Shane waved him off. “Oh, Winnie deserves all the credit,” he said. “I was just an assistant getting the word out there. Improved the historical society’s website, got some digital ad campaigns going, that sort of thing.”
“I’m not trying to steal credit, son,” the older man said with a chuckle. “Trust me. My wife is going to be singing Miss Winnie’s praises for weeks. She already asked Winnie if she’d ever consider getting poached up to our little town, but Winnie told her no—not that I think Kathleen ever expected anythingdifferent.These historians get mighty fierce about their work. But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.”
It warmed something in Shane to have this man, who likely had been married for decades, talk to him like he considered Shane’s relationship with Winnie to be of a piece with his own longstanding romance. Shane knew that wasn’t quite the case, of course, but still. It felt nice.
“No,” Max continued, “I’m here to ask if you’re looking for more work, son.”
Shane blinked in surprise. “More work?”
The man nodded. “I own an antiques store up in Worthford Bay. A love of history runs in the family. My daughter works there with me. It’s a whole family affair. Anyway, I do the business side of things and she has the amazing eye for finding new treasures, but we are looking to outsource some of the advertising work. The work you did here was very nice. Eye-catching, but not tacky. It really spoke to the audience you’ve gotten here today. So. I would like to hire you. If you’re amenable, that is.”
“Yes!”
The word left Shane’s lips before he even thought about it, but once he did pause to think, he found that he liked the idea a great deal. He had liked doing the publicity work for the event, and getting to update the historical society’s website had been a rare treat. He hadn’t quite realized it until he was deep in researching color theory and modern design trends, but he’d gotten so high up in the coding department of his company that he hadn’t been doing any of the visual components of the things that he programmed.
He liked doing that part. He wanted to do more of it.
“Yes?” the older man asked, clearly amused. “Well, wonderful. Do you have a card?”
Shane did, although he made sure to cross out his email at his company before he handed it over to Max. He didn’t think too much about that decision until after he and the older gentleman had chatted a bit about the kind of work he needed and the timeline for the projects. Once the man had returned to his family, however, and Shane was back to his original spot under the tree, he thought about drawing a line through that email address.
It wasn’t against his contract at his other job to take on more work, after all. He had double-checked his contract after doing that first job for Diana. But his instinct had been not to have them find out about this new job with Max until after he had an exit strategy in place.
And that meant that, for the first time, he was really, seriously thinking about having an exit strategy. He was treating his time in Magnolia Shore like it wasn’t all that temporary.
That was foolish though, right? He had a whole life in San Francisco. And he could do the job for Max remotely.
Except…didhe have a whole life in San Fran? He had a job, yeah. And an apartment. But he didn’t even have a plant in that apartment, not since the last one had died because he’d spent too many long days at his job and forgotten to water it too often. He had friends, but they rarely saw one another, because they were all too busy with their jobs too. None of them had even called to find out where he was, because they probably hadn’t even realized that he’d left California. They weren’t those kinds of friends. They were “Hey, want to grab a beer sometime in the next couple of weeks?” friends not “Can I tell you about something that’s weighing on me?” friends.
Heck, even without their romance in play, he’d built a closer friendship with Winnie in these past few weeks than he had with many of the friends he’d had in California for the past several years.
He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about very much at all.
Except for one thing. He was very, very sure that he wasn’t ready to leave Magnolia Shore yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Winnie was flying high. Everything had gone off without a hitch. She’d fretted herself into a lather the night prior, when she and her friends had finished setting up only for clouds to roll in that threatened rain. Eleanor, who had decided to come along and help with the setup, had wrapped an arm around Winnie’s shoulder and reminded her that no amount of worry would give Winnie the power to control the weather and then kept that arm in place until Winnie’s panic had subsided.
In the end, the weather had cooperated enough that it wasn’t anything that twenty minutes and a couple of old rags couldn’t fix.
And everything from that point forward had been perfect.
Well,nearlyperfect. She would have liked a little more time to celebrate with Shane. But that was a pretty small complaint, especially since every time she’d stolen a moment to look for him, she’d found him already looking in her direction, ready to share a little wave before she got sucked into her next conversation.
The whole thing had made Winnie feel so happy she thought she might topple over.
She didn’t, of course. She was a professional.
“Winnie!”
At the sound of her name, Winnie turned to see Lyle, Cherry, and Lyle’s grandson walking toward her. Winnie tried not to react at the sight of the little boy walking hand in hand with Cherry rather than his own grandfather.
Hm. Winnie had wondered if Lyle didn’t get a little bit of an extra twinkle in his eye when Cherry was around. She hoped her suspicions were true. Lyle had been widowed for over a decade, and he deserved some happiness in his life.
“Can you say what you were going to say to Miss Winnie, Connor?” Cherry prompted, leaning down to the little boy, who looked to be about four years old.
“I really like the shestival, Miss Winnie,” the boy said.
