Her thoughts, just as they had for the past few weeks, kept wandering back to kissing Gordy in her kitchen pantry. Other than knowing glances and a mischievous grin, he hadn’t said a word about the kiss. She suspected he was playing a game with her—waiting for her to be the first to mention it. But she was strong enough to win that game. She hoped...

“Vickie!” Rick Thomas snapped his fingers in her face. “What the hell is going on with you today?”

She slapped his hand away with a scowl. Rick, a professor at Brady College, was one of her best friends. The two of them were equally cynical and sarcastic. They both loved watching—and gossiping about—people. Neither of them was easily intimidated.

“If you put that hand in my face again, you might just lose it,” she warned.

“Well, you didn’t answer Maura or me, so I thought maybe you’d retreated into some sort of catatonic state.” Tall and lanky, with dark but graying hair, he leaned back in his chair at the small metal table and arched an eyebrow high. “Where were you?”

In the kitchen pantry...

“I was just going through my mental to-do list for the SummerFest in August. I’m in charge of the Saturday night gala, remember?”

She hadn’t really been thinking about that, but she should have been. Selecting and celebrating the Local Business of the Year was a big responsibility. Not that she couldn’t handle it. Through the years she’d held just about every role in every one of the local festivals Rendezvous Falls was so famous for.

“Bullshit,” Rick snorted. “You could wait until the night before and still have a successful event. You’re the Hostess with the Mostest. It’s your superpower. What were you really thinking about?”

Luckily, Cecile came to the rescue with a distraction. She leaned forward and lowered her voice dramatically.

“Did you hear about Connie? She has a man!”

Rick fixed his attention straight on Cecile, who, as usual, was dressed in cotton candy pink, her too-blond-to-be-natural curls swinging around her face.

“Seriously?” Rick asked. “I can’t find a man to save my life, but the grumpiest florist in town found one?”

“I keep telling you you’re trying too hard, Rick.” Cecile shrugged. “Connie just said ‘good morning’ to some guy at church, and bam, they’re dating!”

“At church?” Maura leaned in. “Who?”

“Stan Perelli,” Cecile answered. “I guess he’s been wanting to ask for a while, but couldn’t get past her prickliness. When she wished him a good morning, he figured that was as close as he was going to get.”

Vickie scoffed. “He’d be waiting a long time if he expected any more than that from Connie.”