“Did you bring a farm animal into my office?” he shouted. Several of his employees looked up. Greg muttered a curse then stalked over and slammed the door to his office shut.
“You can’t steal her back from Mark Holbrook with a goat, secondhand flowers, and a plucky attitude,” Greg scoffed. “Speaking of, someone get a trash bag and throw that thing away. We’re going to put together a nice gift basket and order a reasonable bouquet. That thing looks like a weapon. And someone call animal control for that goat.”
“Mark Holbrook?” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“What does Mark Holbrook have to do with this?” I practically shouted.
“You didn’t know?” Greg said. Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “I figured that was why Hunter had taken an unreasonable interest when normally he just sits around Harrogate, wasting time.”
“She can’t be with Mark Holbrook,” I argued. “She just left Harrogate two days ago.”
“According to my assistant Marnie, who is friends with Josie, who is friends with Ida, who is friends with Barbara, who is friends with Mark’s mother, Nancy, Mark has a date with Sadie at the Georgia Peach restaurant near Frost Tower.”
“The small-town gossip mill is strong with that one,” Remy said somberly.
Hunter made a disgusted noise.
“Apparently rumor has it that Mark is very excited. He’s a war veteran and a billionaire, and also he doesn’t sell his girlfriends to cults, so Parker needs to up his game,” Greg added.
“I don’t have time,” I said, panicking. “What if Sadie falls in love with him? What if she forgets about me? I need to find her.”
“Yes, because stalking a woman and showing up at her date to harass her really tells her how much you care,” Greg said dryly.
“It’s not harassment,” Remy insisted. “It’s a grand gesture.”
“I feel like it’s a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B,” Greg said. “Jail in Manhattan isn’t like jail in Harrogate.”
“But I have flowers and a goat and a box of carefully curated local goods,” I said.
“I’m not bailing any of you out when you get arrested.”
* * *
I wassecond-guessing myself when we pulled up in front of the restaurant. The sign had a cutout of the state of Georgia along with several cartoon bantam hens. The large windows had text on them with words like Hot Chicken! and Soul Food! in fun cursive letters. I stepped out of the car and stood at the window. Sadie was across the room at a table, her back to me. Mark Holbrook was laughing at something she’d said. She reached out and took his hand.
It was heartbreaking.
Did I want to be like my father, storming in, causing a scene? Maybe I should leave her alone or at least wait until she wasn’t in a public restaurant.
“You hyped?” Remy said through the open truck door as Hunter climbed out with the flowers. I looked through the storefront.
“Maybe we should wait.”
“You’re going to wait for him to reel her in?” he said, peering through the window.
“I can’t just storm into the restaurant. She’d hate that.”
“We can idle here until the police tell us to move,” Remy offered.
Hunter looked up at the sky then got back in the pickup. Davy petted the goat. We sat in silence and watched the restaurant. Sadie and Mark seemed deep in conversation.
“Maybe we should wait outside her house,” Remy said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” What if she still hated me? What if—
“I have to use the bathroom,” Davy said.
