A Lot Like Home

She laughed self-consciously. There was a weird vibe here she couldn’t put her finger on. Damian was always nice to her, but she’d never picked up the sense that he’d singled her out for any special treatment. He was nice to everyone. This was the first time he’d complimented her with such fervor though.

“Havana.”

He reached out and snagged her hand, holding it in his, which he’d done before. Lots of times. Usually when they were pretending to be a couple. No one else was around at the moment though since Serenity had opted to stay behind at the diner to talk up her golden boy to the crowd.

So Damian had no reason to be stroking her knuckle with his thumb.

“Havana,” he repeated huskily. “You tried to hug me at the diner, and I messed up. I didn’t realize— Well, I see now that you’ve been using this fake engagement to get closer. I’m sorry it took me this long to clue in.”

“I… what?” She stared at him, her hand hanging limply in his as she scrambled to figure out where this conversation had gone off the rails. “That’s not what I was doing.”

“It’s not?”

His brows drew together in confusion. Oh, man. Oh, this was not good. This was an even worse disaster than the campaign speech. Her pulse hammered in her throat.

“No! I mean…”

She took a deep breath and bit back all the things she’d been about to spew out because first and foremost, she couldn’t hurt his feelings. He meant a lot to her, and she’d always considered him a dear friend. What was this terrible misunderstanding going to do to that friendship?

Or to the project? If she rejected him, he might not want to work with her anymore. She had to fix this.

Fake engagement. What had she been thinking?

“Okay, look,” she said as calmly as possible and squeezed his hand. “I value you as a friend. But that’s a

ll there is to it. I appreciate so much that you’ve agreed to act as my fiancé, but it’s led somewhere I didn’t intend for it to go. I’m not interested in you that way.”

That was about as tactful as she could be. He nodded once and let their fingers slip apart, his expression flattening.

“I see. I overstepped. My apologies.”

He didn’t sound upset. Cautiously she put a hand on his arm to show that they were still good. “I hope we can put this behind us and move on. As friends.”

Hopefully he didn’t take offense to her stressing that last part as heavily as she had. But he just gave her a small smile and briefly covered her hand with his palm.

“It’s Hardy then, right?” he asked.

“What’s hardy?” And then it dawned on her. “Caleb? What’s he got to do with this?”

Damian shook his head with an amused hmm. “He’s the reason you only think of me as a friend. I was hoping I was wrong, but I don’t think I am.”

“You are way off base,” she said and forced a laugh to cover the raspy note in her voice that would reveal far more to him than she’d like. “Way, way off. Like a billion miles from base. Maybe even—”

“I’ll remind you of this conversation in a few weeks.”

His smile got a lot smugger as she sputtered. Finally she found her vocal chords and used them to shoo Damian out the door with a firm good night. Honestly. Caleb was not the reason she thought of Damian as a friend. That had been the case before she’d even met Caleb.

He was the reason she hadn’t slept well all week. The reason her mind wandered frequently, only to end up reliving the first and second time she’d ended up in his arms while fantasizing about the third and fourth. He was definitely at least half the reason she’d botched the campaign speech.

And she’d take that to her death bed, thank you very much.

That night’s sleep didn’t go any better. Not only did Caleb make an unsurprising visit to her dreams, nerves unsettled her stomach to the point of ridiculous. The writing was on the wall. The town loved Caleb and didn’t love her. Serenity fell into that camp too—her own aunt preferred an outsider to her niece. It hurt, for more reasons than one.

She was here trying to fix the fact that she’d left. Didn’t everyone get that?

The next morning, the townsfolk all dutifully trooped to Ruby’s to participate in the first-ever Superstition Springs electoral process. By noon, Serenity and Augusta Moon, who had married Keith Moon’s eldest son, had the ballot box in hand, ready to count the votes so they could declare the official winner.

As Serenity and Augusta disappeared into the back of Ruby’s to lock themselves into her small office, Caleb untangled from his friends and made his way over to offer his hand. Of course. Because she needed additional stimuli at this point in time. But she couldn’t be rude, so she reached out.