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Edwina logged in and clicked the link for the meeting. She left her camera off given she had wet hair and no makeup. On further thought, she muted herself as well. No one needed to hear anything that might pop out of Sullivan’s mouth.
Sighing, she scrolled through the chat to catch up, chest tightening with anxiety the way it always did in these meetings.
“Nigel is cool with me staying here?” Sullivan asked.
She nodded. “Yes. Because he’s not the jerk my father thinks he is.”
“Great, I’ll grab Finn then and my suitcase and move us into…” he looked around. “Where am I moving into?”
“That bedroom.” She pointed to the smaller room. Her belongings were already in the other room.
“Excellent. Thanks, Ed. I really appreciate it. It means a lot to me.” He sounded sincere and not at all flirtatious.
She pried her eyes from her computer screen and studied Sullivan. He had moved toward her. “That was perfect,” she told him.
“What do you mean?”
“You sounded exactly like a friend, nothing more. Like our genders are irrelevant.”
Sullivan was now right next to her. He wasn’t looking at her, but at her computer screen. “Yep. Totally irrelevant.”
Her co-workers were in a grid on the screen with their names at the bottom of their individual box. Rebecca was speaking, but Nigel was nodding and interjecting a comment here and there.
“So that’s Nigel, who is not a jerk,” Sullivan said. “He’s a good-looking guy.”
He was. Nigel was what she liked to think of as dashing. He had a great smile, rich brown eyes, dark skin, and trim and tidy hair. He wore a suit like nobody’s business and his shoes were always impeccable. He had excellent manners, fabulous taste in wine, and always knew what to say when dealing with vendors and clients.
“I never would have found a man like him in Beaver Bend,” she said, with a smile.
Sullivan pulled a face and then laughed. “That is true. I’m happy for you.”
And maybe a little sad for himself. She could see it in his pale blue eyes. Sullivan missed his wife.
She needed to say something, she wasn’t sure what, but Sullivan turned around quickly and left the apartment.
She stared after him, lost in thought.
“Edwina. Edwina?” Nigel’s voice pierced through the fog.
“Oh!” She swiveled around and unmuted herself. “Yes, I’m here.”
“About bloody time,” Nigel said with amusement. “We were starting to think the wilds of Minnesota had swallowed you up.”
She forced herself to focus on the faces of her co-workers and staff. “My connection is spotty, that’s all.”
Nigel would know it was a lie, but she couldn’t quite pull her thoughts together.
“God, I don’t know how anyone lives in such a godforsaken place,” Rebecca said, giving a mock shudder.
Everyone laughed, all clearly in agreement that small towns were some sort of inconvenient hell on earth.
Ironic, then, that sometimes all Edwina wished was that she could go back to being thirteen and never leave Beaver Bend.
Chapter4
“You can stop hitting on Edwina,” Sullivan told his cousin that night, yanking out a bottle of white wine from the cooler. “She has a boyfriend.”
Torin eyed him. “Nothing wrong with a little flirting, is there? It’s good for tips.”
