by Jen DeLuca
I couldn’t imagine a better home. Or a better life.
Acknowledgments
Books—at least my books—don’t get written without the help of some of the best people I know.
My agent, my rock, Taylor Haggerty, I legitimately don’t know what I’d do without you. Thank you for talking me down off all the ledges I manage to get myself stuck on.
I’m so glad I get to write these stories with the help and guidance of my brilliant editor, Kerry Donovan. Working with you feels like a true collaboration with someone who really gets my characters. Thanks for your keen insights and your willingness to brainstorm tough scenes with me on the weekend!
All the gratitude to my Berkley Romance team! I can’t imagine doing this without the Jessicas—Jessica Mangicaro and Jessica Brock—having my back. Thank you for everything you do to make my life easier! Additional thanks to Colleen Reinhart for a gorgeous cover design—I’m so lucky!
Thank you, thank you to my beloved critique partners Vivien Jackson, Gwynne Jackson, and Annette Christie for cheering me on page by painful first draft page. Thank you for squeeing over the good stuff and saving the real critique until my heart can take it.
Additional, but just as fervent thanks to ReLynn Vaughn, Jenny Howe, Cass Scotka, Trysh Thompson, Ian Barnes, Lindsay Landgraf Hess, and Courtney Kaericher for giving feedback on drafts in various stages of completion, oftentimes more quickly than I had any right to ask for. You all helped make this book better and I can’t thank you enough for it.
Re, as always, you are my gif-spiration.
Like Stacey, I’ve thought about running away and joining the Faire, but also like Stacey, I had no real idea of what that might entail. Thankfully, Nicole Skelly (of The Gwendolyn Show—see her perform at a Faire near you!) was nice enough to give me some insight on the realities of traveling Faire life, and anything I got wrong is on me, not her.
I’m always grateful for the love and support of my Bs: Brighton Walsh, Ellis Leigh, Melissa Marino, Suzanne Baltsar, Anniston Jory, Elizabeth Leis Newman, Helen Hoang, Esher Hogan, and Laura Elizabeth. There’s no group of girls I’d rather get stuck on the ice with during a polar vortex.
Finally, I want to thank all of you. The readers who picked up Well Met at the bookstore or library, and those of you who are just now joining me on my Ren Faire journey. The bloggers and Bookstagrammers who featured my book on their platforms, the bookstores who hosted my visits, and the readers who came out to meet me. Thank you for your emails and private messages. I’ve been touched and humbled by your enthusiasm and support. It’s a weird feeling to talk to other people about characters who until recently lived only in my own head, but it’s been one of the best experiences of my life. Thank you all for going to the Faire with me, and I can’t wait to take you back there again soon. Huzzah!
The card wasn’t addressed to me.
I leaned an elbow on the bar and took a sip of my hard cider. It was happy hour at Jackson’s, but I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy at all. And this drink wasn’t changing anything. The card still lay there on the bar. It was still addressed to my daughter, Caitlin, and it was still from her father. The man who’d wanted nothing to do with her since the day she was born, or in any of the eighteen years since. It was hard to believe that, after all this time, his handwriting could still strike my heart the way it did. Back in the day, that handwriting had covered pages and pages of love letters. Little notes we’d leave each other on Post-its on the bathroom mirror or near the coffeemaker.
Then our birth control had failed, barely a year into our marriage. The marriage itself had failed not long after that. The last time I saw Robert’s handwriting had been when he signed the divorce agreement, terminating his parental rights. Rights that he’d freely, almost eagerly, given up.
Why the hell was he writing to Caitlin now?
Like poking at a bruise, I flipped the card open again.
Caitlin,
I know I haven’t been there for you. But I wanted to let you know how very proud of you I am. Graduation from high school is an important milestone in anyone’s life. As you move on to greater things, I want you to know that if you ever need anything from me, all you have to do is ask.
With love from your father,
Robert Daugherty
I almost wanted to laugh. If you never need anything from me . . . How about eighteen years of back child support? That would be a start. Our daughter had turned out great, no thanks to him. Caitlin was a smart, funny, and respectful young woman and I couldn’t be prouder of her. But that had absolutely nothing to do with Robert, who’d been little more than a sperm donor. What the hell was he thinking, getting in touch now and trying to do a victory lap as a father? Fuck that. And fuck him.
I stared at his name, wishing my eyes could burn a hole through this cheap cardstock. I’d been April Daugherty once, for roughly one and a half of my forty years. And if we’d stayed married, my daughter would be Caitlin Daugherty instead of Caitlin Parker. I thought about that for a second, about those two hypothetical Daugherty women, and the life they might have had.
Would Caitlin Daugherty have had an easier time of things? Would April D. and Caitlin D. have worried a little less about affording college, applied for fewer scholarships and grants? I’d sat up a lot of nights with Caitlin P., our laptops side-by-side at the dining room table, filling out forms late into the night. At the time it had felt very feminist, very “us against the world,” the way most of our lives together had been. But Caitlin Daugherty would have had a provider for a father. Maybe she would have had to fight a little less. Maybe—
“What’re you drinking?”
Oh. I glanced up and to my right, squinting at the guy in a gray business suit who’d taken up residence on the barstool next to mine. He didn’t look familiar, and Willow Creek, Maryland was the kind of town where everyone at least looked familiar. He was probably some guy on the way down to D.C.—he had that Beltway look about him. Salt-and-pepper hair with a nice expensive-looking cut, pale eyes, a decent smile. Of course, one strike against him was that he’d just hit on a strange woman at a bar.
I gave him a friendly-but-not-too-friendly smile. “I’m good, thank you.” There. Pleasant enough, but not encouraging.
He didn’t take the hint. “No, I mean it.” He slid his stool a little closer to mine, not quite in my personal space but close enough. I slipped the card back into the envelope and slid it onto my other side. He peered at my drink. “Whatcha got there, a beer? Probably a light beer, huh? I can go for that.” He beckoned at the bartender. I wasn’t a person who hung out at bars, but I came here enough that I knew her name was Nikki, and she knew I liked the cider on draft.
“It’s not a beer,” I said.
He wasn’t listening. “Another drink for the lady. Light beer. And I’ll have one too.” His take-charge voice was grating. Maybe he’d sound commanding in a government building in D.C., but in a town like this he just sounded like a dick.
Nikki raised her eyebrows at me, and I shook my head, covering the top of my glass with the palm of my hand. “I’m good. But he can have whatever he wants.” I probably should have been flattered. Not bad for someone who just hit forty, right? But I was itching to be left alone. I wanted to be back down that rabbit hole with my thoughts, not dodging advances from Mr. Wannabe Lobbyist over here.
Nikki brought his drink and he held it up in my direction, expectant. What the hell. I raised mine too, and we clinked glasses in a half-hearted toast.
“So tell me . . .” He leaned in even closer, and it took everything I had to not lean away. I had my best resting bitch face on, but this guy wasn’t taking the hint. “This can’t be your typical Friday night. Hanging out in a bar like this?”
Engaging him in conversation was a bad idea, I knew, but he just wouldn’t go away. “Nothing wrong with a bar like this.”
“Well sure, but ma
ybe there’s something else you’d rather be doing . . . ?” He raised an eyebrow suggestively, and I pressed my lips together. Jesus Christ, this guy was annoying.
“Hey, April, there you are!” Another voice, deep and masculine, boomed from my left, but this time my irritation melted away. I knew this voice. Everyone in Jackson’s knew this voice. Mitch Malone was an institution, not just in the bar, but in the whole town. Beloved of the kids of Willow Creek High, where he taught gym, and beloved of most adults with a pulse who enjoyed the sight of him in a kilt every summer at the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire. Mitch was good friends with my younger sister Emily, so by default he’d become a friend of mine, too.
“Mitch. Hey . . .” I’d barely turned my head in his direction before Mitch’s arm slid around my waist, tugging me half off the stool and against his side.
“What the hell, babe? You didn’t order me a beer yet?” He followed up the question with a kiss that landed somewhere between my cheek and my temple, and I had absolutely no idea which to respond to first. The kiss, or being called “babe.” I looked up at Mitch with narrowed eyes, about to give him shit for at least one of those things, when his eyes caught mine and one lid dropped halfway in the ghost of a wink. Ah. Okay. I could play along.
“I didn’t know when you were getting here, honey.” I punctuated that last word with my hand on his cheek, landing a little harder than was strictly necessary. It wasn’t a slap, but it was definitely a warning. Keep your hands where they are, mister. “Your beer could’ve gotten warm, and I know how much you hate that.”
“You’re too good to me, you know that?” Mitch’s bright blue eyes laughed down into mine, and the curve of his smile felt good against my palm. A dimple even appeared under my thumb and I snatched my hand back, keeping the movement casual. I’d been a breath away from stroking that dimple with the pad of my thumb, and that was getting a little too into character.
“Much better than you deserve. I know.” Our smiles to each other were full of manufactured affection, yet it all felt so . . . comfortable. In a way that talking with Mr. Gray Suit hadn’t.
Mitch stepped closer to me, fitting his body against mine, then glanced over at Mr. Gray Suit as though he’d just noticed him. “Hey, man. Did you need something?” His voice was light, casual, but his arm tightened around me in a not-so-subtle message to the guy on the other side of me. Back off.
Mr. Gray Suit got the message. “Nope. I was just . . . y’all have a good night.” He fumbled for his wallet, then moved down to the end of the bar, where Nikki was waiting to cash him out. She glanced over at us, shaking her head. I could relate. I shook my head a lot when I dealt with Mitch, too.
Speaking of . . . now that we were alone, I pulled out of Mitch’s embrace. “What was that all about?”
“What?” He picked up my glass, sniffed at it, then put it down with a grimace. “I was helping you out. That guy was practically drooling down your shirt.”
I scoffed. “I had it handled. I don’t need your help.”
“You don’t have to.” Mitch shrugged. “Needing and wanting are two different things, you know. You can want something and not need it.”
“Fine.” I tilted my head back, finishing off my cider. “Maybe I don’t want it either.”
Mitch looked up at me through his lashes, and for a split second I forgot to breathe. Damn. Was this what women saw when he really turned his attention to them? I didn’t think of Mitch in that way. I mean, sure the man was gorgeous. Well over six feet tall, his physique spoke of lots of spare time spent at the gym, and his golden-blond hair and stunningly blue eyes made him look like a genetically engineered, all-American hottie. He had a smile you wanted to bask in, and a jawline you wanted to run a hand down, to see if it felt as sharp as it looked.
Something must have shown on my face, because his expression shifted. He lifted an eyebrow just a little, and this was nothing like when Mr. Gray Suit did it a few minutes ago. I caught my bottom lip between my teeth, worrying the skin, and Mitch’s eyes darkened.
“Liar,” was all he said, but his voice had a roughness to it that I’d never heard before. The air between us was charged with electricity, and for the space of a few heartbeats I couldn’t breathe. Worse, I didn’t want to. I just bit down on my bottom lip harder so I didn’t do anything stupid. Like bite down on his bottom lip.
Then I forced out a laugh, breaking the spell. “Okay, whatever.” I picked up my glass and dammit, it was empty. I put it down again.
“So what are you doing here, anyway?” Mitch leaned an elbow on the bar. “You’re not a ‘drink alone at the bar’ kind of person.”
“How do you know what kind of person I am?” But he just looked at me with his eyebrows raised, and I had to admit he was right. I wasn’t that kind of person. I put my hand over the card and, after a deep breath, slid it across the bar in his direction. He flipped it open, his face darkening as he read.
“Her father?” He closed the card and handed it back to me. “I didn’t realize he was in the picture.”
“He’s not.” I stuck the card in my purse; I’d had enough of Robert for one night.
“But he wants to be, huh?” Mitch gave me a questioning look. “What does Caitlin think about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said wearily. “I think she’s still deciding.” He nodded, and I hated how there was something resembling pity in his eyes. I didn’t want pity. “Let me get you that beer.” I leaned over the bar, catching Nikki’s attention to order a beer for him and a second cider for me. “The least I can do for helping me get rid of that creep.”
Mitch accepted the beer with a thoughtful look. “You know, if you really want to pay me back, I know a way you can help me out.”
“Oh yeah?” I picked up my cider. That first, icy cold sip was always the best. “How’s that?”
He didn’t meet my eyes. “Be my girlfriend.”
Photo by Morgan H. Lee
Jen DeLuca was born and raised near Richmond, Virginia, but now lives in Florida with her husband and a houseful of rescue pets. She loves latte-flavored lattes, Hokies football, and the Oxford comma. Well Met was her first novel, inspired by her time volunteering as a pub wench with her local Renaissance Faire.
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