You Had Me at Cougar (Heart of the Cougar #9) - Terry Spear Page 0,2
motioned to all the cakes and cookies she’d made—“you could ask how I was doing first. Or say, happy Fourth of July to me or something.” She loved her sister, but really…
“Happy Fourth to you.”
Ava finished cleaning up. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, if you really don’t want to do it, I’ll try to find someone else to ask, but—”
“Just spill it.” Because her sister was so hesitant to just come out with it, Ava figured it was something she really wouldn’t want to do.
“Just for an hour, if you can manage our fortune telling booth from one to two, I would be forever grateful. The proceeds go to the Big Cat Rescue and we had a couple of people who were willing to be the gypsy fortune tellers, but something came up. I would do it, but I’ve got to be in charge of the sack races for the kids and if someone else doesn’t volunteer to take over the fortune telling job before you’re done with your shift, I’ll take over for you.”
Ava let out her breath. “You know if someone comes up to the booth and I see something in their future that is going to affect them, I'll feel obligated to tell them what's bound to happen.”
“Well, you can just fake it.”
“Yeah, but everyone knows we have second vision, and if I just say something silly, they’re going to think that will really happen.” Because it had. Both Ava and Nina had done that when they were growing up, not wanting to tell people who plagued them about learning something about their futures—mostly because others didn't believe they could see premonitions of future events so they were testing them—just silly stuff—like so and so was breaking up with them, or seeing someone else. But making up stuff had really backfired. Boy, were others mad at them. So in Yuma Town, where people really did know they could see future events sometimes, they had to be more careful.
“Okay, well, I’ll try to get someone else to volunteer then.” Nina glanced at all the cakes and cookies Ava had made. “You've outdone yourself."
“Thanks. I’ll do it, all right? Just for an hour. I need to get some float time in.” Ava couldn't believe how Nina could always make her feel guilty if she didn't do something for her. Maybe because Nina was working her butt off during the festivities, when all Ava wanted to do was go out and play.
Nina smiled and gave her a hug, getting remnants of flour all over her. “You are the best sister in the world.”
“You say so now, but if I see something someone doesn’t like, I’m sending them to tell you all about it.” Ava smiled.
“Works for me.” Nina hurried out of the shop as if she were afraid Ava would change her mind.
Not that Ava would. Once she promised to do something, she would do it. She packed up all the baked goods and Florence picked them up to deliver to the resort.
An hour later, Ava turned the shop sign from open to closed and locked the shop up after finishing to clean up.
She drove home to her own little townhouse that she’d just moved into and couldn’t be happier. The place was all decorated in turquoise with accessories of purple and light gray as the base color. Her own place. Even her garden was filled with purple flowers of salvia, sage, lupine, violets, bellflower, iris, veronica, buddelia, lavender, tulips, purple statice, lilacs, liatris, larkspur, columbine, and ageratum.
She arrived home and hurried inside, stripping out of her clothes from the front door, that was now closed and locked, and up the stairs to the bedrooms, kicking off her sandals, stripping out of her skirt, shirt, bra, and panties. Naked, she made it to the landing and raced into the bedroom to put on her swimsuit, shorts, a shirt, and shoved her feet into her flipflops. She grabbed her beach bag off the chest of drawers that she'd already filled with sunscreen, a beach towel, and a bottle of water. She hurried down the stairs to the kitchen, dropping her bag on the dining table, and then threw together a ham sandwich—off-the-bone sliced ham, white bread, lettuce, mayonnaise, and mustard and stood at the island counter eating it. She had every intention of swimming before she had to do her part as a fortune teller, passing along all kinds of good news, she hoped. And then swimming again afterward.