilating near airports. “And totally untrue. Patrick’s wife probably has him on a choke chain these days. For all I know, he changed jobs or moved.” She shrugged, genuinely not caring about her former lover’s life. She cared more about his kids, whom she’d never met. The guilt snuck up on her at odd times.
“Okay.” Biting her lip as she studied Erin, Heather turned back to the bicycle basket and plucked another daisy. “I’m going to go.” She wrapped it around Erin’s wrist. “And I’m not going to think about you spending 24/7 on the store expansion, which I know you’re going to do without me around to force you to go home. You love that sledgehammer too much.”
Erin smiled in spite of herself while Heather took a photo of their matching wrists with her phone. Her sister might be bossy, but she meant well. Heather was practical, organized and the business mind behind Last Chance Vintage. She also happened to be much better with their mother—a calming presence that soothed Diana Finley’s fractious nerves. Erin had always envied Heather’s ease with their mom.
“Awesome.” Erin gave her a quick hug. “If you leave now, you can still grab a coffee for the road. Plus, I hear there’s a storm coming in tonight. It would be good to stay ahead of it.”
Heather peered outside at weather that had gotten more overcast as the day had gone on.
“Right.” Heather frowned, tucking her phone back in her shoulder bag. “I just worry you won’t follow through on the promotions I’ve set up.”
Erin suppressed a groan, and instead recited the mental list. “Dress sale on the first Tuesday of the month,free champagne for shoppers during Friday lunch hours and thirty percent off anything spring-related next week.”
“Yes, fine.” Heather nodded absently, her heavy turquoise earrings rocking against her curtain of long red curls. “But I mean the press releases about the grand reopening for the updated store and the social media presence I’m trying to maintain. I’ve sent out a lot of feelers to try and attract some media attention. We need to bolster that stuff to support the expansion.”
Erin tried not to grind her teeth. She and her sister could not be more diametrically opposed on this issue. The last thing Erin wanted was to turn a kitschy small-town boutique into some regional shopping mecca. But re-treading old ground now would not get Heather out the door.
“I will probably not do as good a job as you, but I will try.” She stretched her lips into what she hoped passed for a reassuring smile.
She held her breath.
“Fair enough,” Heather said finally, and surprised the hell out of Erin by picking up her suitcase. “Austin, Texas, here I come.”
When Heather swished out the door, the welcome bell ringing in her absence, Erin slumped against the front counter. She was too mentally exhausted to celebrate that she’d ousted her sister before Heather’s wise eyes had seen through the Goth girl hair and the sledgehammer-wielding nights to the truth that Erin was still a broken mess and not really over a lying scumbag she should hate with a passion.
How long would it take for her brain to get the message Patrick’s wife had delivered so succinctly six months ago? He was the antithesis of everything Erin hoped for in a man. But some days, it was hard to reconcile that image ofhim with the guy she’d fallen for, possibly because she’d never confronted him about it, had purposely avoided any interaction with him ever again. She’d never gotten to see his expression as she called him on his lies, never gotten the chance to see the charming facade fall away.
Maybe that would have helped her to hate him more.
Okay, she actually hated him quite a bit.
And that was the whole problem. She wanted desperately not to care.
Until then, she would simply keep moving forward, building her new life here and hoping that by walling out the rest of the world, she’d finally find some peace.
Remy Weldon hadnever seen fog like this. It had come from out of nowhere in the past two hours, causing his visibility to shrink. It looked like someone had dumped a few metric tons of wet cotton balls along the back roads of central Tennessee. In theory, he was scouting locations for one of his shows that was floundering in ratings—Interstate Antiquer. But since he couldn’t see what street he was on, he didn’t hold out hope he’d see much of the shop he’d been searching for, Last Chance Vintage.
In his six years as a TV producer, he’d never had a show plummet in viewership so fast, but then he’d never had a successful show’s host walk away midseason to make a documentary on a turn-of-the-century American painter. Like that film project would lift the guy’s career more than Remy’s show? Either way, Remy was at his wit’s end trying to patch together the rest of the contracted shows with guest hosts while doing the heavy lifting himself on everything from location scouting to script development.
