“Checking the temperature of the chicken,” he finished, the excuse as flimsy as the composure he was barely holding on to, especially since there wasn’t a thermometer in sight. He focused on the pattern of Lolly’s dish towels. Anything to avoid Aggie’s suspicious gaze.
Winston adjusted his glasses, his expression knowing. “I see. And what was it?”
He cleared his throat and turned the burner off. “It was hot.”
Bea shot Aggie a quick glance, her lips pressed into a tight,disapproving line. The steady tap of Aggie’s fingers against the doorframe said it all. They trusted him to help take down Worthington, sure, but when it came to their precious Cora? That was a different story.
He thought they might be off the hook until Aggie’s eyes narrowed again, a slow grin spreading across her face as if she were a cat toying with a cornered mouse.
“Well then,” she said, voice smooth as honey and just as sticky. “Why don’t you two join us in the dining room? We’ve got plenty to discuss.”
Chapter Twelve
After Jack and Cora cleaned up in the kitchen, they followed the sound of laughter into the dining room. It had always been one of Cora’s favorite spots, filled with food and gossip. But that night, something felt different. The air was charged, almost as if the room were holding its breath. Maybe it was the aftershock of that almost-kiss in the kitchen, but her heart was still doing a jittery little dance. She had to remind herself to breathe as she slid onto a seat across from Jack and tried to act like everything was perfectly normal.
Jack seemed just as determined to avoid looking at her. He stared at the table, tracing some invisible pattern in the wood. She wondered if he was replaying that moment in his head too, then caught Aggie giving them a look that was far too knowing for comfort, so she busied herself straightening the salt and pepper shakers.
“So,” Bea said, cutting through the awkward silence. “We’ve got two weeks until the Honeysuckle Festival, and there’s still work to do if we’re going to save The Salty Spoon. Our fundraising efforts haven’t been as successful as we’d like, and with all the preparations for the festival, things are getting busier around town.”
“The weeks leading up to the festival were Lolly’s favorite days of the year,” Cora said.
The Honeysuckle Festival was one of those events that made Sunrise impossible not to love. Every June, when the air turned sticky-sweet and the breeze barely kept the mosquitoes away, the whole town crammed into the square for a celebration only Sunrise could pull off. It had been a tradition for hundreds of years, ever since someone had spun a story about the honeysuckle that crept through town each spring.
The festival began with the legend of Jeremiah Puryear, the town’s founder, shipwreck survivor, and first official honeysuckle fanatic. They said that when he’d washed up on the town’s sandy beach, the sight of those vines spilling over the dunes was all the sign he needed to settle down. Because when the universe spoke through an aggressive, fast-growing plant, what else was there to do but build a town and throw a party?
Back then, honeysuckle grew wild, climbing over every fencepost and trellis and filling the air with its sweetness. But as Sunrise expanded, so did its zoning laws, and the vines weren’t exactly rule followers. Now, most of the honeysuckle was tamed, stuck in decorative pots around the town square.
During the festival, garlands of yellow and white flowers twisted around lampposts in the square, and vendors sold everything from honeysuckle lemonade to honeysuckle candles that mostly smelled like wax but came with a good story. Then there was the parade, with floats put together by whichever committee managed to scrounge up a budget, local bands playing old rock songs, and town dignitaries waving from vintage convertibles.
They even used to crown a Honeysuckle Queen. Lolly was the last to wear that crown, and no one ever figured out why they’d stopped the tradition after her. She used to joke that it was because they’d never found anyone good enough to unseat her.
The real magic of the festival, though, was in the stories that got passed down from year to year. Like the time the mayor’s goat, Gus, broke loose and devoured an entire table of honeysuckle-flavored saltwater taffy before anyone was able to catch him. Or when the local firefighters won first place in the baking competition with a honeysuckle-flavored chili that sounded awful but somehow tasted amazing.
“Lolly loved that festival. She was the heart of it,” Bea said with a fond smile. “She always insisted The Salty Spoon entered a float in the parade. She said it was good for business, but I think she just loved the attention. Every year she’d have a trail of men following her float, hoping for a smile.”
The image made Cora smile too. She could easily picture a younger Lolly, glamorous and full of life, waving from her float while the whole town watched.
Winston cleared his throat, bringing everyone back to the present. “Yes, well, the point is, we haven’t planned a float this year. And given the circumstances ...” He trailed off, leaving the unspokenit might be our last chancehanging in the air.
The mood shifted, the lightness of earlier fading quickly.
Cora straightened, pushing aside thoughts of almost-kisses and grandmothers who were anything but embarrassing. “You’re right. We should do it. For Lolly.”
Everyone agreed, and Aggie pulled out her notepad. “So, what should our theme be? We don’t have a lot of time to pull something together, but we can use my old truck.”
“Ooh, how about Beach Bingo?” Bea suggested. “We could wear vintage swimwear.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “You want to see the Sunrise bridge club in wool bikinis?”
Bea laughed. “Okay, maybe not the swimsuits. But let’s do something beachy. Lolly loved the ocean.”
“True,” Aggie said. “Remember when she tried to teach that seagull to dance the cha-cha?”
Cora blinked, sure she had misheard. “I’m sorry, what?”
Winston chuckled. “That’s right. She found an injured seagull on the boardwalk and wanted to nurse it back to health.”
“Did it work?” Jack asked, every bit as bewildered as Cora.
