Arden wondered what he thought constituted “freshening up” in a primitive cabin with no running water. Then she considered the intimidating option of meeting Baz’s friends without Baz by her side to serve as a buffer. “No, thank you. I’ll stay with you, if you don’t mind.”
The grin widened; he was now practically beaming. “I don’t mind at all.”
Arden’snewfound determination nearly deserted her when they arrived at the main street and she found the whole group gathered around a cooler in a patch of shade under some trees. Then she reminded herself of some of the situations she’d walked into in the past (political meetings! parties! social events at which she was the hostess!) and realized she had let herconfidence lapse very badly over the last couple of years. It was easy to blame Grant for it, but at some point she needed to let go of her nervousness and start believing in herself again.
So she straightened her back and walked up to the small group under the shade trees, side by side with Baz.
Lexie still looked less than friendly, and Declan was openly scowling. Only Fern looked happy to see her, and she bounced to her feet and came toward Arden, barefoot with her long dress swishing around her ankles, holding out her hands.
“Are you Arden? Lexie was just telling us about you.” She clasped Arden’s hands, and Arden tried to stifle the urge to pull away, while Baz looked delighted. “Hi, I’m Fern. You’ve met Lexie, of course, and that’s Declan. Come here, sit down. Tell us about yourself.”
That was the last thing she wanted to do. Arden gave Baz a panicked look, and Baz said, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. If you just want to sit under a tree and have a sandwich, you’re welcome to.”
“I think if Baz is letting someone stay here without consulting the rest of us, we at least deserve to know a little about who you are.” Declan’s voice was low and fierce.
Baz whirled on him with a flare of temper that startled Arden. “Knock it off right now,” Baz snarled. His eyes glinted. “You can say what you like to me, but not to her.”
Declan stared at Baz as if he’d never seen him before. There was a brief standoff, the two of them glaring into each other’s eyes, and then Declan looked away.
The display seemed to galvanize Lexie into a little extra friendliness. “Here,” she said, rising from the camp chair where she had been sitting. “You can take this. I’ll sit on the cooler.”
“No, I can’t chase you out of your chair,” Arden protested, but before she knew it, Lexie had hustled her into the camp chair. Unfortunately this meant she was sitting next to Declan, wholooked like he would very happily have yeeted her and her camp chair all the way down the street and out of town.
“Hi,” she said to him, deciding to try for friendliness. “You’re right that I should have introduced myself earlier, but better late than never, right? It’s nice to meet you. I’m Arden, though I guess you know that already.”
Declan gave her a terse nod, but his eyes were on Baz, not her, and Baz was watching him as if he planned to bite him if Declan stepped out of line. Which, for all Arden knew, maybe he did.
“What do you do, Arden?” Fern asked.
“I’m an artist,” Arden said.
Lexie and Fern were both immediately interested, so with apologies for being out of practice, Arden hesitantly showed them the pencil sketches and half-finished watercolors in her sketchbook.
“Oh, but these are really good,” Lexie said, flipping through them. “Do you sell your work?”
Arden shook her head, watching Lexie look at her art with a nervousness that was halfoh no, what if she hates themand halfplease don’t smudge that!
“Have you thought about it? I bet people would buy them.”
“They’re not that good,” Arden said. “No one’s going to pay money for this ...”Childish sentimental garbage,she almost said, but she stopped herself because of the shock of hearing Grant’s words spilling from her own mouth. “Never mind,” she mumbled. “I—I guess I’ve thought about it, a little.”
“Here, I’m sure you’re hungry,” Fern said smoothly, offering a selection of plastic-wrapped sandwiches from the cooler. “We’re down to chicken salad or salami, it looks like. Uh, I hope you like meat. We have brownies for dessert.”
“I love meat,” Arden said gratefully, taking the chicken salad. “And brownies. Are you all, um—” She tried to think how to ask it. “Brothers and sisters?”
“We’re cousins,” Lexie said. She was still leafing through the sketchbook while Arden tried not to be too anxious about it, but she looked up long enough to point to Baz and Declan. “Their dads are brothers, and my dad is their dads’ cousin. Fern isn’t actually related to us, but she’s our honorary cousin.”
“Yeah, and some of us don’t think that just anyone should be let in on oursecrets,” Declan said grimly. Gripping a sandwich so tightly that part of it crumbled, he got up and stalked off down the street.
Fern looked anxiously at Baz. “Should I go talk to him?”
“Let him cool off,” Baz suggested. He stared after Declan for a minute, then shook his head and looked at Arden. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Declan takes a while to warm up to people.” Lexie handed the sketchbook back to Arden, whose mouth was full of sandwich. “I know he seems like a lot to deal with, but he’s a good guy, really. He’s just not that great with strangers.”
As far as Arden could tell, he wasn’t that great with his friends either, and if he had good qualities, she had yet to see any sign of them. But she filled her mouth with another bite of sandwich. It was delicious.
Eating took up enough of her attention that she could zone out a little and let the conversation flow around her. She got the impression that Baz was living in a—store?, which .... couldn’t be right? Actually, she still had no clear idea what was going on with this group, or what they were doing in the town.
