Page 58 of Windward Hearts

“It was more than a little nudge,” she amended. “Winnie told me that you really talked me up.”

Now it was Jared’s turn to blush.

“Nothing that wasn’t true,” he said.

Another customer came up just then, so Jared gave Hope a little wave and continued his circuit around the bazaar, feeling just a little disappointed that their conversation had been cut short. He could have spent the whole afternoon happily hanging out with her, he thought. He never really got tired of spending time with her.

But there was still lots to see, and he didn’t want to distract Hope from her success. He kept moving, pausing for a long while at the informational displays that the historical society had arranged at the center of the bazaar. He would not have called himself a history buff, per se, but he found the exhibit fascinating. He particularly liked the photographs of Magnolia Shore from the early eras of photography. Many of them were of stiff-faced people from the Victorian era, posing solemnly for the one photograph that they might take in their lifetimes, but his favorites were the ones where people had been caught unawares. Sometimes, their expressions were a little blurry, but he could see their laughter.

In the second half of the loop, he stopped at the Magnolia Boutique table, where Diana had put out an assortment of her smaller wares for sale. Nobody was at the table for the moment, so Jared stopped to say hello.

“Hi, Diana,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” she said brightly. “Weirdly, I have been selling a lot of sunglasses today. I almost didn’t bring them with me to stock, since they’re not exactly historical.” She held a hand up to her eyes and squinted at the bright sky. “Or maybe it’s not so weird after all. It’s sunny today, and a lot of these people are from out of town, so it’s not like they can just pop on home and come back if they need sun protection.”

“You know,” Jared observed, “I thought I saw an awful lot of new faces around here.”

“Yeah, I heard the main historical society guy, Lyle, talking about it. Apparently, this is a way bigger turnout than they’d hoped for. The good weather drove people into searching for something outdoors, and they found us. Which, you know, great for us.”

“Absolutely,” Jared agreed. “Maybe I’ll live to regret closing the restaurant, but I’m feeling pretty happy about the day off for right now.”

“I’m a little jealous,” she admitted. “I want to be eating all the snacks.”

He grinned. “Well, not to rub it in, but they have been pretty delicious.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, making him laugh.

“How’s the wedding planning going, by the way?” he asked. At the last small business owners’ meeting, Diana had bemoaned how very many details went into planning a whole wedding.

“Still pretty chaotic,” she admitted, offering him a good-natured but still long-suffering sigh. “I’ve been stuck on the wedding dress.”

“In fairness, that’s a pretty big part of the whole planning bit,” he said. “Or, you know, so I hear. Not that I have a ton of personal experience shopping for dresses.”

“No?” she quipped. “Well, take it from me, it is a big part. And I keep dragging my poor friends to every bridal shop in the state, because I just can’t seem to find the dress. Not that they’ve been bad sports about it,” she hastened to add. “They’re actually being beyond lovely. Every time I’m tempted to give up, they keep my head in the game.”

“Those are the kinds of friends to have,” he said.

“You are absolutely right about that,” she agreed. “And, speaking of…” She waved, and Jared followed the expression to find Cadence, Tyler, and their daughter Isabelle coming toward them.

“Hi, Aunt Diana!” Isabelle cried, darting behind the booth to give Diana a quick embrace before returning to her parents’ side. “Hi, Jared.”

“Hi, Izzy,” he said. “Those glasses are new, right?”

Izzy held a hand under her chin, framing her face. “Indeed, they are, thank you for noticing,” she said with a truly hilarious amount of drama. “Aren’t they super cool?”

“They are super cool,” he agreed.

Suddenly, her eyes went wide behind her lenses. “Want to know something super silly, though? I didn’t want them for a long time, because I thought they would look dorky. But they don’t.”

“They don’t look dorky at all,” he said. He tried to keep his face earnest and serious, because he didn’t want to make Izzy think he was laughing at her, but it was hard, especially because, behind her, Diana and Cadence were both silently cracking up.

“If you ever need glasses, I can talk to you about it,” she offered.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

Jared hung out with the group for a few more minutes, then kept moving around the bazaar. He saw June and Levi holding hands and flipping through boxes of old records at the booth that was being hosted by the local music store, Benjamin standing beside them, trying on a giant pair of headphones.

Eventually, after purchasing a few more local baked goods to eat during the week, he reached the end of the exhibit. Instead of heading back toward his car, however, he found himself looping back around to Hope’s booth, which now looked a lot emptier than it had even half an hour before.