or so.
“I am not kidding, Miss Hudson,” Benjamin said. “We’re looking at being there in about two weeks. Does that work for you?”
Olli reached for her desk calendar, clearing away a couple of pieces of unopened mail, a pile of rubber bands, and a stack of unmade boxes for her sample bottles of perfumes. “Uh, two weeks?” That would put them in the third week of May. “How long will Mister Renlund want to be here?”
Would she have to house him? Show him around Lexington? Her mind raced with the possibilities, and she reminded herself that she was very personable. She’d worked as a tour guide on two horse farms in the area before achieving her dream of opening and operating her own perfumery.
“Only a few days, ma’am. I’ll send you his itinerary. He’d love to meet your husband or boyfriend.”
Olli sat back, her frustration morphing into anger. “What if I don’t have a husband or boyfriend?”
“That’s why I call in advance,” Benjamin said. “If I were you, Miss Hudson, I’d get one, even for a few days. In two weeks’ time.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but she blanked.
“Good day,” Benjamin said, and the call ended. Olli scoffed as she took the phone from her ear and checked to make sure he’d hung up.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered to herself. “That guy lives in the eighteen hundreds.” Didn’t he know women could—and did—run their own businesses these days?
No man needed.
Olli stared out the window across the room from her desk, trying to think of a single man she could somehow convince to be her boyfriend for a few days.
She’d grown up here in the Lexington area, and she knew a lot of people, but the only men who came to her mind were the Chappell brothers.
They owned Bluegrass Ranch, which happened to be located right next door to Olli’s place. She saw at least five of them ride by her window on any given day of the week.
She stood up and went to the window, looking left and right as if one of them would happen upon her and offer her a diamond ring. One didn’t.
Her stomach writhed, but no one else had called about any of the other grants. Two of them had rejected her on the same day yesterday, in fact.
Desperation clogged in her throat, and it wasn’t pleasant. She squared her shoulders and started for the door. She could go next door and see what was happening with the Chappells. In the back of her mind, she thought she’d heard that a couple of them had started dating someone recently.
There were eight to choose from. It couldn’t be that hard to get one of the boys next door to be her arm candy for a few days.
Olli stopped by the door of her perfumery and picked up a bottle of her newest scent, Seduction.
“Perfect,” she muttered, spritzing the perfume on her neck and mostly bare shoulders. “Game on, boys.”
She left the perfumery and looked to the road that ran east and west in front of her workshop. Her windows faced south, and she’d seen someone go by about a half an hour ago.
“What are you going to do? Stand on the side of the road and flag him down?” She didn’t even know who she’d get next.
She decided it didn’t matter, as long as it was one of the older Chappell brothers. She was forty-four, and she knew Cayden Chappell was her same age.
“No problem,” she said. She didn’t have Cayden’s number, but she had Spur’s. He was the oldest brother, and they’d exchanged numbers years ago when she’d first moved in next door.
“Just in case,” he’d said.
Olli hadn’t known what that had meant at the time, but she did now. Just in case his cattle got out. Just in case his horses broke through a fence. Just in case the Chappells had to turn off the water to the whole street—which was just their place and hers—for some ranch construction. Just in case he had to tell her the big rigs would be coming to get the horses they’d sold. Just in case he needed the field she owned between their places for all of his high rollers to park.
There had been a lot of instances of just in case over the years with Spur Chappell.
She’d spoken to Spur on all of those occasions. He rarely wore a smile, and though she’d known him for years, he still intimidated her.
So definitely Cayden, she told herself, still standing