Lipstick On A Pig

Chapter 10

The next day, I decided to do something I hadn’t gotten a chance to do in years: I was going to actually visit the Summer of Fun Festival here in Willow Bay. Charlotte had class, and Sophie was spending the day with her boyfriend Taylor, who had the day off. I texted Jason, who turned out to be busy all morning covering an obstacle course event on the beach, but promised that he’d come and hang out with me in the afternoon. That left me with the whole morning to enjoy the festival that I hadn’t really been to since I was a kid.

I decided to walk from home, heading down toward Main Street where the bulk of the activity began. The hot sun beat down on the pavement, heating the day. With the weather report saying it was supposed to hit the low- to mid-eighties, without a single cloud in the sky, this was going to be a perfect day. I knew I was getting close when I passed a local high-school student dressed in a giant orca costume. He waved at me, and I waved back. I walked down Main Street, which was completely decked out for the festival. Colorful flowers lined the streets, which were pedestrian only during the festival. The windows of every store were decorated with summery scenes: paper flowers, window paintings of people surfing in the bay, fake suns, and more. Even the vet clinic, despite being closed for the duration of the festival, got the treatment. A high school art student had kindly come and painted little cartoon cats, dogs and other animals frolicking in a summer field on the front window. I was definitely going to keep that painting up long after the festival ended; it looked amazing. I decided to make a quick stop at Betty’s to grab a vanilla latte before continuing on. It was just after nine in the morning, and business was booming. Every table was taken, and groups of tourists and locals alike were hovering near the counter while waiting for their to-go coffees. As I placed my order and joined the throng, I suddenly heard someone call my name.

“Angela!” the voice said. I turned and looked down to see the local real estate kingpin in town, Leanne Chu, looking up at me. Leanne was in her late forties, around four feet tall, with short black hair and a better sense for sales than anyone I’d ever met in my life.

“Oh, hi Leanne,” I said brightly. I’d never bought or sold any property, since my parents had left us the house we lived in when they died, but Leanne made sure she knew everyone in town just in case.

“Listen, your landlord is a client of mine, and I was going to start making this known after the festival ended, but the other party wants to move faster than that. The building your vet clinic is being leased from is being sold.”

“What?” I said, my mouth dropping open. Leanne nodded.

“Yes. My client was approached a few weeks ago by a man looking to add to his investment portfolio. He has decided to sell. Of course, this likely won’t make much of a difference to your business. Commercial real estate investment is very much a behind-the-scenes business. Most likely the only thing that will change is the number of the account you pay your rent into every month.”

“Let me guess,” I said darkly. “The man buying the property is named Matt Smith.”

Leanne nodded. “You have good information sources.”

I had run into Matt Smith—literally—a couple of months ago in this very coffee shop. He had tried to flirt with me, and I immediately wasn’t a fan. Call it witches’ intuition. Betty had told me he was one of those big hotshot real estate developers from Portland. Another one of those Donald Trump wannabes who saw Willow Bay and thought they could make their millions by buying up property here and modernizing it. Of course, people like that didn’t realize two things: first of all, the rustic charm of Willow Bay was half of what brought so many people here in the first place. And second, the people who lived here were very good at preserving the heart and soul of the town. Most of these investor types gave up pretty quickly on Willow Bay. I really hoped Matt Smith would be one of those. Unfortunately, it looked like he might be my new landlord.

“When is the deal supposed to happen?” I asked Leanne, a million thoughts running through my head.

“The negotiations are almost finished. I’d say they will give an offer that will be accepted within the next seventy-two hours, and then a few weeks for closing.”

Great. In a few weeks I was going to have some hotshot from Portland as my new landlord, instead of the kindly old man who had owned the building Healthy Paws’ Vet Clinic, and the small kitchenwares shop next to it, for over forty years.

“And you’re totally sure this deal is going to go through?” I asked. Leanne patted me kindly on the arm.

“Don’t worry. Nothing will change. You re-signed your lease last year, remember? You’ve got your current price locked in for at least six years.”

I nodded glumly as Betty called out Leanne’s name. She grabbed her coffee.

“I have to run. Don’t worry Angela, it won’t really mean much of a change for you.”

I wasn’t so much worried about me as I was worried about my town. We had soul. We had charm. And every time someone came in and tried to turn us into some modern-looking resort like in Hawaii, I worried. Tourism was all this town had; we had to make sure the soul stayed the same.

A minute later I grabbed my coffee, and left the shop, the conversation with Leanne leaving a sour taste in my mouth as I continued down the street toward the beach where most of the action was happening.

As I walked further down Main Street, the infectious happiness of the festival began to get to me, however, and I quickly put Matt Smith and his plan to modernize Willow Bay behind me. Hordes of children ran around in circles screaming and laughing, helium-filled balloons trailing behind them and tangling together. The aroma of grilling meat from the barbeques mingled with the smell of popcorn from the stalls selling their various foods. A man standing behind a wooden cart took money and made freshly-squeezed lemonade. A woman, next to him dressed like a clown scooped up fluffy cotton candy for excited kids.

I walked past all of them with my coffee, and made my way toward the beach. It was a gorgeous day for swimming and for surfing. The sun shone down on perfect waves—large, but evenly sized and spaced apart. The water wasn’t choppy at all. An announcer somewhere blasted out names from a loudspeaker, but the ambient noise around was so loud that I had no idea what was going on. I took off my shoes and left them in a quiet corner, hoping they wouldn’t disappear, and let the warm sand envelop my feet as I made my way closer to the edge of the water.

I shaded my eyes with my hand and watched a surfer manage to do a 360 on top of a wave. It was so impressive; these guys and girls could do things on their surfboards that I could barely manage to do on my own two feet on dry land. Suddenly, I felt someone wrapping their arms around my waist from behind.

Instantly, I began to panic. I was being attacked! I struggled, dropping my half-drunk coffee onto the ground and spilling it onto my foot. I let out a yelp as I leapt backward and threw my elbow back into whoever was assaulting me. I heard a grunt behind me as the hands let go, and I spun around angrily to see who it was.

What I saw was Jason, looking as sexy as always, laughing while holding his shoulder, which was evidently where my elbow had gotten him.

“Oh my God!” I said, completely mortified. “Jason, I’m so sorry!” I ran over to him, my hand covering my mouth. I really hoped I hadn’t hurt him too badly.

“I came over here to surprise you, but it looks like I’m the one who got a surprise,” Jason laughed, his eyes twinkling. Thank goodness he wasn’t mad.

“I didn’t realize it was you! I thought someone was attacking me!” Oh boy. I felt like the least sexy person in the world right then. I knew some people around were watching us, amused, but I forced myself to put them out of my head. Had it really been so long since I’d had a romantic relationship that the instant someone put their arm around me my instinct was to hit them? Great.

“Well, I’m glad to know my girl can defend herself, at least,” he replied, rolling his shoulder in the joint a few times. “Sorry about your coffee.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. My face was beet red. I couldn’t believe my boyfriend had come up to be all romantic and nice and I’d attacked him.

“Rule number one to dating Angela Martin: always approach her from the front,” Jason said. “You know, I think that’s what they tell you to do with cheetahs and grizzly bears, too.”

My face flushed an even deeper red. “I thought we weren’t meeting until this afternoon,” I said lamely. “I wasn’t expecting it to be you.”

Jason grinned. “Well, there isn’t too much going on today compared to the other days, so when I saw you coming onto the beach I figured I’d come and surprise you.”

“Well, you succeeded at that,” I replied.

“I noticed.”

“You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?” I asked, and Jason shook his head, a smile still beaming across his face.

“Nope!”

“What if I bribe you? Maybe buy you a lemonade and some popcorn?” I asked, fluttering my eyelashes, trying to make up for the decidedly un-romantic way I’d reacted to my boyfriend’s greeting.

“That’ll certainly help,” Jason replied, and we made our way toward the stalls. On the way I told him about my conversation with Leanne. Jason’s face darkened.

“I’m not surprised. I’ve been hearing from a few people, apparently he has more than one deal in the works.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Definitely. Apparently he’s trying to buy the building your vet clinic is in, Betty’s Café and the long building that houses that children’s clothing store, the swanky gift shop and the art gallery. Apparently, his plan with Betty’s Café was to modernize the whole thing. He wanted to put in floor-to-ceiling windows, change the façade out front to be sleek and modern and make Betty change the logo.”

“I hope she told him to pound sand,” I replied incredulously. Jason laughed.

“She did, definitely. Betty told me she’s owned that building since she started the café in the late nineties, and no young whipper-snapper with more money than business sense was going to ruin her business or this town, as far as she was concerned. She told me I could quote her on that.”

I laughed. “Wow, it must be serious. I rarely ever hear Betty say a bad thing about anyone.”

“Exactly. I wonder what other properties he’s thinking of buying that we haven’t heard about yet.”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”

“Me neither. But, unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about it. When the festival is over I’ll write an article in the paper. Who knows. Maybe the people will be so outraged that my article will spur an open revolt. It’s every journalist’s dream.”

“Really? Inspiring a revolt against a business developer in small town Oregon is your dream?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, to start with. Eventually I hope to write an article that will inspire a populace to topple a fascist regime somewhere, but I figure this is a good start.”

“Start small and work your way up,” I laughed as I linked my arm in his. “Now, what do you say we forget about the fact that I tried to attack you, and let’s go enjoy this festival.”

“Oh, I’m not going to forget about that, or let you forget it... ever,” Jason teased, his eyes glimmering as he let me lead him down toward the beach.