Getting Lucky (The Portland Pioneers Book 2) Read Free Page A

said the identical phrase not half an hour before and she hadn’t really meant it either.
    Cal set the beer down on the coffee table, and to her utter surprise, began to peel away the damp wrapper, leaving a litter of paper crumbs on the coaster.
    Something was definitely up.
    “Tell me what’s wrong,” Maggie said again, but this time didn’t bother phrasing it as a question.
    He glanced back up at her, his eyes meeting hers. “Do you ever feel alone here?”
    “In Sand Point?” she asked in surprise. Cal was the stoic sort; she’d never heard him talk about loneliness before, but of course he must have felt it. He was still human, after all.
    “Yeah, in Sand Point. In life. In general.” He lifted the bottle and took a long drink. “I’m going to be twenty nine this year, and you’re twenty seven. We’ve met everyone worth meeting here. Don’t you ever worry you’ll never find someone special? Someone you could settle down with?”
    Before she’d moved back to Sand Point three years ago to open the Café, Maggie had gone to culinary school in San Francisco and had lived and worked there for several years after. She hadn’t been an avid dater when she’d lived in the city, but she’d done okay for herself. Since moving back home, she’d been too busy to worry about her love life. Now that Cal had brought it up, it had been three years since she’d been on anything resembling a date. “Not really,” she admitted. “But then I haven’t thought about it.”
    “I have.” Suddenly he sounded like the Cal she knew so well, the Cal who was absolutely certain about everything. Whatever it was that he was about to say, he was one hundred percent convinced it was the right thing. That should have reassured Maggie, but instead she felt a twinge of anxiousness deep in her stomach.
    “I think we should date.”
    Her jaw dropped. “We should date? You mean each other ?”
    He gave a sharp nod, as if this wasn’t the most insane, ridiculous notion in the entire universe. As if she wasn’t practically his sister and he wasn’t practically her brother. For god’s sake, he was Calvin Keller .
    For a moment, she tried to entertain the idea, and looked him over with what she hoped was a totally clinical detachment. She supposed he was good looking, if you liked that clean-cut, all-American look, but well, he was still Cal. And that was the crux of the problem; she’d honestly never once thought about it, and that was probably more an indication of her own blindness than it was of what Cal had to offer a woman.
    A sudden, horrific thought occurred to her. “You’re not. . .” She took a deep gulp of beer and swallowed, hoping it would give her courage she needed to ask this un-askable question. “You’re not in love with me, are you? Like secretly, for years. . .?”
    She wanted him to laugh, like really laugh, a deep belly-splitting laugh at how truly ridiculous the notion was, but instead he just gazed at her seriously. “You know I love you, Maggie. But no, I’m not in love with you. I just started thinking about this a few months ago.”
    “Then why ?”
    “Like I said, I love you. You’re the most important person in my life. Who’s to say we’re not compatible romantically?”
    Personally, Maggie thought it was a pretty enormous leap of logic to go from close friends to hot for each other—but then he hadn’t said he was hot for her.
    “You’re my best friend,” she finally said because that was the one phrase that kept repeating in her head that actually made sense.
    “And you’re mine, Maggie,” he said earnestly, leaning forward. “Why do you think I even considered this? I look around this town and you’re the only one I want to spend my time with.”
    “I suppose I’d be flattered, but then I know the rest of this town.” She laughed, but it came out a little bitter and more than a lot confused.
    “You don’t have to make a decision tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day.