“She sounds amazing.”
“She was. Dad was too.” She chuckles. “God, he would be so thrilled to know that I work with the Chance family. He really admired your store and your family. He always said he loved how you all worked together for the greater good of the store. He saw you and Palmer and Cooper always helping out. He’d tell me what great parents you had to instill that kind of comradery.”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “It seems as though we’ve kind of lost that along the way.” I fork a piece of pasta. “I guess I don’t remember Cooper and Palmer helping out as much because I was always in the back.”
“Cooper was the folding king.” Larkin plops some pasta in her mouth, her eyes focused on the fire. “He told me that once, when I was in the store. He was folding an endless pile of shirts and refused to use the folding board; said he was better than any board because he was the folding king. I remember that day specifically because my dad bought a shirt and knocked over a large pile that Cooper had just finished folding. His face turned bright red, but he reassured my dad it was okay because, like he said, he was the folding king.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. I know our families never mingled, but I had small moments with your family as a customer. From behind, I always thought Cooper was you and that I was about to catch a glimpse of the elusive Ford Chance, but when he turned around and I saw his younger face, I knew it was Cooper.”
That surprises me. “You were trying to catch a glimpse of me?” Kind of like how I try to catch glimpses of her at the office.
She opens her soda and takes a sip. After a roll of her eyes, she says, “Come on, every girl in town was trying to catch a glimpse of you. You were Ford Chance, with the devastatingly light eyes and contrasting black hair. Both you and Cooper were so different from anyone else on the island; everyone was hoping for a sighting.”
“And if you had caught a glimpse, what would you have done?” I ask, my voice defying me when it cracks.
Her eyes bounce to mine, and I catch the flicker of the fire in her pupils. “Blushed, probably, and then told my friends about how I saw you. How you emerged from the back for a second and graced us with your presence.”
I chuckle. “Are you saying that you might have had a thing for me back then?”
I don’t know why I ask it.
But hell, now that it’s out there, I really want to know. Did she have a thing for me?
And why the hell does it matter so much?
Why am I holding my breath?
Why am I leaning a little closer to her now?
Why the hell did I just wet my lips?
“Had a thing for you?” she asks, all of a sudden looking nervous, and I realize from the tic in her jaw that I’m her boss, she’s my assistant, and I should never have asked her that. What the hell was I thinking?
“Sorry.” I clear my throat and stab a piece of pasta. “I shouldn’t have asked—”
“I wouldn’t say a ‘thing’ necessarily,” she starts. “More just fascinated. You might not know it, but the town was very enamored with the Chance family.”
“Because of the store?”
“Because of the dynamic. You’re a blended family, but you never would have known—it was beautiful to see. Beautiful to see all these personalities and circumstances come together to show that love really does win out . . . every single time.”
“Yeah, I guess I never think of it that way.”
“Because it’s your family; why would you? And it’s not different, by any means, just beautiful. Ugh, I don’t know if I’m making sense or being offensive.”
“Not offensive at all,” I reassure her. “You’re making perfect sense, and I’m sure my parents would really love to hear that. They always prided themselves on the family they raised, more than the store they built.”
“It shows.”
I sit back, my right hand propping me up. “If my parents heard the way my siblings and I spoke to each other yesterday . . . man, they would be upset.”
“You know, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if maybe it was a good thing.”
“What do you mean?” I ask as she motions for me to eat more. I take a big scoop and plop it in my mouth.
“Maybe you needed to get all of that out in the open, off your chests, you know? You’re never going to move past something if you just let it fester.”
“But none of us are talking to each other.”