“Bring it.” I’ve never backed down from a dare and I’m not about to now either.
“Blind taste test!” someone hollers.
Rowan grabs my upper arm and drags me down the street. I try to wrestle free, but my efforts are half-hearted at best. Why would I fight his hold when my biggest desire for the past eight years has been to feel his hands on me?
We gather quite the following as we march. I notice my sisters, Aspen, Ellery, Lilac, and Juniper, in the crowd. Shouldn’t they be at work on Monday morning? Ellery and Lilac wave while Juniper gives me a thumbs-up and Aspen winks at me. Naturally, my sisters know about my ‘Rowan obsession’ as they refer to it.
When we enter Bake Me Happy, a table is already set up in the middle of the bakery. Of course, it is. The grapevine in this town is faster than a goat rushing off when you’ve accidentally left the fence open. It was an accident. I’m not my animal-loving sister, Juniper, who thinks animals should be free to roam wherever they want.
Rowan presses me into a chair, and Aspen steps forward with a blindfold.
“Where did you get a blindfold from?”
She waggles her eyebrows. “Do you really want to know?”
No, I don’t. Aspen recently reunited with her childhood love and she’s all rainbows and butterflies. And I’m not jealous at all. Not. At. All.
She fits the blindfold on me and ties it behind my head before primping my hair.
“What are you doing?” I mumble to her.
“Making you pretty.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve joined the matchmaking committee.”
There isn’t really a matchmaking committee. It’s actually a bunch of old women who enjoy sticking their noses in other people’s love lives. I assumed being the youngest West sister at twenty-three would save me from their matchmaking schemes for a few years. But I have the feeling I was wrong.
“I’ve got ten dollars on Rowan’s coffee,” Aspen exclaims as she steps away from me.
Ah, yes. The other favorite past time of the people in Winter Falls. Betting on any and everything.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Are we going to do this thing or what? I’ve got things to do, places to be.”
“Because you have five-hundred jobs. I wish you’d settle down,” my mom grumbles.
Great. Here we go again. The ‘pick on Ashlyn’s life plans’-hour has arrived.
“Let her be, Ruby. You didn’t exactly stick to your life plan,” Radiance, Mom’s best friend, says.
Radiance is also Lyric’s mother. Lyric as in Aspen’s fiancé. I wouldn’t be surprised if Radiance and Mom planned for Aspen and Lyric to fall in love from the moment they both conceived their bundles of joy.
“Love conquers all,” Mom sings. She probably has the goofy expression she always gets when she’s thinking about Dad on her face, too.
My parents have been married for thirty-three years and are still sickening in love. I blame them for all my romantic notions. Couldn’t they be similar to my college friends’ parents and fight and bicker all the time? No, they have to be best friends and lovey-dovey all the time. What kind of an example are they?
“Here we go,” Clove says before I hear the sound of a coffee cup being placed on the table. “No peeking.”
“Peeking? I couldn’t peek even if I tried. I seriously don’t want to know what my sister uses this blindfold for.”
“I assume it’s for romantic liaisons,” my other sister, Lilac, says. Lilac is Ms. Scientist. Until recently, I didn’t think she knew what sex was. She proved me wrong there.
“Quiet down everyone.” Rowan whistles and the crowd immediately shuts up. “Ashlyn has agreed to prove once and for all how my coffee is better than Clove’s.”
“Wait a minute! I didn’t agree to anything of the sort.”
“Yes, you did.” I can hear the smirk in his voice. Jerk.
“Let’s do this.” The sooner this is over, the sooner I can escape from Mr. You’re Like a Sister To Me’s presence.