Page 89 of With All My Haunted Heart

“Hmm.”

“What?”

Dea takes the tiniest sip of her drink. “Nothing. I’m surprised you let yourself get involved. You’ve been hesitant to date the whole time I’ve known you.” She studies me when I shrug. “And I think you fell harder than you expected. Harder than you’ve admitted.”

The burn of oncoming tears makes my eyes feel like they’re on fire. “Yeah, well, I should have known better. It was stupid to fall in love with her.”

“You love her?”

My own words echoed back at me break the dam on the tears. “Obviously, I was alone in that.”

Dea reaches for my hand and squeezes tight. “You don’t know that. The last time you talked was the worst moment of her life. She could feel bad about what she said and is too embarrassed to reach out. Maybe she thinks her feelings were one-sided.”

“But I told her I liked her. I told her I wanted to stay. I said I’d help with anything she needed.”

The help you were supposed to provide failed.

I shake my head, letting bitterness cover the hurt in an impenetrable shell. “She knows how I feel about her, Dea.”

“She knows how you felt. She doesn’t know you still feel that way.”

“That’s—” A ping on the computer cuts me off. “Please tell me that’s a new client.”

“Let me check. It’ll be my final act as your office manager.” Dea clicks the laptop’s track pad, the multiscreen setup I’d gotten her already packed away in her car, a parting gift for her next job.

“Holy shit.”

Her breathy tone shivers down my spine. “What is it? A new client? Please tell me they want something expensive.” I scramble to my feet.

“That was the accounting system, not the scheduler.” Dea turns the laptop so I can see the screen. “The bonus came through.”

“The—” My voice dies when my gaze lands on the top deposit on the screen. There it is. Every cent Elle promised if I successfully haunted the B&B. Well, happy Friday to me. “Is there anything else? A note or a…I don’t know, anything?”

Dea swivels the computer back around and clicks into the deposit. Her eyes scan across the screen, but ultimately, she shakes her head. “Did she text you?”

I scramble for my phone, and the rush of disappointment threatens to make me emotional all over again. “Nothing.”

“Give it time, boss.” Dea shuts the laptop and passes it over to me. I store it in my bag. “Do you regret not renewing the lease on this space? Now that you have the money, you could afford to stay another year.”

“No, it was time to let this go.” I put the cork in the champagne bottle and pass it to Dea. “To the end of an era.”

“And a better one to come.” She tucks the bottle under one arm and drains her glass, smirking at me over the rim. “I do have one final piece of business before you’re no longer my boss.”

“Yeah?” I shoulder my bag, ready to call it a day. “What’s that?”

“I set up your lunch date with Teagan from C3.”

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

“I’m so glad we could finally do this!”

The owner of C3, Teagan Keller, sits across from me at our small table at Bellflower Bistro. Dea set our meeting for eleven Monday morning to avoid the lunch rush. We already put in an order for the appetizer platter to share, glasses of ice water sitting on the table in front of us.

Despite how often I’ve cursed the existence of Coffee, Charms, and Crystals since it opened, sitting here with Teagan, I can’t help but feel relaxed in her presence. She’s warm and friendly and full of a buoyant, likable energy.

“You saved my ass the other day with the rush order of lepidolite. This is the least I could do to thank you.”