“Yes you are, girl. You got this!” I clap my hands. “Now go!”
I watch as she makes her way to her chair, then as she rests her hand on Carter’s shoulder and smiles down at him. He glances up, his expression startled before it evens out into a polite smile. Ah, he’s good.
Too good.
Eleanor steps closer, and she’s kind of short, and rather busty, and I realize she took my advice and she’s trying her best to get her boobs close to his face.
Covering my mouth, I try not to giggle.
He says something and Eleanor throws her head back, laughing like his remark is the funniest thing she’s ever heard, and I wish I could send her a warning signal that she might be overdoing it.
The panicked expression on Carter’s face fills me with satisfaction. She might be overdoing it, but he’s also falling for it.
The dog.
“What are you doing?”
I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of Caroline’s voice. “You snuck up on me.” It sounds like an accusation, which is sort of is. I can’t explain to her what I’m really doing.
“Sorry. You were watching Eleanor and my brother with this really odd intensity.” Caroline nudges me in the ribs. I should add she has really pointy elbows and the nudge is painful. “Are they actually flirting right now? He just told me she wasn’t his type.”
“They’re flirting.” My voice is flat. I can’t tear my eyes away from the spectacle. Eleanor and Carter are chatting away like old friends, and my plan to sneak up on them and hover over Carter with a smirk is being ruined, thanks to Caroline.
“Huh. I don’t know if I like this.”
I turn to Caroline. “Why not?”
“He would eat her up and spit her out, quite frankly. At least, that’s what I told him,” Caroline explains as she watches them continue to flirt.
When did Carter and Caroline discuss Eleanor? God, I hate this. I hate feeling this way. All icky and—and…
Jealous.
I watch Eleanor and Carter. She’s sitting in her chair now. She looked like she was going to fall into his lap only a second ago.
“They’re just talking,” I say with a dismissive wave of my hand. I turn away from them and focus all of my attention on Caroline. “Where’s Alex?” She needs to go find him so I can head over to Eleanor and Carter.
“Talking with Jared. They’re plotting a secret project together and want no one else to know about it yet. Not even me or Sarah,” Caroline explains.
“Where is Sarah?” I ask, needing a distraction for my BFF.
“Right here, bitches.” Sarah magically appears. My distraction.
Yay.
I give Sarah a hug, I’m so glad to see her, and the odd look on her face when we pull away from each other tells me that was unexpected. “Didn’t we hug when we first got here and saw each other?”
“Yes, but I haven’t had the chance to talk to you the entire night. How are you?”
Sarah smiles. “I’m good. Great, actually. I got a few more window display jobs this week. Big ones. One is for the Carmel Company.”
That’s a gorgeous home goods store that sits on one of the busiest intersections in downtown Carmel. Everyone, and I mean everyone, walks past those window displays. “That’s amazing! See? You deserved that extra hug.”
“Aw, thank you. I’m so excited. Did I tell you I’m only working at Bliss part time now? The window display jobs are taking up most of my days.”
Sarah works at Bliss Lingerie, which is a high-end lingerie store in the shopping plaza here in Carmel. She’s the one who created their beautiful window displays, and when word spread around town that Sarah Harris does such gorgeous work, she started getting requests to design and put together various window displays throughout Carmel.
She helps me with the window display at Sweet Dreams, and her creativity is so inspiring. And I love that she’s taken her unique skills and has turned them into a new career. Something that’s all her own. I wouldn’t mind trying to find something like that, but I have no idea what. While I’m a damn good barista, I can’t take that skill and turn it into a career.
Can I?
No. If I started my own coffee shop, for instance, my entire family would disown me. I can’t compete against them. That would be ridiculous.
But they have zero expectations for me to do anything else. Take over Sweet Dreams someday? That’s what I hope, but sometimes I think my brothers believe I’m not capable. And if they’re the ones who take over, I’ll end up just being a barista for the rest of my life.
Ugh. That’s so…boring.
“Do you miss working there all the time?” I ask Sarah.
“Not really,” she says with a shrug. “I’ve been so busy, I’m lucky if I can work at Bliss three days out of the week. And when I’m there, it’s only for four or five hours, tops. Thankfully, Marlo has been understanding.”
Marlo is Sarah’s boss.
“Our new spring collections have come in,” Sarah adds. “You two should stop by the store sometime and check it out.”
“Ooh, I’ll come in tomorrow,” Caroline says excitedly, but I just nod in response. Look, I love shopping in that store and own quite a few pieces from Bliss, but I haven’t been there in a while because I’m single and have no one to wear the frilly matching bra and panty sets for except myself.
And hey, I love myself, and I love wearing pretty lingerie, but lately it’s been about cotton-and-lace bras and thongs that I get on sale from Aerie and that’s it. I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m going for comfort. If Carter wasn’t living with me, I’d go braless a lot more, because the first thing I normally do is whip that sucker off the minute I walk in the door.
With him around, I can’t do that. All my “let me make myself comfortable” moments are gone. I like walking around in the privacy of my own home without pants—Caroline and I used to do that all the time. Sometimes I’ll forget something right before I step into the shower and have to dash out of the bathroom to my bedroom and grab it. Naked.
Can’t do that anymore. Yes, Carter has seen me naked, but he’s not going to see me naked again doing the day-to-day thing.
No sir.
“What a minute. Is Carter flirting with Eleanor?” Sarah sounds positively scandalized. She sends me a look. One that clearly says what the hell, considering I admitted to everyone except Caroline that Carter and I have had sex.
“More like I think Eleanor is flirting with my brother,” Caroline says, sounding worried.
Sarah frowns, her gaze returning to mine. I think she’s confused. Welcome to the club. “Eleanor isn’t good at the flirting thing.”
We all know this. We love and protect Eleanor as much as we can. We encourage her and tell her she’s a strong, independent woman and she shouldn’t take any crap from any man no matter what. But she’s the friend in our group with the pure heart and trusting soul. She wants to believe that everyone is as wonderful and kind as she is.
This is why she gets burned. She doesn’t have a steel wall erected around her heart like the majority of us. Instead, her heart lies open and bleeds for anyone and everyone.
“Oh, we know she’s not good at it,” I say, and Sarah shoots me another meaningful look. One that says, get over there and help our friend. “I should probably go rescue her from Carter.”