“You’re extremely helpful,” she agreed. “You’re just also very fun to tease. Thank you for this though,” she added, hefting the wine glass before taking a sip. “It’s just what I needed to not freak out about all this paperwork.”
He sifted idly through it. “It looks like a lot, but it might not be as terrible as it looks on the surface.” At her skeptical look, he shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve done this before, you will recall. I didn’t have to rezone from residential to commercial, but I did file all this other… hoopla.”
“Your terminology is not reassuring,” she added dryly. “But your assistance is much appreciated, even if itwasMiriam’s help that got me into my current state.”
Beneath his beard, Garrett’s lips twisted into a smile. “Miriam Landers is a force to be reckoned with. Even the town curmudgeon knows that.”
“The force I’m more worried about is Winnie Burnett,” she admitted. “She did not exactly seem thrilled by my project when she approached me. And if she’s as fearsome as I’ve been led to believe, Ireallydon’t want to be on her bad side.”
“I’m not entirely sure the woman has a good side,” he said wryly, which made her blink at him in surprise. He held up the hand that wasn’t holding his wine glass. “Hey, I might be the grumpy hardware guy, but I’ve lived here for a long time too. I hear things!”
“I think you’re not as grumpy as you seem,” she groused. “But again: this is not reassuring information!”
“If it helps, I don’t think she’smean. She just likes the rules to be followed. So, if you follow all the rules…”
“I should be in good shape,” she finished for him. “Okay.” Then, following another sip of wine, “Okay. I am starting to feel as confident as I pretended to feel yesterday. I think the key here is just to not get overwhelmed. One stinkin’ document at a time.”
“Attagirl,” Garrett said, tugging her toward him so he could press a kiss to her temple. “It’s all going to be okay. You’ll get through this, and your bookstore will open. And it will be amazing.”
She turned in her chair so that she was facing him, propping on elbow on the paper-strewn table and leaning her head against her fist.
“It’s just a little scary,” she confided. “I’ve had so many amazing things happen to me this year. Moving here, meeting you, making all the friends I’ve made… I know that my life will still be full and wonderful if the bookstore doesn’t work out, but I really,reallywant it to work out. So I’m a little torn between throwing my whole heart into it and protecting myself from getting my hopes totally dashed to pieces, you know?”
He reached out a hand and cupped her cheek. “Hey. Listen. You hope away. You’ve got me, and you’ve got your friends. And, most important, you’ve got you. So, step one, drink that wine I poured for you.”
He held her gaze until she smiled and took a sip.
“There you go,” he said. “Step two, we organize this crazy mess you’ve made. Step three, we put together a pile of paperwork that will make Winnie Burnett quake in her boots. Sound good?”
“Yeah,” Eleanor said, feeling more confident than she had since she first saw Winnie looking at her with a doubtful expression. She really was a lucky woman to have foundsomeone as wonderful as Garrett Wilder for. Her second act. “That sounds pretty good to me.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Cadence Meadows, what the heck are you doing up there?”
Eleanor’s voice startled Cadence where she was standing on top of her desk in the gallery.
This was… an admittedly sort of bonkers part of Cadence’s process. She’d gotten the art put in the order she wanted it for her re-arrangement project, or at least had gotten to the point where she was pretty sure it was the way she wanted it. But she couldn’t be certain until she saw it from the angle where she would see it if she were on the floor and it were on the walls. Since hanging it and un-hanging it wasn’t really practical… she’d come up with this. She stood above it, tilted her head just so, and voila. It was almost as good as hanging it all up again.
She did look a bit strange standing on her desk though, she could admit that.
“Getting perspective,” she told Eleanor, hoping this sounded cool and artsy and not like she was a nut on a table.
Eleanor looked duly impressed.
“Did you get the perspective you wanted?”
Cadence wobbled her hand in aso-sogesture before carefully getting herself down from the desk.
“I have the art right, but not the rest of it.”
“The rest?” Eleanor asked.
“Well, that stuff, over there?” She jerked a thumb over to what she was thinking of as thewhy won’t this stuff just workpile. “It just… doesn’t feel right anymore.”
“You’re sounding a whole lot like an artist, right now,” Eleanor teased gently. “Needing perspective, things not feeling right. I’d buy art from you, you sound like you know your stuff.”
“Oh, well, thank you,” Cadence said.
