Josie didn’t love Aiden and Dax too. But things around this table had changed, and she’d been feeling like a fifth wheel for the last couple of weeks. Henry, Zoe’s little brother, had told her she could be his date. He was cute, smart, and funny. But he was also only eleven so she was still, for all intents and purposes, the single girl at the table.
“You’ve barely touched your food,” Maggie said with a worried little frown. “Are you sure?”
It was very unusual for anyone to leave food at Maggie McCaffery’s table, it was true. And it wasn’t because Josie didn’t love Maggie’s pork chops, and yes, cheesy potatoes. She’d just been distracted throughout the meal. Which was entirely Grant’s fault. Which made no sense.
He was a suit-wearing, rich city boy who worked in an office, loved spreadsheets, drank hot water with lemon and worried about gluten, and who was, apparently, not attracted to her.
She didn’t need him. There were dozens of guys in Appleby—okay, a dozen, plus or minus—who were interested in her. Guys who happily ate gluten—a good thing for a guy dating a baker. Guys who wore good old blue jeans and worked with their hands and appreciated every dollar they earned and freaking drank coffee, the hot beverage God intended to be paired with baked goods. Gluten-free or not.
“I’m… feeling a little off,” Josie said, deciding to be as honest as she could. She wasn’t sick. She was annoyed. But that was “off” for her. She was bubbly and happy and optimistic, and much to her chagrin, sometimes, romantic.
A guy who caught her from falling off a ladder, who literally had swept her up and saved her, was supposed to at least want to take her on a date.
Especially if he was her age, handsome, and looked amazing in a suit.
She’d always thought she was a blue-jeans-and-flannels girl. Grant Lorre was making her think she’d been wrong about that. Very, very wrong.
Even tonight he was wearing a button-down shirt. He didn’t have a tie or jacket on, but he’d paired the shirt with jeans, and she would very likely always find flannel shirts lacking now. Which was going to be a problem. Small-town Iowa guys liked their flannel.
“Oh, honey.” Maggie put her hand on Josie’s forehead in a very maternal way, and Josie had to fight a smile. “Do you need some ibuprofen? Or how about lemon cake?”
That made the smile even harder to hide. The McCaffery family absolutely felt that lemon cake—or really any cake—was as medicinal as actual medicine. And Josie had really never had reason to doubt that belief, as a matter of fact.
“No, I think maybe I just need to head to bed early tonight.”
That wouldn’t hurt, and just getting away from Grant’s sudden presence in her social circle and his cheesy-potato sexiness was probably all the remedy she really needed. She hadn’t been expecting him to be here tonight. That was probably what was throwing her off.
She didn’t know the guy. She saw him for, like, three minutes each morning. Sure, she’d felt his rock-hard chest and his big biceps and had slid along his long, firm body as he’d caught, held, and then lowered her to the floor. Twice. But she was probably making it all better in her memories than it really was. Like how people remembered movies as being better than they really were. Or high school.
She just needed to get her mind around the fact that he was, evidently, sticking around Appleby. So she’d be seeing more of him. Even though he was from Chicago. And lived in Chicago. And worked in Chicago. And had come to her tiny hometown only because his best friends had decided they were all going to buy a snack cake factory, and Grant, from what she’d overheard from Aiden and Dax, was the money guy and kept everyone else in line when it came to business and investments.
So he was here babysitting his friends. Helping them get things going with their new venture. Making sure no one blew through several million dollars without any supervision.
Josie internally rolled her eyes. It was weird to her that Aiden and Cam—Zoe’s older brother—were millionaires. They’d met Dax and Ollie and Grant in college and had accidentally invented the fastest-growing online gaming phenomenon of the decade. So they were accidental millionaires. She supposed it was good they had someone like Grant around. Twentysomething guys fresh out of college with unlimited disposable incomes and no