“What town?” Jessica asked.
“Wakan.”
Wait. WHAT?
My heart started to pound.
“Wakan?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “Are you sure?”
“Uh, yeah.” Gabby laughed.
“Not Wabasha? Or Winona?”
“Is something wrong with Wakan?” Jessica asked, bored.
“No. I don’t know, never been there,” I said, my voice a touch too high.
Daniel’s bed-and-breakfast wasn’t open. He closed it in the off-season, so I didn’t have to worry about ending up there. But if I was in Wakan, chances were good I’d run into at least one person who recognized me from that first night, and I wasn’t ready to tell Gabby and Jessica about Daniel. I wasn’t ready for these worlds to collide. Not yet. Maybe never.
I knew unequivocally that if Gabby and Jessica met Daniel, it would get back to Neil. Jessica could keep it from Marcus. They didn’t talk. But Gabby would tell Philip, and Philip would absolutely tell Neil—especially if the story was the dramatic one I was sure Gabby would give him about my “boyfriend” being a tattooed twenty-eight-year-old who lived above a garage in a town with more corn than people.
Neil would make it a joke. They all would. And I didn’t want Daniel to be a joke. I didn’t want it to be anything. I just wanted to have fun and enjoy him and not think about my friends’ opinions on it or have Neil laugh and make it an example of how far I’d fallen since him. He couldn’t have this. None of them could. Daniel was mine and I wanted him to stay only mine, because what we had was good and it was making me happy and it wouldn’t survive the scrutiny.
And that was really it—it wouldn’t survive the scrutiny.
It wouldn’t hold up under their inspection. My friends wouldn’t approve. And this hadn’t really mattered too much to me, since I’d never imagined that they’d ever be in a position to.
We drove down a winding road that I now recognized as the final leg into downtown. “Where in Wakan?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“It’s called the Grant House,” Gabby said.
Panic ripped through me. I felt like I was going to hyperventilate. No. No no no no. This couldn’t be happening.
I looked at Gabby’s navigation. We were less than three minutes away. I started frantically texting him.
Me: I’ll be there in two minutes. Please act like you don’t know me. I’m sorry.
When the car crunched down the gravel drive, I strained my neck peering out the window to see if Daniel was outside. I didn’t see him. My text said Delivered but not Read.
My mouth was dry.
“We’re here!” Gabby sang, putting the car in park.
Jessica looked up at the house through the windshield. “Cute.”
“Right?” Gabby turned off the engine and got out.
They went around to the trunk to get their bags, but I didn’t get out. I was pretending to look for something in my purse, stalling for as long as possible, praying for a text from Daniel letting me know he’d gotten my message.
“Umm…are you coming?” Gabby called a moment later. They were both standing with their luggage in front of the steps.
I poked my head out the window. “I dropped my earbud. Just go ahead. I’ll be there in a second.”
Daniel still hadn’t texted.
Chapter 15
Daniel
I heard my weekend guests pull up to the house. I took my spot inside next to the small checkin counter by the stairs and looked down at Hunter. “All right, listen up. I’m letting you meet guests so you can get practice being a gentleman. But there’s rules.” I gave him a stern look. “You have to sit.” I gave him a raised index finger for the sit command.
He sat and I smiled.
“Good boy. No jumping. And no sniffing anything either—you know what I’m talking about. Understand?”
He gave me one of his goofy looks, his tongue lolled out.
I’d leashed him to the checkin counter, just in case, but with the exception of Alexis, he really didn’t jump on people.
He needed this socialization. With me running the B & B full-time, he was going to end up locked in the garage for most of the day if he couldn’t get his act together. The more interaction I could give him, the better.
The door to the house opened, and I put on a smile as I came around the counter to grab luggage handles. It was two women.
“We’ve got one more outside,” the brunette said, her tone bored. “She’ll be in, in a minute.”