Chapter Six

Tori pulled up outside the restaurant a solid five minutes before her meeting with Mrs. Bedland’s daughter and future son-in-law. She’d spent an extra twenty minutes making sure her hair, makeup, and clothes were all perfect. Her boss at First Impressions in Atlanta had always stressed how appearance was everything, especially when working with their usual high-class clients and their even higher expectations.

Early morning sunlight shone through the windows of Bread and Butter, the local restaurant that, according to Deb at least, was most noted for its incredible breakfast menu. The hostess smiled with closed red lips from behind her stand, her black hair pinned up in a braided crown and a tag with the name Callie on her blue T-shirt.

“Hi, I’m expected for a business breakfast with Danica Bedland.” It seemed safe to assume everyone knew the Bedlands’ only child and, judging by the even bigger smile of recognition on Callie’s face, Tori was right to do so.

“Oh yes. We’ve already got a table set up for you. If you could follow me, please.” She led the way around the corner to a room full of tables and booths. Only about half were occupied, not too surprising at nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning. Most of the town’s residents were already sitting at their desks and typing away at their computers.

Tori always loved meetings like this one that took her out of the office, especially when it came with food. She’d held off on breakfast all morning in preparation for this, and her gurgling stomach was starting to protest.

It was a cute little place, robin’s-egg blue paint spread across each wall, matching the blue of the sky hanging over the beach visible through the windows. They were open, a light breeze carrying the smell of sea and salt and the sound of far-off seagulls into them. She still couldn’t get used to it, life in this small coastal town, but without doubt it had its highlights.

Callie headed for a table set for four in the center of the room, and Tori’s grin fell. Wyatt already sat waiting with a glass of orange juice while he studied the menu in his hands. His head rose as they approached, and he offered a smile. To anyone else it would appear nothing but friendly, but combined with his straight back and tight jaw, she could tell it was stilted.

“You’re early,” was all he said.

She hadn’t realized Georgina would include Wyatt at this meeting with Danica Bedland and her fiancé—though after that first meeting, she probably should have—and she wasn’t prepared for the way his sudden appearance caught her off guard. After a deep breath to reset herself, she forced her own smile back at him. “Look who’s talking. I wasn’t sure you believed in punctuality after showing up more than five minutes late the last time.”

“Yes, well, I hadn’t exactly planned on oversleeping on the beach that morning. But now that I’m competing for this job, I’ll be pulling out all the stops.” He took a sip from his glass of orange juice and patted the chair next to him. “Here, have a seat.”

She eyed the seat beside him, then the ones on the other side of the table. She would so much rather sit with a good foot or two between them, but that would mean putting Danica and her fiancé awkwardly on opposite sides of the table. Still, it might be worth it…

Frowning, she slid into the seat beside him. “I guess this means you decided to go for it after all.”

“As you so eloquently put it, I’d be insane not to. Despite what you may think, my business needs this kind of publicity just as much as yours does. Probably even more so.”

Like you’d even know. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Does your silence mean you’re mad about my going for this job?”

“Of course not. I am nothing if not professional. And professionally speaking, I have nothing to be mad at you for.”

He set his menu down and turned in his seat to face her. He wore an open green button-up with the sleeves rolled up over a gray T-shirt—his signature look, apparently. This time his shirt featured an avocado shaped like a cat, with the word Avogato.

He could not be serious.

His head tilted, sunlight reflecting off the lenses of his glasses. “Really? Because I can practically see you fantasizing about dumping this orange juice on my head.”

“I’m perfectly capable of separating my work and personal lives, and you are very decidedly in the former. Besides, all that matters is that I don’t act on it.” She turned the page on her menu without actually reading it. “I can daydream about pouring drinks on your head all I want.”

“That’s very reassuring.”

She gave him a side-eye glance but failed to suppress the grin that accompanied it.

His brow creased before he smiled back at her, his stiff shoulders relaxing some as he did. He looked like he was formulating his next words when Callie returned to their table followed by a young couple. Whatever he’d been about to say was forgotten as he stood from his chair. Tori did the same beside him.

“Wyatt, how are you?” A young woman with the same dark skin and wide smile as Georgina Bedland approached him with arms outstretched.

Wyatt met her in a firm hug. “Dani, always a pleasure.”

Clearly, the two were familiar. Again, not surprising in this small, everybody-knew-everybody town. What Tori hadn’t counted on was how much of a disadvantage that put her at compared to Wyatt. It was human nature to want to hire a friend over a complete stranger. Which meant she had to go even bigger than she’d originally planned.

Danica reached for Tori next. “I’m Dani. Very nice to meet you, Torrance.”

“Tori, please,” she corrected. “It’s so nice to meet you too.”

“My mom has just been raving about you ever since she looked into your work in Atlanta.”

“Oh, thank you. Having seen her taste firsthand, you have no idea how flattered I am to hear that.”

She stepped back. “And this is my fiancé, Collin.”

His hand stretched out between them, and she took it. “Nice to meet you, Collin.”

“You too.” Where Dani was petite, Collin was tall and broad. Where she was dark, he was light. He looked like a surfer boy with his shaggy white-blond hair and tan skin.

“I’ve been so excited to meet you, Tori. It’s always nice to find someone new around here,” Dani told her as they all sat down. She adjusted her red-orange blouse before resting her elbows on the table in front of her. “I feel like we’ve all known each other forever.”

“So the three of you go back a ways?” Tori asked, confirming the obvious.

Collin nodded. “Wyatt went to school with my older brother, so we sort of grew up together.”

“I see.”

“How long have you been in town exactly?” Danica asked her.

“About a week.”

“Wow, so you probably haven’t had a chance to find all the best places to eat yet.”

“Um…” Tori bit her lip. “Not really.”

Collin chuckled as he wrapped his arm around his fiancée’s shoulders and squeezed. “Leave it to Dani to go straight to food. We don’t have much of what you’d consider a nightlife here, but we do have a few restaurants that could easily compete with those fancy places you’re used to in the city.”

“For example, Mrs. O’Neal makes the best breakfast you’ll ever have in your life.” Dani raised her finger and twirled it, indicating the very restaurant they were in now. “Pancakes, eggs, muffins, even toast. Whatever it is you like, hers can’t be beat. And you absolutely have to try her cheesy grits. They are to die for.”

“Wow. That’s quite the endorsement.”

She shrugged. “It’s true though. That’s why I wanted to meet you guys here. Breakfast is my favorite, but Collin and I don’t get to eat here as often as we’d like. Let’s see, what else?” She looked over at Collin.

“There’s McCluskey’s, this great soup and sandwich place right on the strip downtown. But the real star is Andrew’s lasagna. It’s not on the menu, but there’s always some on hand if you ask for it.”

Dani straightened. “Oh, and you have got to try Del Mar. It’s small and a little hard to find, but the shrimp tacos are out of this world. Best you’ll find anywhere in the south.”

Tori glanced at Wyatt. She wasn’t sure if it was the proud, triumphant grin on his face or the reminder of that night that made her stomach clench. “I’ll be sure to check it out,” she said.

Wyatt picked up his menu and started perusing it once again. “If we’re going to keep talking about food, we should probably order something soon.”

Collin laughed. “Your hunger about to get the best of you?”

“It’s not me I’m worried about. I just know Tori can get a bit cranky when she’s hungry.”

“I do no such thing.”

He grinned, his eyes filling with that playful twinkle she’d already become so familiar with. “And yet I seem to remember a threat of bodily harm if I didn’t feed you soon.”

Dani’s smile widened. “I didn’t realize you two were friends.”

“We’re not,” Tori and Wyatt said simultaneously. She crossed her arms once again over her empty, growling stomach, and Wyatt fidgeted with the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt.

“We became briefly acquainted at the Spencer wedding last weekend,” he explained.

“I saw the pictures.” Dani’s eyes lit up across the table. “Wasn’t it absolutely gorgeous?”

“It was,” she admitted only somewhat begrudgingly.

Collin nodded. “It’s pretty crazy, right? Who would guess this guy had all that in him?”

“I certainly didn’t when I met him,” she said, casting a knowing smile Wyatt’s way.

His eyebrow hitched. “Why? Because I’m a man? Because as a professional, I take that sort of sexist comment with great offense.” But his playful grin indicated he was far from offended.

“No, actually. I fully believe men are just as capable of planning a wedding as any woman.” She shrugged like an idea had just occurred to her. “Though it may have something to do with you leaving the wedding early with one of the guests. Doesn’t sound very professional to me.”

“That’s because I’m confident enough in my skills and my team to handle whatever happens without me. Besides, part of a planner’s job is to entertain their guests.”

“Late-night tacos and a tour of the town seems above and beyond the call of duty,” she murmured.

“What can I say?” He smirked, his eyes staring into hers with a heated intensity. “I take my job very seriously.”

Tori’s heart thudded in her chest. Her mouth fell open, primed for her own comeback when a perky waitress popped up at their table with a smile on her face. Tori’s jaw snapped closed, and for the first time in several minutes she remembered Dani and Collin’s presence across the table. They stared at her and Wyatt with round eyes.

“Are you guys ready to order?” the waitress asked hesitantly as if only just now realizing she’d interrupted something. Not that Tori had any clue what that something even was.

After a beat of silence, Dani turned to the waitress with a warm smile, and she and Collin listed their orders. Tori didn’t think she’d ever been so grateful for an interruption in her life. Somehow, she and Wyatt had gone from light bantering to full-out flirting, completely compromising the carefully sculpted impression she’d wanted to make for Dani and her fiancé.

Tori was the last to give her order, ultimately choosing eggs and grits purely based on Dani’s colorful recommendation. The waitress left with a smile, and Tori closed her eyes and took a deep, grounding breath.

Get it together. You’re a professional, so act like it!

“So Dani, Collin,” she said before the conversation had a chance to get away from her again. “Tell me a bit about your relationship.”

Dani grinned, that startled look in her eyes from earlier completely gone. “Sure. Well, like we said, we grew up in town together, but we were in different circles. I was the cheerleader, and he was the computer nerd and band geek.”

Tori scanned Collin’s wide shoulders and thick arms before meeting Collin’s gaze. Her shock must have been written all over her face, because he chuckled. “Sorry. It’s just that I would have pegged you as the athletic jock type.”

Wyatt coughed lightly next to her, reaching for his orange juice.

Collin grinned, taking Dani’s hand in his as his cheeks turned a light shade of pink. “College was good to me.”

No kidding. “How did all this start?”

“I’d just come back home after my senior year at college and was taking the summer off before inevitably starting at my dad’s company in the fall,” Dani went on. “So naturally I was spending each day at the beach. Collin was working in a food truck to save up for grad school, and we ran into each other a lot. One day we got to talking and catching up, then he started bringing me lunch on the beach, and we’d eat together almost every day that summer.”

Collin leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “Until one day at the end of July I showed up, and she was just in this awful mood. I had no idea what I’d done, and I was doing everything to try to cheer her up. All my best jokes—”

“I think you mean worst jokes.”

He narrowed his eyes at Dani, who grinned innocently back at him. “My best jokes. But nothing worked. So I finally just asked her what was wrong. And she said…” He waited, watching her with this expectant grin the way couples always did.

She laughed. “I said I’d never waited so long for a guy to ask me out in my life and would he just go ahead and do it already?”

“And did he?” Wyatt asked her.

“Nope.”

Tori’s mouth fell open. “Really? Then what did he do?”

Dani shook her head. “He left. Didn’t say anything, just got up and left. I didn’t hear from him until a few days later when he sent me a link to a geocaching app he’d created. You know, kind of like a scavenger hunt that takes you to different GPS coordinates. This one took me to all these different places in town, and each one had something waiting for me. White roses at the flower shop, my favorite chocolates at the candy store. There was even this gorgeous bright red dress waiting for me at one of the boutiques downtown.

“Finally, the app took me to the food truck near the boardwalk. The sun had already gone down so it was dark and quiet, and he’d set up a little candlelit table where he served me food from the truck he cooked himself. We ate and talked while the truck speaker played this beautiful acoustic guitar playlist. It was…absolutely perfect.”

A familiar weight settled heavily on Tori’s chest. Love and joy floated between Dani and Collin, filled them with light until it radiated from them, while Tori sat behind an invisible wall. She could see how much they loved each other, but it was separate, distant from her. A chasm between her and the happy couple that not even her imagination could bridge.

She’d never known that kind of love or felt the warmth she liked to think took hold of their hearts. She spent so much time convincing Lettie she didn’t mind being alone—and usually she didn’t. But there were still moments like this when that lacking felt especially poignant.

“That sounds beautiful,” she finally said.

Wyatt nodded silently beside her, no smart comment or joke to lighten the mood. Their eyes met, and for a second she felt like they were back on that beach together. Somehow, she knew he was on this side of the chasm with her.

The waitress returned, arms laden with dishes covered in eggs, toast, and sausage, and Tori used the interruption to gather her focus back to the business at hand.

Professional. She could stay professional.

She drew her shoulders back and straightened in her seat as the waitress set a bowl of grits in front of her. “So”—she took a deep breath, rubbing her hands together—“let’s start talking wedding details, shall we?”

Dani and Collin delved into the guest list and preferences on colors and flowers as Tori took her first bite of the cheesy grits that, turned out, really were to die for.