“What would I do without you?” Cash asked, before leaning down to kiss me.
However, after almost an hour of shopping, Cash’s good mood was starting to wear off.
“Turtle, there’s nothing left in the store,” he said, nodding to our overfilling cart. “And I only brought three bags.”
“Well, that’s on you, Old Mother Hubbard. Your cupboards arebare. How do you live like that?”
“I’m either at the club or the shop. I’m never home and it’s not like I entertain. There’s no point in having food, much less fresh food in my house.”
“You have a point.” I frowned. “Should we put stuff back?”
“You planning on being at my place more often?”
I beamed. “Hell, yes.”
“Then, no, we’ll keep everything. Gotta keep you fed, right?”
“If you don’t want feral Teagan, yes, you need to feed me.”
He chuckled and we headed to checkout.
After loading up the truck’s cab with our haul, we walked hand in hand down to the new boutique for a little window shopping, just as Cash had “promised.” The shop was a gorgeous bohemian dress shop called Le Perche. As soon as we walked inside, I heard my name called and turned to see Claire Hurley walking toward me.
“Oh my god, Claire, hi,” I said, giving her a hug.
“Hey yourself.”
“Cash, this is Claire. She and I went to high school together.”
“I was a shy little nerd who was afraid to talk to anyone and Teagan was the coolest girl in school.” Claire said with a chuckle as she shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Cash smiled. “You too.”
“I was not cool,” I argued.
“You were too,” Claire said. “But never stuck up or mean. You were always nice to us weirdoes.”
“You were not a weirdo.”
“See? That’s what I mean, you were always so nice.”
“Whatever.” I smiled. “How are you? How long have you worked here?” I asked, pointing to her name tag.
“Since day one. Minute one actually,” she chuckled. “I’m the owner.”
“Oh, my gosh. This is your place? It’s beautiful.”
“Congratulations,” Cash said.
“Thank you. We’ve only been open for six months, but we landed this amazing space, and I’ve got two full time employees who are both rock stars and we’re running full steam ahead.”
“Last I heard you’d won a Gunnach Grant and were off to Dartmouth.”
Claire nodded. “Six to eight years of academic research with the hopes of landing a long-term career in academic research. After a year of assisting and two years of lab work my future was looking less like a shiny path and more a death sentence, so I dropped out of Dartmouth, got a small business loan, and took a leap of faith into dream land.”
“How exciting.”
Claire laughed. “Exciting is one way of putting it. My parents freaked out and the Gunnach foundation people were pretty pissed, but something inside of me was screaming thesame thing over and over. If you can’t summon the courage to make a move right now—”
