Page 60 of The Worst Possible Plan

“I am not defending him.” I stabbed my pancake. It had done absolutely nothing to deserve it, but at this point, breakfast was becoming collateral damage. “He’s not interested in me like that.” I waved my fork vaguely in the air. “Besides, have you looked at him? Men like Sheriff Walker don’t notice women like me. They notice women who have their lives together. Women who don’t accidentally shut down Main Road with a miniature donkey. Me? I’m a walking tragedy.”

Lola gave me a look. “Honey. A tragedy is when you sit down and your thighs are twice as large.”

Good point.

But right now, I had bigger problems than the size of my thighs.

The festival started in less than thirty minutes. I had vendors to check. Volunteers to organize. Hundreds of visitors arriving. A million things that deserved my attention.

Which would’ve been great…

If my brain had kindly stopped wondering whether Captain Competent was already there.

14

SOPHIE

By ten thirty this morning, I was officially suspicious.

The kind of suspicious normally reserved for miracle diets, people who claimed they enjoyed assembling IKEA furniture, and emails that started with Congratulations! Something about all this competence felt… statistically unlikely.

Because the festival had been open for a few hours and nothing had exploded.

No animals had escaped or kicked a kid in the face. Nobody had called the fire department, the health inspector hadn’t fainted, and as far as I knew, no one had attempted to sue anyone over a hot dog.

Bandit had remained inside the petting zoo, Theo had adopted approximately seventeen different children as temporary best friends, and Daisy continued judging everyone from a respectful distance. And the donkey? Well, he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

It all felt… strangely wrong. Not bad. Just wrong. Like the universe had forgotten about me for a few hours and would eventually remember with alarming enthusiasm. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So far, it hadn’t.

I turned just in time to catch a volunteer hurrying toward me. She looked to be in her early forties with rosy cheeks that gave her face a permanently cheerful roundness, long, curly brown hair, and a faded black Star Wars T-shirt stretched beneath an unzipped festival volunteer hoodie. An ID badge bounced against her chest with every hurried step, and she clutched a clipboard like it was the only thing preventing complete organizational collapse.

Here it comes.

“Yes?” I asked her, my heart thumping in my chest.

“We’re almost out of ketchup,” she panted.

I blinked. “That’s it?”

She frowned. “Should there be something else?”

“No.” I smiled a little too brightly. “Ketchup. Great. I can absolutely handle ketchup.” I nodded with far more confidence than the subject of condiments deserved.

She wrinkled her face in confusion. “Should I go buy more?”

“Yes. Great idea. Thanks.”

She gave me an uncertain smile, as though she wasn’t entirely convinced she’d just witnessed a normal human reaction to a ketchup shortage, and then turned and hurried back toward the food trucks, her hair bouncing behind her.

I watched her leave, and my pulse slowly returned to something resembling normal. Normal for today, that is.

I jerked as something tugged on my sleeve.

Glancing down, a little boy of about nine or ten looked up at me, still clutching the fabric.

Freckles were scattered generously across his nose, a shock of sandy-blond hair stuck up in three different directions beneath a tiny blue baseball cap, and his oversized festival T-shirt hung almost to his knees. He looked up at me with wide brown eyes full of complete seriousness, as though he was about to report an international emergency.