Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,258

although it had given me plenty of time to cry and cry without anyone around to tell me to knock it off. Now I just wanted to crash into bed and sleep for about a year.

If I’d wasted my time in L.A., I didn’t intend to waste it now that I was back home. I was starting over at the ripe old age of twenty-one.

I got a little apartment in Mechanicsville’s historic downtown, which was two blocks of old, preserved buildings from the 1930s. When we had tourists, it’s where they came, and Delaney’s family’s custard shop was a prime destination. She wanted to hire me to do their marketing.

“You don’t need marketing,” I said, sitting in her second-floor office above the shop. “Everyone knows who you are.” I knew she was just offering me a job to be nice as I tried to sort my life out.

“Please,” she said. “You think Coca-Cola stops advertising because everyone knows who they are? Plus, writing marketing materials and handling our social media is basically writing, which is what you do. It’s a little off the path of where you want to be but not too far.”

“I’m not even sure I want to write anymore,” I said, picking at the threads of my shredded jean shorts. No more slim fitting dresses and stilettos for me. I’d gone back to my roots, flip flops and all.

“Don’t you dare say that,” she said, leaning across her desk.

“You look fancy sitting at this big oak desk,” I said, trying to change the subject. The arched windows behind her did look pretty cool, though, I had to admit.

“Plus,” she continued, ignoring me, “I’ll be down in New Hampshire more, and I need someone I can trust looking after things here. You’d really be helping me out.”

“Taking over the world, one frozen custard at a time, huh?” I said.

“If you ask my father, then yes,” she said. “Dad is breathing down my back to make the New Hampshire store bigger and better. He wants it to be a model for even more expansion.”

I’d only been back in town a couple of days, and I was shocked at how differently I saw everything. Not just the town—which felt claustrophobic—but even some of my old friends, the ones who stayed behind because they loved it there and wanted to raise their families in a quiet New England town, where all the seasons were picturesque and every evening was safe and quiet. There was no risk, I realized. Nothing to shock you into trying something that scared you, to force you to be a stronger version of yourself. But had I really changed from my few months in L.A.? Or had I simply been burned?

“Hey,” Delaney said. “Come back to me, daydreamer. I can’t have you zoning out on the job. The custard must be kept frozen at all times!” She smiled at me, trying to keep my head above water. She’d always been my biggest support, from talking me off the ledge when I didn’t get into my first-choice college to helping me get over Paul. Now, here she was again, throwing a job at me simply to keep my mind off the one thing I could not clear myself of—Leo Armstrong.

“So what do you say?” she said. “You going to help me out here?”

“Of course, Delaney,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

“Yay!” she cheered, and decidedly un-boss-like move. I laughed. “It’s going to be fun! We haven’t worked together since freshman year when we were scooping downstairs.”

“And you should have learned your lesson then,” I said. “Remember how I sneezed into the vat of the strawberry cream and we had to throw the whole thing out?”

“Dad was pissed,” Delaney laughed. “He almost took it out of our paychecks.”

“You know, I had like five spoonful’s before I tossed it.”

“Gross!”

“It was my own snot!” I said. “But I got brain freeze so the joke was on me.”

“Oh, remember the time I told Richie Reiner that frozen custard doesn’t give you brain freeze and the best way to eat it was really fast?”

I started laughing again. “He was in so much pain!”

We reminisced until Delaney had some conference call with the builder in New Hampshire. I was sorry to leave—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed that hard. I could hardly remember the last time I laughed at all. The one thing I was sure of, though, was that it was probably with Leo. Knowing that the last time I’d smiled had