While You Were Speaking: Spring Flings and Engagement Rings

by Maria Hoagland

  A text came through immediately.

  Jo: I can. And I will.

  Ugh. They’d been having this same argument for the last week.

  Allie: It’s my hair, and I’ll cut it off if I darn well please. Where are the scissors?

  Jo had already canceled a hair appointment Allie had made at Swiss Bliss Salon, had hid every pair of scissors in their business, their apartment and at their aunt’s house, had gone up and down Main with their employee, Kathy Morrison, and had made all the business owners promise not to let Allie use their scissors or buy them. And with the help of Kathy, Jo had even gotten Kathy’s brother, Deputy Ethan Morrison, to threaten to throw her in lockup for an hour if she tried.

  Ethan was a nice guy, but Kathy had her brother wrapped around her little finger, and when Kathy had asked, Ethan had given in—Ethan had practically raised Kathy, and she had him wrapped around her little finger. Allie had no doubt the threat was real.

  Jo hadn’t been this mobilized since the great fiasco of their senior year in college when Allie had been dumped by her English T.A. Allie had wanted to dye her hair four or five different shades of green because why not? Jo had stopped her, and Allie could admit she’d been glad of that.

  But the need to make a change now, to not be what she was when her ex-fiancé, Tony, had almost royally screwed her and her sister over, the desire to be different immediately was growing exponentially within her. She’d burst if she didn’t sheer her hair right off. Maybe a bob? Or maybe even a pixie cut? That might be cute. Would bald be going too far?

  Of course, she didn’t know how to cut her hair or anyone’s hair, but how hard could it be?

  Jo: It’s not just your hair though, is it? You’ll want me to cut mine just like it. Just like every time you do something crazy. I’m not getting pulled into your post-breakup nonsense.

  Allie growled and stomped her foot, then headed up front. She’d need to hurry their customer along so she wouldn’t be late for dinner. After the last few months, heck, after the last year, she needed something to look forward to, and she didn’t want to be late.

  Plus, her aunt had taken to inviting Brandon Carroll ever since he’d decided to invest in Sticky and Sweet, and she wanted to show him some projections she’d been working on. His investment into their company had saved their bacon, quite literally because up until he’d invested, they’d barely had enough money to pay rent let alone buy bacon thanks to the debts their deceased father had racked up.

  She wanted to impress him, keep him happy—plus, he was just an outright joy to be around, squirming under her Aunt Sophie’s matchmaking attempts. His sense of humor was dry, his manner cool and collected, and Allie loved trying to rile him. She rarely achieved it, but it gave her something to look forward to and kept her mind off her traitorous ex. Brandon had been a good friend.

  Allie stepped through the door separating the shop from the office. “Hi there, how can I help—”

  Millie Douglas, Harvest Ranch gossip, and manager of Bateman and Stalls Auction House in Charleston, the town fifteen-ish minutes to the north, stood at her counter in all her irritating glory. The woman was her mother’s age, fifty-five, but while her mother had aged gracefully and stunningly, Millie had nipped and tucked, and prodded and poked, and bleached and plucked herself to her idea of perfection. The woman never let a single hair out of place.

  “—you?” The end of Allie’s sentence came out more like an accusation than a question.

  “Which one are you?” Millie smiled a glossy smile and tapped her pointed, bright pink, acrylic nails against their counter with nerve-rattling clacks. Under her cool façade, Allie could tell the woman was fixin’ to start a fight.

  Allie folded her arms. “What do you want?”

  “Rude. You must be Allie.” Millie glanced at the ceiling. “Getting used to your new living arrangements?”

  After Allie’s dad died, her family had discovered he’d owed a large debt to the bank. He’d participated in some business scheme perpetrated by a family “friend” only to lose everything they owned, even their house. Their business had been the only thing safe, but just barely. Allie, Jo, and their mother Clara had moved into the apartment above Sticky and Sweet, the apartment that had once been their offices and storage. It was cramped, but their mother had recently moved in with Aunt Sophie, and with Jo and Cash getting married in May, it’d soon be all Allie’s.

  Allie crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Is your sister here?” Millie asked.

  Allie bristled.

  Up until five weeks ago, Jo had managed the business end of their company’s doings, while Allie had been the creative mind. After Allie had been kidnapped, in a totally harmless and friendly way by loan sharks, and then discovered that Tony was a loser who owed the sharks money, the sisters had had a heart to heart. They both wanted to branch out. Jo wanted to be more involved with the creative aspect of the business and Allie wanted to be more involved with the actual business end of their business.

  Turned out the business end was harder than she thought, but she wanted to learn, and she was. That didn’t stop people from whispering, implying, and outright saying Allie wasn’t cut out for it.

  “Allie and Jo may be identical from the tops of their red heads to the bottom of their feet, but Jo is a numbers girl and Allie is the artist.” They’d heard this from more than one of the town’s aunts—any woman over fifty. Did busybody-ness flip on like a switch at fifty?

  Yeah, both sisters were getting fed up with other’s judgments of them. Also, they had strawberry ginger hair—not red!

  Jo handled the criticism better. She handled everything better. She was the calmer and more put together of the two, the more reasonable, and Allie knew it. The sensible Jo would never have dated a guy like Tony, would never have been caught up in his pretty words and shallow actions, would never have been blinded to his schemes.

  Allie was determined to do better, be better—to be more like her sister.

  With that thought in mind, Allie squared her shoulders and reminded herself to stay calm. “Anything you need to say, you can say to me. Jo and I are equal partners.”

  Millie pushed a perfect spiral, bleach blond, curl behind her ear. “Of course you are.” She couldn’t have sounded more condescending if she were selling God on TV for the price of a luxury RV. “I came to see you. I was hoping to catch you alone.”

  Allie kept her expression blank as she headed to the front door and flipped their closed sign, though her stomach churned. Her sixth sense warned her something bad was about to go down. She’d felt the same way before the sharks, Jason and Greg, had kidnapped her. And now that she thought of it, she hadn’t talked to them or their boss, Henry, in a while. She’d need to remember to call them tomorrow to catch up.

  “Well, you caught me,” she said. “What do you want?”

  Millie sat her large purse on the counter. Allie went around behind it and pulled the till out of the old-fashioned bronze register for the night. Finding what she was looking for, Millie let out a little “aha” and pulled a paper from her bag. Allie set the till next to the register and lifted a brow.

  “When you sold me the furniture from your house, quite a few pieces of your jewelry came through as well,” Millie said, clutching what Allie could now see was a photograph to her ample bosom. “As I went through and priced the pieces, I was reminded of a string of pearls. Needless to say, the piece was not among the jewelry.”

  Allie frowned. Most of the jewelry they’d sold had been little more than costume jewelry, if they’d had a pearl necklace, she doubted they would’ve parted with it. “What’s it to you?”

  Millie grinned, her paper white teeth gleaming in the overhead lights, and put the photograph on the counter for Allie to see. “I’d like them back.”

  Allie eyed her suspiciously before leaning over and examining the photo. In it, a young woman who looked very much like Farrah Facet during her Charlie’s Angel’s years, in hi
gh wasted bell bottoms with a cute white blouse, leaned against a motorcycle—a string of dark pearls hung around her neck, and she held one delicate bead between her teeth as she gave a saucy grin to the cameraman.

  Allie arched her brows. Dang, Millie had once been hot, and not just hot but stunningly beautiful.

  A man stood at her side, a possessive arm around her waist, holding her tight against him, with a gleam in his eyes as he stared at her like the million bucks she looked like. He didn’t look like Mr. Douglas. This man was taller, had broader shoulders and sandy blond hair. Mr. Douglas was short, squat, and balding. Though, to be fair, he probably looked much better when he was this age. Probably not like this guy, but better than he did now.

  The guy in this photo was James Dean in a wife beater and leather jacket, Paul Newman in tight jeans with piercing blue eyes, Robert Redford unshaved and brooding attractive.

  He actually looked familiar, really familiar . . . . She leaned in closer. It was in his eyes. His sapphire blue eyes. Eyes that looked just like hers and her twin sisters. He kind of looked like . . . he looked like . . . . She sucked in a gasp. “Pops?”

  “I bet you didn’t know your father had it in him,” Millie said, leaning a hip in her fashionable white pencil skirt against Allie’s glass counter. “He was always so boring with your mother.” She stared at her cuticles.

  Allie’s stomach clenched up as she slowly pulled her gaze from the photo and stared at Millie.

  Millie’s smile was the biggest Allie had ever seen it.

  “When was this photo taken?” Allie asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Eighty-six,” Millie said.

  Eight-six? That was the year her parents had married. Allie’s stomach gave a nervous jolt.

  “Putting the pieces together, are we?” Millie tapped a long nail to the photo and pointed to the pearls. “Focus, dear. The pearls. Your mother has them, and I want them back.”

  Allie swallowed the thick lump in her throat. “My father cheated on my mother?” No, it couldn’t be. Her dad was the most honest, upright, loyal guy she knew . . . had known.

  Millie slammed her hand on the glass, and Allie jumped back. “No! He cheated on me with your slut of a mother.” Millie’s eyes went wild, her teeth bared. Allie had always known Millie was crazy, but as the fire burned down in her eyes, and she rushed to compose herself, Allie finally understood just how crazy she actually was. Millie rubbed a hand over her hair on the side as if to relax any fly-aways that might have escaped in her outburst. She cleared her throat. “Look at the pearls.”

  Allie’s mind whirled, that was probably why she did exactly what Millie ordered and looked at them. She recognized them immediately. An eighteen-inch necklace, with dark pearls that she’d later learned were black even though to her they’d looked dark blue. When she and Jo were teens, they would sneak into their mother’s jewelry box and try things on. She’d seen these pearls and had immediately fallen in love with them. She remembered them distinctly because her mother had caught her wearing them one day, and demanded she hand them over immediately. They’d disappeared after that, never to be seen again, that is until they’d moved out of their house in October.

  She’d seen her mother holding them the last night she spent in her room before the movers had come. If they didn’t go to the auction house, then her mother must still have them.

  “I want them back,” Millie said. “It’s the only reason I agreed to sell your furniture at Bateman and Stalls.”

  That was a lie. Allie might feel like her whole world was turning upside down—her dad had dated Millie? Had then cheated on the harpy with her mom?—but she knew this woman had taken pleasure in taking their furniture and harassing them in the process. Millie had never been a particularly nice woman to anyone, but she’d always aimed the worst of her maliciousness at her mom and Allie and Jo. Now Allie knew why.

  Millie pushed the photo closer to Allie. “Take it. Ask your mother where they are. They’re mine, but if she won’t give them up, I’ll buy them back.”

  Allie blinked. “Why would you want them?” If her dad really had done what Millie said, why would she want them back? Tony had nearly ruined Allie’s business and she’d given up the engagement ring he’d given her immediately. She didn’t want any reminders of him. If he’d cheated, she knew that desire to distance herself would be that much greater.

  Millie sniffed, her joy in the situation fleeing instantaneously. “You . . . you’re just like your mother. An irritating reminder in looks and temperament. Flighty, self-centered, and arrogant. Not that I would expect you to understand, but your father loved me, and he gave me those pearls. I want them back and if I don’t get them, I’ll take this to court.” At that, she turned on her kitten heels and stormed from the store, leaving Allie a wilted mess behind her.

  Allie rushed to the door, locking it behind Hurricane Millie, then went to the end of the counter and slunk down the side where no one could see her. Now that Millie was gone, and Allie’s shock started to fade, her breathing came deep and hard as tears threatened to spillover.

  Her fingers slid over the slick paper, sticking to it, and she looked down. In her grasp was the cursed photo she’d thought was on the counter. She didn’t even remember picking it up. She stared at it, at Millie, at her dad, and could no longer keep the tears at bay.

  First, her dad passed away, then they found that he’d made a bad business deal with a long-time family “friend,” and had lost all their money that forced them to sell their house, then her stupid ex-fiancé had tried to steal her company and had gotten her kidnapped, and now, her dad was a big fat cheater pants!

  Tears ran down her cheeks in a deluge as she stared at the photo once more. Her heave reflex started to react at the way her dad stared at Millie. The way Allie had always wished someone would look at her. Wide-eyed with wonder, head over heels in love. How could a man who looked that much in love, a man who she’d always thought was the most honorable man she’d ever known, be a cheater? How could he have cheated on that woman with her mom and in the same year marry her mom? She chucked the photo across the room.

  That was it. She was done. If she couldn’t even trust her dad, how could she ever trust any man ever again?

  She couldn’t. That’s how.

  I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek! Click here to keep reading Beehives and Broken Heroes by Ellie Thornton.

  Will Carter Get His Happily Ever After?

  Poor Carter Hughes! While he was off on a speaking engagement, his brother swooped in and stole the fiancée Carter never knew he had. Will he ever get his own happily ever after?

  Read more about Carter Hughes and Hawthorne, Massachusetts, in the Spellbound in Hawthorne series, Dash of Destiny.

  Coming August 2, 2021

  Pre-order your copy today!