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Katrina filled Josh in as if Ansley wasn't even there. “Your father will be dealing with you when your parents get back from their holiday; that’s what he said.” Oh, now Katrina decided to address her directly.
“Ansley. Ansley. Ansley. Trouble wherever you go.”
“Oh, shut up, Josh. Firstly, they weren’t naked, well, not completely. Secondly, I didn’t have to bat my eyes. And thirdly, I had to set the scene properly. It was Bethy’s birthday lunch, after all, and I had a theme I had to work with.”
Honestly, she wished people would lighten up a bit more. They were just standing in the way of her vow to spread the joy. She had made Bethy happy, and if it took a five-hundred-dollar steak and three near-naked hunks to make that happen, then she had no regrets. Her dad would blow his top for a full five minutes before he caved and offered her a new car instead.
She had just missed saying goodbye to her parents when she arrived the day before. They were taking their usual annual romantic holiday on a private island in some undisclosed place. She loved that her parents were so in love with each other. They were a real lifelong match.
Ansley had no illusions about whether she would find her soulmate, although her mother had told her repeatedly he was around the corner just waiting for her, but she was taking her sweet time getting there. Well, of course she was. She was too busy doing other things.
She felt good about herself. There was Bethy licking… okay ticking things off her bucket list. She was going to make sure Marjorie got to keep her toy store, no matter what. And as a film producer as well, her side-hustle as she called it, she had just read the most amazing script and had her personal assistant, Paige set up a lunch meeting with the very talented writer, Miranda Kopecki.
“She still hasn’t explained why she’s fully dressed at eight in the morning,” Katrina observed, again as if Ansley were invisible.
“I mean, do we want to know?” Josh asked, grinning.
“Well, that’s for my second good deed,” Ansley said, refusing to fall for the banter. “Did you know that I’m now the proud owner of Cupid’s Toys? It’s a toy store. It was gifted to me by Marjorie. You remember Marjorie, right?” she asked both Katrina and Josh. She had meant to tell Josh about it last night, but then he had fallen asleep in the middle of her sentence.
Ansley had met the stylish and lovely Marjorie Brown almost a year ago when she had volunteered her time to help rebuild and refurnish her home when her property had been damaged by a fire.
Ansley had instantly fallen in love with the soft-spoken and quirky Marjorie and had continued to visit her regularly since then.
“What on earth are you going to do with a toy store?” Katrina asked.
“Well, it’s just temporary ownership. I plan on giving the toy store back to Marjorie once I’m done saving it.”
“From what?” Josh asked with a suspicious frown wrinkling his forehead.
“From three grumpy old money-hungry men, according to Marjorie, who want to tear down the store for their financial gluttony, and I won’t have it. It’s an iconic toy store that has been in existence since the fifties. I consider that a vintage heritage. But more than that, it’s where Mr. Brown first saw Marjorie and then proposed to her the very same day. Can you believe that?
“They were so instantly in love, Marjorie closed up her little toy store and they spent a week, a whole week, cocooned inside it just discovering their love for each other. Isn’t that just romantic?”
“No,” Josh said. Ever not the romantic.
“That seemed like a poor business decision on her part, and I don’t even want to think of the hygiene ramifications,” Katrina seconded with a straight face.
Of course, Katrina would think about those things. And Josh had zero romantic bones in his body. Ansley grinned and carried on.
“They met on Valentine’s Day, and in memory of their great love, they have a massive sale every year on the fourteenth of February. But now the toy store, housing all those beautiful memories, which are all Marjorie has now that Mr. Brown has been dead for almost a decade, is at risk of being demolished. She gifted me the toy store because she thought my name behind it would give it more power against the company trying to take it down.”
“Wouldn’t she have had a better chance giving it to your father instead?” Josh asked.
“I agree,” Katrina added.
“Oh, you two, I am not without my own power, you know.”
“Oh, we know, and this is what we’re afraid of. Trouble seems to follow you like a moth to a raging inferno,” Katrina said. She totally turned that saying on its head. No living creature would actually go into a fire willingly. Well, maybe Ansley did, but only sometimes.
“She’s right, Ans.”
“Not all the time,” Ansley said sheepishly. "Okay, most of the time, yes. But not this time.” She was going to do everything in her power to make sure Marjorie’s toy store remained intact. And with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, she vowed that Marjorie would get to have her annual sale to commemorate her meeting Mr. Brown.
“Who are the three grumpy old men?”
“Three brothers from a company called Shlykov Industries.”
The gluttonous company had plans to ruthlessly erase decades of sweet and romantic memories right on Valentine’s Day, whether Marjorie moved out her stock or not. They owned the rest of the buildings on the block except Marjorie’s little toy store. Now they were applying pressure on her to sell, with the threat that they could have it taken to court and have her forcibly removed. Yes, they weren’t above manufacturing false evidence.
