Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Her legacy? Ha.
“By the way,” Darlene continues. “How long does it usually take you to make all these candles, Josie?”
“It depends on the scents I’m utilizing, but it can take anywhere from two weeks to an entire month for a hundred.”
I have to bite my lip to fight my laughter. An entire month? We just packed up one hundred of these things in two hours.
“Oh my goodness. I’m so thankful for all the time and hard work you put into these. Do you think you’ll have enough in stock for Christmas this year? Last year, you sold out pretty quick, and I was hoping to get a candle for each of my sisters and cousins.”
“I’m definitely going to try.”
Darlene looks at me with a soft smile. “Norah, you are so lucky to be on the inside of Rose’s homemade candles now. I begged her for years to show me, but she only let Josie in on the family secret.”
I force a smile to my lips. “Josie is still being pretty top secret about Grandma Rose’s candles. She’s only been letting me put the labels on them, but I’m hoping she’ll show me how to make them soon.”
So, is it a one-click checkout? Do we get Prime shipping with the bulk orders? So many difficult questions my sister has yet to answer.
Darlene smiles at both of us like a woman who really thinks my sister is making homemade candles, bless her. “Well, I better head over to Kelly’s booth before she sells out. You girls have a wonderful day.”
“You too, Darlene!” I answer with a big, fat, phony grin on my lips. “Enjoy those homemade candles! I know my sister worked really hard on them!”
Josie discreetly elbows me in the side, a smile still intact on her face, and offers Darlene a friendly wave as the older woman carries her bag of fake-ass candles toward another booth that sells knitted scarves.
Now, does Kelly actually make the scarves or buy them off Amazon, too? I have no idea. Maybe she has to utilize Etsy or eBay.
“I didn’t know our grandmother was a little con artist.”
Josie just grins. “She always said it was a dog-eat-dog world and you have to capitalize on every opportunity you can find.”
I laugh. “She has an entire town believing she could make candles. She was a swindler!”
Josie’s eyes turn wistful, and a little grin lifts the corners of her lips. “Grandma Rose was the best.”
Yeah, she definitely was.
And there’s a large part of me that wishes I would’ve been able to spend as much time with her as Josie did. That I would’ve realized that my life wasn’t my life at all and moved here when I was eighteen like my sister.
But there’s no use living in the past. All I can do is move forward and try to savor the memories I do have with my grandmother.
I spot a tall, towering, familiar head through the crowd, and my smile grows by a mile. My favorite people have just arrived.
Bennett weaves his way over to us, and I wave my arms in big, theatrical dramatics at my girl Summer when she spots me from her chair in front of him. She’s wearing her usual heart-shaped pink sunglasses and smiling so big it turns my heart to butter. Bennett’s sister Breezy trails the two of them slightly, getting distracted by every booth she walks by.
My eyes probably linger on Bennett a little too long, taking in his handsome face and his larger-than-life presence as he wheels Summer toward me.
Goodness, that man. I’d sure love to climb him like a tree.
We haven’t gone back to our “bookmarked page” since the night we bookmarked it in his truck. Both of us have had our energy entirely focused on Summer, and with so many people always around now, I’ve also felt like we’ve been living under a microscope.
Even though we have managed a few stolen kisses when saying goodbye, I can’t deny my desire for him hasn’t waned. If anything, it’s only growing by the day. The more I get to know him, the more time I spend with him, the more I know letting myself have this connection with him isn’t a mistake. It doesn’t matter where either of us came from—it only matters where we’re going.
He wheels Summer straight to me, and I greet her with a smile and an air-bump of my hip. She giggles, and I wish for not the first time that I could scoop her up in my arms and hug her tight.
“You guys are here just in the nick of time!” I tell her cheerfully. “We’ve been so busy all morning, and I really need help figuring out which scents are going to be our best sellers so I can get organized.”
“I want to smell!” Summer volunteers immediately, her eyebrows shooting up over her sunglasses.