The Backup Plan by Jill Shalvis

Author:Jill Shalvis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Need

Alice—A new life.

Lauren—I second that, preferably in Bali.

Lauren—mousetraps (the traps are gone, don’t even bother trying to find them—Alice, in case you didn’t know)

Lauren—Dark chocolate with sea salt, pronto.

Lauren—for Alice to stop being mean.

Alice—I’m not mean! Just honest!

Knox—this is for WORK-RELATED NEEDS ONLY, LADIES!

The next day Alice stood on the porch, watching a truck drive away from the inn. Lauren and Knox stood on either side of her, silent and unmoving. Well, Knox was silent and unmoving. Lauren was practically jumping up and down.

The truck belonged to the hardware store, which turned out to be owned by Ben. He’d personally just delivered live greenery for the inn’s back deck, along with patio furniture.

Hence Lauren grinning from ear to ear, the sort of grin a woman gets when she’s been struck by Cupid’s arrow, and she was excitedly poking Knox, demanding. “How? What? When? Why?”

Alice had no idea what she was talking about, but apparently Knox did because he shrugged. “I might’ve called and asked him to deliver after all.”

Lauren threw herself at him and hugged him tight, leaving Alice surprised and . . . jealous? Lauren hadn’t hugged Alice like that since . . . well, since Alice had left Sunrise Cove.

Yeah, and whose fault was that? She went hands on hips. “Okay, what am I missing?”

“Ben’s got a thing for Lauren,” Knox said. “And likely also a concussion.”

Alice looked at Lauren for an explanation that made sense.

Lauren grinned. “It’s true. It happened at the diner. He walked right into a beam when he was looking back at me. Do you know what that means? It means that someone has a crush on me and he’s not eighty.”

Alice hadn’t seen that look of happiness on Lauren’s face since the old days. Since before everything had gotten screwed up. Maybe Alice had no clue about how to breach the huge crevasse between them, but she knew Lauren was a good person, one of the best, actually, and this town had held her back for too long.

Knox turned to the two pallets of stuff that Ben had dropped off, and Alice joined him. Patio furniture—not assembled—plants, pretty pots, dirt, lights, and yard decorations.

“I might’ve gone slightly overboard,” Lauren admitted.

Alice snorted. “You should’ve just slept with him. You didn’t have to warm him up with this huge order. I mean, since he already walked into a beam for you.”

“I didn’t order this stuff to catch his attention,” Lauren said. “We’ve talked about the back covered deck, how it’s just a pad of concrete, cold and uninviting, remember? I said we should fix it up, make it so people want to gather there and socialize.”

“And who’s the ‘we’ in this equation?” Alice asked. “Because those cute little baby spruces need to be potted, as do the other plants you bought. The furniture has to be put together, and all those strings of fairy lights hung.”

“Oh good,” Lauren said, looking at her watch, moving toward her car. “I knew you’d know what to do. I’ve got a shift at the library.

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