One Fine Date: Do-Over Date Series: Second Chance Clean Romances, #8

By Susan Hatler

A sweet and humorous tale to make you smile and inspire you to believe that taking chances can lead to the happy ending you've always wanted. 

 

When a small-town craft shop owner is commissioned to paint a mural in the city, she somehow gets swept into pretending to be the girlfriend of a young and ambitious CFO.

 

Adrian Maxwell is determined to acquire the best art in the world and has no clue his plans are about to be thwarted by small-town Kari Smith, whose honest heart and love of a paintbrush and canvas is about to make his dreams come true.

 

From a New York Times bestselling author, enjoy this fish-out-of-water tale about new experiences leading to treasured friendships and an opposites-attract romance that turns into true love in ONE FINE DATE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hatco Publishing
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201140823

Susan Hatler

SUSAN HATLER è una Scrittrice Bestseller del New York Times e di USA Today. Scrive romanzi contemporanei umoristici e sentimentali e racconti per giovani adulti. Molti dei libri di Susan sono stati tradotti in tedesco, spagnolo, italiano e francese. Ottimista d’indole, Susan crede che la vita sia strabiliante, che le persone siano affascinanti, e che la fantasia sia infinita. Ama trascorrere il tempo con i suoi personaggi e spera che anche tu lo faccia. Puoi contattare Susan qui: Facebook: facebook.com/authorsusanhatler Twitter: twitter.com/susanhatler Sito internet: susanhatler.com/italiano Blog: susanhatler.com/category/susans-blog

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

It was decided: I needed to delete my sister--off my phone contacts, computer emails, Christmas card list, social media, in-case-of emergency card, and our regular mani/pedi appointments at the Blue Moon Bay Day Spa.

This may sound extreme, but it’s a totally rational decision. After all, it was her fault I was standing in a massive, cold lobby of glass and steel getting jostled left and right by scowling businesspeople in dark suits. It was because of her that I was clutching my paintbrush to my chest like a life preserver in a sea of fast-paced city hustle and bustle. She was the reason I was stuttering over my words, acting very much like the guppy out of water I surely resembled. 

Um, what do you mean you don’t need the hand-blown glass installation anymore? I asked, my conversation interrupted each time I professed ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘my bad’ to strangers who nudged into me from both sides.

Why was I apologizing for people bumping into me? For shouldering me aside on their way to the elevator? I suppose it seemed like the polite thing to do, having grown up in the small coastal town of Blue Moon Bay. I wasn’t sure about how to act in a big city like Sacramento, even though I’d been standing here before they arrived.

Martina Maxwell wrung her hands in front of me, the only sign that she was slightly uncomfortable. In a sleek, black dress of sharp lines and trim tailoring she stood like a rock in the lobby. People didn’t bump into her--they went around her in a wide berth. 

Kari, you don’t know how sorry I am about this, she said, looking me in the eye, her tone sincere. It wasn’t my decision.

After fumbling over my words for another second or two, I opened my mouth to speak but a blaring car horn from the horrendous traffic outside made me mute. I clenched my hands at my sides. Yes, my sister was so deleted. I might even have to block her, so she can’t look at my social media feed.

Right now, I should be in my cozy, warm, cheerful shop in small, quiet, calm Blue Moon Bay. I should be knitting oven mitts behind the counter with one of my cats curled in my lap, a mug of steaming peppermint tea on my stack of invoices. I should be listening to the chirps of morning birds or the soft melody of music from my grandmother’s antique phonograph.

My shop, Kari’s Kaleidoscope, imbued a dazzling assortment of color and joy and friendliness into everyone who entered. I knew every nook and cranny, every display of kitschy salt and pepper shakers, each corner noisy with artisan windchimes, and every hand-blown glass, vase or bowl. 

This hectic, frantic, leather briefcase world? This I didn’t know. This I didn’t want to know. 

Tabitha is so totally deleted, I said. 

What’s that? Martina asked, leaning toward me as she waved around at the tall glass-enclosed atrium. Sorry, it gets pretty noisy in here during the morning rush hour. 

Oops. Had I said my thoughts aloud? No time to worry about that since a businessman was coming at me like a freight train. I darted out of the way, nearly spilling the can of midnight blue paint tucked under my arm.

I cleared my throat. I thought you were the CEO of The Maxwell House.

The Maxwell House was an international art auction house based in Sacramento and they were supposed to be my new client. Martina, with her straight shoulders and poised posture and raised chin, suddenly blushed and fidgeted from foot-to-foot. 

Well, yes, she said, her tone hesitant. I mean, yes, I am the CEO. Technically. But my father, well, he. . . I suppose he hasn’t fully accepted his retirement.

She attempted to mask her discomfort with a short, little laugh and then cleared her throat as I stared at her. 

So . . . I stopped talking long enough to dislodge my flowy, paisley rainbow peasant top from the sharp protrusion of a man’s umbrella. 

Just like every other part of me, my eclectic style of long, dangly earrings and wide-sleeved tops didn’t feel suited to city life; there were too many things to get snagged on: a revolving door, a taxi’s door handle, or a stranger’s headphones. 

So, I said, beginning again as I inhaled a slow, deep breath, trying to find my center. It’s your dad who doesn’t want the hand-blown glass installation anymore? 

Martina nodded and glanced up at the expanse of cold, gray concrete in the busy lobby which I had been commissioned to transform into something beautiful. I followed her gaze to the beams of steel high above the glass ceiling. 

He said the hand-blown glass installation would be impractical, she said, avoiding my gaze. Hanging glass, that is. He said there’s the cost of installation and that we would probably need liability insurance in case something fell and he said . . .

Martina continued listing reasons robotically, but I kind of stopped listening. It wasn’t that I purposefully phased her out. It was just that the worry of ‘practical’ never entered the equation for me when it came to art. Art was about the heart, about the soul, about the way a piece moved you to laugh, to cry, to call your pushy sister and tell her that you love her. What did ‘practical’ have to do with art at all? Nothing, I tell you. Less than nothing.

He said you could still do the paint portion, Martina concluded, sheepishly scratching at the back of her neck. He trusted me enough to continue with that part of the project, at least.

She laughed again seeming to hide her obvious embarrassment as she smoothed the front of her dress even though there wasn’t a wrinkle in sight. I sighed and drummed my paintbrush against my chin. Look at the mess Tabitha had gotten me into. I hadn’t even wanted to take this commission in the first place. I didn’t want to leave Kari’s Kaleidoscope. I didn’t want to go to the big city.

Tabitha had pushed me to do this with her ‘take a step out of your comfort zone’ speech, and now I wasn’t even going to get to follow my vision for the artwork. Instead, I got shoved forward as someone ran to catch the elevator and a drop of blue paint splattered from the can onto my knee-high boots. Are you happy now, Tabitha? 

I’m really sorry, Martina said, clasping her hands together. If it were my decision . . .

I couldn’t blame Martina or her controlling father since they weren’t the ones who had given the ‘step out of your comfort zone’ speech that led me here. All that phrase meant was letting the world make you into a different person, anyway. I hadn’t been gone from home twenty-four hours and already I was being asked to alter my art.

"Martina, the whole point of my being here is the hand-blown glass installation, I said, trying to explain. It wouldn’t be a Starry Night vision without the stars, right?"

My grand plan was to paint the distinctive swirls of Van Gogh’s masterpiece on the expansive lobby wall. I was going to paint all of it, the midnight sky, the foreground tree, the sleepy little town, all of it minus the globes of yellow. Those would be done in my signature hand-blown glass and hung from the ceiling to catch the light through the glass.

Martina had opened her mouth probably to protest, or apologize once more, but little did she know it was too late for that. I’d already started talking about my art and once I did that it was very hard to get me to stop. Ask Tabitha. Or my manicurist. Art invigorated me like a mountain stream and I often babbled in excitement. And how exactly do you stop a river?

Before I knew it, I was going on about the beauty of light, the multiplication of stars, and the way the installation would look slightly different each morning as people entered the building. I was waving my paintbrush around like a conductor at the symphony while darting this way and that like I was trying to catch a loose dog.

Kari, really, Martina said, hands clasped together and index fingers pressed to her lips.

And, and, think about at night, I rambled on, my cheeks flushed and my long, wavy hair surely frizzing against the moisture I’d worked up at the back of my neck. With the glass ceiling, the Starry Night will unfold like a blooming Evening Primrose!

Kari, I—

"There’s no movement without the glass. What is life without movement?"

Ms. Smith, please—

I paced in front of her, wagging the paintbrush near her face and going on about my theory that Van Gogh himself would want the hand-blown glass feature and did she really want to upset Van Gogh? Huh? Huh?

Oh, Kari! Watch—

I shouldn’t have interrupted Martina that last time. Because if I had listened then she could’ve warned me I was about to run into someone. And not just someone, her brother. And her brother was also the no-nonsense, number crunching, business-minded CFO of The Maxwell House. But I had interrupted her and she didn’t tell me that I was