I’m not special.
He isn’t madly in love with me the way I’m madly in love with him.
He’s just doing his knightly duties.
But he’s tagging along as we race through Happy Cat to get to my house, where Cassie’s kept my bicycle in good shape. And the next clue requires my bicycle, no question.
“This is your bicycle?” Colin asks.
I grip the purple dildo handlebars and refuse to be embarrassed. “Yep. Sex positivity is very important for women. You’ll have to make sure Beatrice’s next nanny can teach her that so that she’ll never be ashamed of her body or let anyone else make her ashamed of it, either.”
“Savannah—”
“So!” I nod toward the house next door. “You can borrow Ryan’s bicycle if you want to come along with me. But it’s okay if you don’t. I’m over the shock of seeing Steve. I’ll be okay on my own. I really will.”
“Savannah—”
“But we can’t waste any more time, and biking around the lake is the fastest way to get to the Kennedy Family Day School.”
At least, I hope the Kennedy Family Day School is where we’re supposed to go. This clue wasn’t as straightforward.
True love is like a hidden gem, sometimes you don’t even know it’s there. But once you find it, there’s no mistaking the beauty, aroma, and music. For your next clue, find that hidden gem, and search the hearts within.
It could fit Maud and Gerald’s shop, Dough on the Square, just as easily as it could fit the Kennedy Family Day School around the lake.
I bite my lip and look at Colin. “Or maybe we should split up. You could go to Dough on the Square and text me if you find the clue there, and I can head to the Day School.”
“Savannah—”
“Oh, you’re right. Dammit. Cheaters never win.” I blow out a breath. “Okay. To the Day School we go. This way. Follow me!”
“Savannah, could we please discuss—”
“Later, Colin.” I leap on my bike and push the pedal to get going. “I can’t risk Steve getting there first!”
Even knowing Steve is a cheater—and that if he cheats to win the magic love prize, it will do him zero good—doesn’t offer much comfort.
Olivia’s right.
Cheating darkens the world and the auras of everyone around the lying scumbags who do it.
We have to get to the Day School first. And it has to be the Day School that the clue is referring to. Cassie introduced me to it when I came home for Olivia’s wedding to Jace, and it fits the clue. The old building has been repurposed from its school roots to the best coffee and sandwich shop in the entire county, if not in all of Georgia, and somehow, it’s a local gem that only a few people know about.
There’s no way the clue could mean Maud and Gerald’s donut shop on the square—everyone knows about that, and half the town has been buying their special treats there for decades.
Following my heart and the path behind my old house—right next door to where Cassie and Ryan are raising Logan—I head toward the school.
I hear what sounds like Colin riding along behind me, but I don’t turn to look. If I turn to look, I might start believing that the magic of the treasure hunt is already working and that Colin’s not here because he wants his nanny back for his daughter but because he wants me for himself. Because he loves me.
But even if he does love me, he probably wouldn’t want me if he knew my baby maker is a big old diseased dud.
Colin is a great dad, and he’s let it slip a few times that he wished he and his wife could have had more babies. And Beatrice is always pretending that she has younger sisters when she plays alone in her room. It breaks my heart, sometimes, hearing her boss and tease these imaginary siblings she might never have.
Colin and Beatrice both deserve a woman who can help grow their family, not a chick with a pelvis that looks like the witch from Sleeping Beauty put a curse on her fallopian tubes.
“Savannah,” he calls from behind me, making my stupid heart leap. But I can’t help it. I’m glad he’s following me, even if we’re on a road to nowhere. “Could we please pause a moment? I have something very important to—aaaahhhh!”
I whip a glance over my shoulder and shout, “George! Get off Colin’s handlebars RIGHT NOW!”
That damned raccoon. He must have been hiding in Ryan’s bike basket. Now, he’s going to cost me the treasure hunt, and I can’t afford to wait another year to win.
For the past twenty years, every person who’s won the treasure hunt has found their true love within just a few months. The first year, everyone laughed at the funny coincidence, the second year, eyebrows were raised, and by the third year, it had become downright eerie. But in a good way. In Happy Cat, people aren’t afraid of a little spooky stuff, as long as the spooky ends in two lonely hearts finding happiness.