This month’s selection had been a classic—Austen—and who could go wrong with that?
“I think you know the answer to that,” she replied with a laugh, already feeling her spirits lift being here in her second favorite shop of all of Blue Harbor, next to her own—not that she’d be telling Brooke that—with a cousin who loved books with romantic endings every bit as much as she did, and Candy, still busy trying to convince Brooke to hack five feet off the train she would no doubt want ten feet longer the week before her wedding.
Bella caught her smile. “There’s the cousin I know. By the way, I meant to tell you, that guy who always used to give you grief back in high school was in here the other day.”
“Doug?” Gabby nodded and popped another bite of cheese and cracker into her mouth. “Yes, he moved back to town.”
“So he told me. Here I thought when I saw you so upset…”
“That I was upset about him?” Gabby covered her mouth to laugh. “The only thing to get upset about when it comes to Doug Monroe is how mad he always makes me! He loves nothing more than a good argument.”
Bella gave her a funny look. “I just thought…because back in high school, you used to talk about him just as much as that lacrosse captain—”
“Soccer captain,” Gabby corrected, thinking of Chad, who would strut down the hall with that cocky grin, his hair always tousled, his eyes so blue. She nearly set a hand to her stomach to stop the swoon, even though she hadn’t seen him since the summer after graduation. Like many people in Blue Harbor, he’d gone away to college and stayed away. But Gabby could never bring herself to leave this lakeside town that had always been her home. Even if she was starting to wonder what the future could hold for her here.
“You know what I mean.” Bella poured herself a glass of white wine. She was a Clark, a relation on Gabby’s mother’s side of the family, and even though she was in no way related to the Conway orchard, she was always happy to support the business by proudly displaying their local wine at her club meetings.
“No,” Gabby said, honestly. “I don’t.”
Bella leaned in, giving her a sly smile. “Doug got to you.”
“He annoyed me,” Gabby corrected.
Bella gave a little mew. “Isn’t it one and the same? Besides, he’s pretty cute. I don’t remember him being that cute.”
“He wasn’t,” Gabby said, before catching the spark in her cousin’s eye and realizing she had inadvertently agreed with her. “Look, there’s nothing between Doug and me, not then, not now.”
“You’re sure about that?” Bella asked.
Gabby didn’t pause to consider it. “I know the kind of guy I’m waiting for, and I can promise you, he is most certainly not it.” She thought of the way he made sure to goad her into an argument every time she saw him, the way he seemed hell-bent on showing just how much he disagreed with her career choice, her opinion, her optimism. The man was rude, really. And he was far too cynical for her liking.
Bella just nodded and took a sip from her glass, saying nothing.
“If you’re going to try to tell me that opposites attract—” Gabby started to say, but she was interrupted by Bella’s hoot of laughter.
“Oh, honey. You don’t need to worry about that. You and Doug were never opposites. You were more like…two of a kind.”
“Did I hear someone say two of a kind?” Candy was back, and Gabby and Bella exchanged a brief but knowing glance.
Candy helped herself to a giant cookie and looked at Gabby with interest. “We aren’t, by chance, talking about a certain bartender in town?”
Gabby suppressed a sigh. Candy wasn’t going to let this Jackson thing drop. For so many reasons, Gabby’s life would be easier once Candy had sailed off on her honeymoon, she reminded herself. After much discussion, the couple had decided on a two-week cruise, and Gabby suspected it would be the most relaxing fourteen days that any of the Conway girls would experience for the foreseeable future.
“Bella and I were just talking about an old friend from school,” Gabby said, not mentioning that it was a male friend and that she and Doug had never really been friends at all.
That according to Bella, they’d been two of a kind.
Looking disappointed, Candy took another cookie and went to her favorite seat, the chair beside Bella, even though the meeting hadn’t yet started, and no one would dare take Candy’s seat, knowing that if they tried, she’d bat her eyelashes and plead with them to trade.
Two of a kind. As if! Gabby was still frowning into her plate considering her cousin’s words, when Bella touched her on the shoulder, made her excuses, and tapped on her heels across the room to where her sister Heidi was standing with Helena, the town librarian.
Normally, Gabby might have joined them, but she was too unnerved by what Bella had just said. Besides, she hadn’t even mentioned to her cousin that Doug was insistent that he didn’t believe in love—not for himself. Maybe not for anyone.
Gabby set her plate down on the table and noticed a stack of new romances on the table beside it, most specifically, the latest in one of her favorite series, guaranteed to have a swoon-worthy hero and the happiest of endings.
Maybe she should take her sister’s advice. Take a break from looking for love for a while. At least she could always find it between the pages of a book.
Doug pulled his frozen dinner from the microwave and peeled away the plastic cover, knowing that his mother would insist he join them for Sunday night dinner if she had any idea what he was eating. It was another reason that he
