Willow rolled her eyes.
“What if, though?” Saffron formed and dropped dough balls onto the cookie sheet with long-practiced precision. “A lot of folks in town are convinced they’re out there. Real actual lupines.”
True enough. Working at the most popular coffee shop in Harmony Ridge, Willow couldn’t help but hear the rumors. “Well, so what if they are?”
Their hands nearly collided over the bowl as both reached toward it at the same time. Saffron nodded to her, and Willow scooped more dough. For a minute the kitchen was quiet.
At last Saffron said quietly, “Mom and Dad would freak out if they heard you say that.”
“Which is why I said it while they’re out of the house.”
“Willow.”
“Look, I know the signs, okay? Ezra is not short-tempered, not overbearing, certainly not impulsively violent.”
“You barely know him. He might be all those things.”
If Saffron were going on a date with one of her customers from Great Clips, Willow would grill her too. Would spin negative scenarios just to be sure Saffron had thought each of them through. Still, being on the other side of sisterly protectiveness was a little annoying. Turned out eighteen months wasn’t much of an age gap, and it only shrank as they moved into their twenties. These days Willow felt not at all like the big sis, instead like one unit of a matched set. Willow was the salt shaker, Saffron the pepper. Willow was the peanut butter, Saffron the jam.
Okay, enough of that. At least two thirds of her thoughts would kill her with embarrassment if anyone could read them.
Picturing Saffron as a jar of jam pretty much drained Willow’s annoyance. Anyway Saffron was only handing back what Willow had dished to her countless times. “Okay, you’re not wrong. But I really don’t think a lupine would be interested in the annual arts-and-crafts fair.”
“He’s the right physical type,” Saffron said.
“There are taller guys in the NBA.”
“Lupines aren’t necessarily the tallest in the world. And you said he’s very tallandvery broadandvery sculpted.”
“Maybe he likes bodybuilding.”
“No, he likes model building. Very different sort of hobby.”
She might have taught her sister too well how to deliver a cautionary challenge. “And I like researching our family roots and arranging flowers, also very different.”
Saffron was quiet while they slid the cookie sheets into the oven. Willow shut the door, and Saffron set the timer. When she turned to face Willow again, her brown eyes were big and earnest.
“The facts are, he matches the physical profileandhe lives out at that commune. You can’t ignore both together.”
Willow looked away, counted seconds along with the oven timer. She knew all this. She would pay attention at the fair, glean information from their conversations, and if Ezra was a lupine she’d…figure out what to do about it then.
“I won’t go in with blinders on. You know me better than that.”
Saffron studied her for a long moment, then hugged her.
Willow tried to dodge. “Sticky hands.”
“Whatever,” Saffron said, but she held her hands out and hugged with only her arms. After a moment she stepped back. “You’re right. You’re the last person who’d ever let hope cloud her judgment.”
When she put it that way, it stung a little. After all, hope was a good thing…theoretically. It was just also really freaking dangerous. And not worth the loss of judgment it sometimes caused.
By the time the cookies were done, they’d dissected possibilities and spun fantasies until there really was nothing more to say about Ezra Sterling, at least not until after the fair. Or so Willow thought.
As they sipped over-creamed coffee and deliberately didn’t count the number of cookies consumed, Saffron said quietly, “The parents would be really upset, you know.”
“I know,” Willow said.
“They expect us to rule out certain things before the first date.”
