She’s quiet for a moment. Then she looks at me and asks, “Is that because of Augusta?”
Pushing out a sigh, I say, “Why are you so interested in the Bad Luck Club? Here I thought we were having a friendly postcoital discussion, and then you had to go and bring your obsession into it.”
Guilt flashes across her face, but it quickly fades. “I could ask why you don’t want to talk about it. Your friends were quick to tell me how much the club helped them overcome some of their obstacles. I mean, sure, Harry’s still into conspiracies, and Nicole is frankly terrifying, but there’s no denying Blue is doing awesome, and it sounds like Dee is living her best life. I doubt they’re the only ones. You’re helping people, Cal. You should be proud of that.”
The sincerity in her voice catches me off guard, and I stop on the path. She slows to halt a foot in front of me and turns back.
“Not everyone wants the glory, you know?” I say, scratching the back of my neck. “Some of us want to just live our lives and try to tip the karma scales in our favor.”
Her brow wrinkles. “Do you feel like your karma scales are unbalanced, Cal?”
Shit. I should have known she would read something into that.
“Aren’t everyone’s?” I ask to dodge the question. Then I’m walking again, not waiting for her response. The rhododendrons are around us again, the pink flowers implausibly bright, but I barely notice. She doesn’t seem to either.
“So you want to do good and not take credit for it…” she says as though mulling it over.
I don’t respond, but I’m walking faster now, which is probably suspicious as hell. Good going, Cal. Great job of throwing her off the scent.
“Your friends think Augusta is causing people harm. They say she got a lot of things wrong, and they’re worried about the clubs relying on her version of the rules. They tell me your dad is too. The rule about leveraging information was hers, wasn’t it? And the one about paying money to stay in the club even if you don’t do any of the challenges?”
She’s right, and what she’s saying drives home my own guilt. Dad and I aren’t psychologists, but I’ve always been good at listening to people, really listening, and Dad has a lot of good old-fashioned common sense, once you get past his eccentricities. We started the club to help people, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t lost some sleep worrying about the damage her book might be causing.
“Why do you get to ask all the questions?” I ask. “That hardly seems fair.”
“Okay,” she says, walking backward with her arms held out. “Ask me anything.”
“Do you have a death wish?” I ask wryly.
Confusion washes over her face. “What?”
I close the distance between us and grab her upper arms, pulling her to a stop moments before she bumps into a small boulder at the curve of the path.
“Oh,” she says as she looks over her shoulder. It’s time to let go of her, but I don’t. I like having an excuse to hold on to her.
“I think that means I just saved your life again.”
“Again?” she asks with a smirk.
“I could have left you down the hillside to waste away.”
“But then you would have missed out on all that fun.”
Thinking about it shoots my blood down south again.
I slowly release her arms before I do something stupid like kiss her again.
“Surely that wasn’t your question,” she says as she turns to face the path and starts walking next to me.
“Tell me about your sisters.”
“What?” she asks in surprise, then smiles. “You remembered I have two sisters?”
I remember lots of things about that conversation at the dog park. I’ve lain awake at night alternating between dread about what she’s doing and lust. But I won’t admit that either. “I don’t have short-term memory loss. You have two older sisters. The middle sister is Maisie, Blue’s friend, and you’re staying at her house while she’s on her babymoon. Your oldest sister lives a couple of hours away.”
“And you call me a stalker.”
“Hey, I just remembered what you said,” I say with a shrug. “So tell me about them.”
“Well…” She pauses as though she’s trying to figure out what to say. Or maybe how much.
“Tell me about Maisie. I’ve met her before, but I don’t really know her.”
A softness fills her eyes. It’s a lot like the look she gave Dottie at the tea shop. I suspected it then, but I’m certain now: Molly O’Shea is someone who cares deeply about the people she loves.
“She took care of me after our parents died.”
“How old were you?”
“Almost seventeen. Mary threatened to come back from law school to ‘raise’ me, but I convinced her to stay in Charlottesville. It wouldn’t have made sense for her to come home. My sister Maisie was still living in Asheville. She was going to school at UNC-Asheville when our parents died, but she dropped out. I felt guilty about that for a while, but then she opened her dog shelter.” She grins, but it looks forced. “So, seeing as you got Ruby from her, you’re welcome.”
“Wow,” I say, not letting the joke distract me. “That had to be rough.”
“Honestly, it was for the best that Maisie stayed with me. For the aforementioned dog shelter reasons and also because Mary and I are complete opposites.” She rubs the back of her neck. “She hated that I worked for Beyond the Sheets. I can’t decide if she’ll be horrified that I got fired or ecstatic that I don’t work there anymore. I guess I’ll find out this weekend.”
“Why this weekend?”
“She and my nephew are coming to visit from Charlotte.”
Her expression is more conflicted when she talks about Mary. It’s none of my business, but I find myself asking, “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Eight months? Nine? She and Maisie brought Aidan to Seattle. I’m excited to see them, especially Aidan, but Mary can be…difficult. She means well, but she’s judgy. She can’t seem to help herself.”
“You mean she frowns on stalking strangers for a good story?” I tease.
“Come on, Cal,” she says, “we’re not strangers.” She gives me a saucy grin. “Not anymore.”
She has a point.
“And since we’re not strangers anymore,” she continues, “I think that makes us friends.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I grunt, and immediately feel like an asshole. But I can’t let myself believe this will go anywhere. Even if she actually agreed to drop her story, we’d never work. There’s no way she’d allow me to yada-yada my past forever. She’d want to know. And I don’t have it in me to tell anyone else. Maybe she wouldn’t blame me, maybe she’d even tell me it’s not my fault, but that’s not something I deserve to believe.
“Okay,” she teases, “special friends.”
I quirk my mouth in acknowledgment.
“So, as my special friend, tell me why Augusta stole your idea and, more importantly, why you’re letting her get away with it. I mean, Harry told me she tried to burn your house down.”