Just One Look (Castleton Hearts)

Theo’s voice was pure deadpan. “No.”

“This is unbelievable, I’d like to speak to your manager.” The woman even put her hands on her hips, her bracelets jangling. She looked like she was wearing every single bit of jewelry she owned at once.

Theo’s voice was clear as it rang through the room. “I am the owner.”

“I’ll pay you for it,” the woman said, pulling her wallet out of her purse.

“It’s not for sale,” Theo said through her teeth.

“This is just ridiculous, you can’t treat customers this way,” the woman said when Theo ignored her waving her card in front of Theo’s face.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Theo said. No, she wasn’t sorry at all.

The woman made more noises and fussed some more and eventually stormed out. The showroom was quiet.

“I feel like I should clap,” I said, coming out of the office with Scout on my heels.

Theo jumped, as if she’d forgotten I was here. She turned around slowly.

“What are you still doing here?” she said, crossing her arms. My brain glitched and I couldn’t think for a second as I stared at those arms. Theo was probably an amazing hugger. Oh, to be wrapped in those strong arms. I bet I’d feel completely safe.

Too late, I realized Theo had asked me a question.

“Got distracted,” I said, walking toward her.

“I thought you had an appointment,” she said.

“I do,” I said. “I should go.”

“Why don’t you?” Theo asked, and her words were a challenge.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” I asked, and I could hear the flirtiness in my voice. Flirting with Theo was absolutely out of the question. Yet here I was.

Theo’s eyes narrowed and I felt like she was staring into my soul. Looking around to see if I was fucking with her.

“I like being alone,” she finally said.

Another flirty response sat in the back of my throat, but I swallowed it.

“Then I should let you get back to it.” I stepped past her and walked to the door, not looking back as I pushed it open and headed to my car.

Chapter Four

On Tuesday, I ended up having lunch at the Castleton Cafe with Paige and her friends Sasha, Hollis, and Hayden. All four of them rented offices in the upstairs co-working space that the café opened last year.

I felt a little weird, like I was crashing their work lunch, but they found me a chair and made room. I ordered a croissant sandwich with hummus and veggies and sipped on an Arnold Palmer as they talked about their various work projects.

“You should freelance and join our cult,” Paige said.

“It’s not a cult,” Hollis said, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, I know. I need to figure out what the hell I want to do. I wish I could like, try out different careers. Like when you were a kid and you’d have career day at school.” Why didn’t they have something like that for adults? We were the ones who actually needed it.

“You can shadow me, if you want,” Hayden said. “I mean, you’ll just see me crunching a lot of numbers and making phone calls, but I’d be happy to show you.”

Hayden had her own accounting business and it was scary how fast her mind was with numbers. I also knew that becoming a CPA was definitely not for me. But it might help to see what a freelancer schedule was like.

“You can shadow me. I always need a second pair of eyes for my covers,” Hollis said.

“Want to watch me yell about how bullshit writing SEO articles is?” Paige added.

I mean, I had the time. They really were so kind. My days for the rest of the week were full now, as I waited for my cottage to be finished.

“You’re going to be bored out of your mind,” Paige said with a laugh.

“I don’t mind being bored,” I said.

Wednesday, I hung out with Paige, and I had to admit, I think I distracted her more than I helped.

“This might have been a bad idea,” I said, laughing as we took another “break” together.

“It’s not all like this. I just don’t happen to have any transcribing work to do today, so I’m working on my writing projects. This is a particularly bad one.” She was writing a series of posts for a company that sold water filtration devices, so her source material was pretty dry.

“How did you decide that this was what you wanted to do?” I asked.

“I kind of fell into it after college. I knew that having a nine-to-five and a boss and all that wasn’t for me, so I did a lot of research to match my skills with jobs that could be done from home.” She showed me a few websites she’d also used to figure out jobs.

“I guess I never really thought about freelancing seriously,” I said. “It sounds so risky.”