She sighed, pushing her recent financial woes to the back of her mind, including the fact that she recently had to let her assistant and her receptionist go because Astrid could no longer afford to pay them. Bright Designs was officially a one-woman show, so she didn’t have time for doubts, for inconsistency.
Since taking over Lindy Westbrook’s design business when the older woman had retired nine years ago, Astrid usually had the perfect amount of work to keep her busy and solvent. But lately, things had been slow . . . and boring. There were only so many design jobs to go around in a town as tiny as Bright Falls, Oregon, and if she worked on one more doctor-slash-lawyer-slash-real estate agent’s office, filling them with uncomfortable seating and abstract paintings, she was going to tear her own eyelashes out.
Not to mention, if she let Lindy’s business fail now, particularly after her disaster of a failed engagement last summer, Astrid’s mother would not only tear her eyelashes out for her, she’d make absolutely sure the entire town knew the professional deficiency was one hundred percent Astrid’s fault, bringing her personal shortcomings out from behind the family curtain.
Lately, this endearing quality of her mother’s had kicked into overdrive, Isabel’s lip literally curling whenever Astrid had a hair out of place or reached for a bagel. Astrid was exhausted, had slept like shit for months, and needed a very, very long vacation.
Or she just needed it to stop—all of it, every single sigh, lifted eyebrow, and pursed mouth her mother aimed in her direction. Surely, if anything would appease Isabel—maybe even draw out a proud hug or a glowing declaration like I had every faith in you, darling—it was appearing as the lead designer on a prestigious show and bringing the beloved Everwood into the modern age.
So Astrid very much needed the Everwood job. She needed the money and she needed the clout that being on Innside America would bring. The place was famous—there were countless books and shows and documentaries featuring the legend of the Blue Lady who purportedly haunted one of the upstairs bedrooms—and featuring on Innside America, the brainchild of the design world’s sweetheart, Natasha Rojas, could change everything for Astrid.
This was her chance to go from small-town designer with a failed engagement to something more. Something better. Someone her mother actually liked. She would prove herself with this project, she could feel it.
She offered her reflection one more smile and was straightening the buttery material of her dress when a fist banged on the glass from inside. She startled, stumbling back so that her ankle very nearly buckled from the height of her heels.
“You look hot as fuck!”
A pretty redhead grinned at her through the window, then made a show of waggling her eyebrows at Astrid’s form.
“Jesus, Iris,” Astrid said, fingers pressed to her chest as she tried to calm her galloping heart. “Could you not for one day?”
“Not what?” Iris yelled through the glass, arms propped up on the back of a turquoise-painted wooden chair.
“Not . . .” Astrid waved her hand around, searching for the right word. When it came to her best friend Iris Kelly, the right word rarely stuck for very long. “Never mind.”
“Get your cute ass in here already,” Iris said. “Claire and Delilah are whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears—”
“We are not!” Astrid heard her other best friend, Claire, call from somewhere behind Iris before she appeared in the window too, her dark hair up in a messy bun and her purple-framed glasses catching the sunlight.
“—and I’m slowly losing my will to live,” Iris went on, her shoulder knocking into Claire’s.
“Don’t even pretend you don’t love it.” This from Delilah, Astrid’s stepsister and Claire’s girlfriend for the last ten months, whose presence Astrid was still getting used to in her life. She and Delilah had had a fraught childhood together, filled with resentments and misunderstandings. The healing process was long and, honestly, exhausting. They’d come a long way since last June, when Delilah arrived in town from New York City to photograph Astrid’s doomed wedding and fell in love with her best friend instead. Since then, Delilah had moved back to Bright Falls and proceeded to make Claire happier than Astrid had ever seen her.
As though to further prove the point, Delilah glided into view and draped a tattooed arm around Claire, who promptly beamed up at her as though Delilah not only hung the moon, but created it as well. Astrid felt a pang deep in her chest. Not jealousy necessarily, and she’d long realized the problems she and Delilah had growing up were just as much her fault as they were her stepsister’s, so it wasn’t discomfort or worry on her best friend’s behalf either.