Homecoming in November (The Calendar Girls Book 3) by Gina Ardito

Author:Gina Ardito [Ardito, Gina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria Ardito
Published: 2016-07-27T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Terri

For the next forty-eight hours, I was the butt of a thousand jokes about how I’d almost catered a dog’s birthday party. I could understand if my mistake bothered Gary. Let’s face it. Having a pâtissier create gluten-free, dairy-free, canine treats was like hiring Michelangelo to paint a garage. But Gary didn’t take offense. Nope. From the moment my potential customer announced the birthday girl was, in fact, a birthday dog, he’d just gone back to work in the kitchen without a single criticism or word of chastisement. Instead, every time I was within earshot, he’d bark or growl at me. Worse, he got the staff to make dog noises at me, too. Even my aunt joined in. Then they’d all start laughing. The only benefit to their antics was the continuous woofing and howling kept my mind off the deliciousness of Gary’s kiss.

Wanna know the weird thing? Ever since he’d pulled me outside to bawl me out for bawling out Chelsea, I spent waaaaay too much time thinking about him. Not just about the kiss, but the guy as a whole. I mean, I actually dreamed him about him one night. Not a sexy dream, thank God. No kissing or anything. Just…pleasant stuff. Us together on a couch, laughing and hanging out with his kid, which was so out of character for me. Worse than oil and water, kids and I were Crips and Bloods. But in my dream, we were pals, tossing popcorn at each other while watching some creepy movie on a big screen tv. Go figya. Maybe my fantasy friendship with Christian grew out of my blooming real friendship with his father.

Working with Gary here in the tea shop, I saw a side of him I’d never witnessed in his scary bartender persona. Drunk as I always was, I still could recall some of the names he used to toss my way when he worked the taps at The Lookout: pathetic, mess, sot, loser, and my personal favorite, drunken tart. Here, though, he never got angry with me, even when he had every right to—like with the whole Halston episode where I’d really mucked things up. I should’ve asked more questions before getting carried away with dreams and schemes about little girls in pretty pink dresses and floral-adorned hats. I made that mistake a lot, blowing things up in my imagination to proportions impossible to achieve. These days, I had to remind myself when I was overly ambitious I wasn’t the only one who had to pick up the pieces when it all fell apart.

So I swallowed my pride and put up with the teasing and doggy sound effects.

On Wednesday afternoon, Max called me for the first time since our evening at his producer’s house and, in a moment of weakness, I answered the phone.

“Where’ve you been?” he demanded in lieu of the standard phone greeting.

“Working,” I replied. “Some of us have a business to run.”

If he noticed the edge to my tone, he ignored it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.