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He must be a perceptive person, she thought—and she noted that behind his almost goofy grin, his eyes gleamed with intelligence.
“Yes, I am. I’m the new doctor in town.”
“That explains it,” he said, his expression slightly mischievous.
“Explains what?” she asked slowly. She thought in a flash of the coffee and Heidi waiting at the clinic that she wanted to get back to—but she felt herself getting drawn into the conversation. She wanted to know what this man was thinking, and why his eyes were glinting like that.
“The people here in Blueberry Bay have an easygoing attitude that you don’t seem to have,” he said, still grinning.
She had to stop her jaw from dropping. She couldn’t believe he would just come right out and say something so forward. He said it in such a friendly way that she couldn’t be particularly offended, but she still felt shocked. It was as if he’d taken regular social conventions and turned them upside down, making her question herself.
“I’m here to do my job, not to have an easy time,” she said curtly. “Speaking of which, I need to get back to my clinic. It was nice to meet you.”
She nodded at him one more time, and he stepped back, still smiling a little. He waved to her as she pulled her car back onto the road and started to drive back toward the clinic.
She squared her shoulders as she drove, starting to question the way other people perceived her for the first time in many years. What had Isaiah Dunlap seen in her that made him say what he did?
He’d never stopped smiling, so whatever he thought of her, it couldn’t be too bad, she reflected. But had she behaved in a way that she shouldn’t have?
She thought back over their interaction, realizing that she could have been a little friendlier—but he’d almost hit her car! She could have been downright rude to him, and she hadn’t been.
She realized that people in Blueberry Bay must be especially friendly and laid-back, if he was surprised by her curt response under the circumstances.
She arrived back at the clinic and made her way inside, trying to stop thinking about Isaiah Dunlap. She gave Heidi her coffee and the two of them sat down in the waiting room together. Heidi gushed excitedly over how good the coffee tasted, and how excited she was to experience more of Blueberry Bay. Gwen nodded as she listened, thinking to herself that she needed some work to do—she was still feeling restless and jittery. She feltimpatient to do something constructive. And, she had to admit, she was finding it hard to not think about Isaiah and wonder what he thought of her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Paige Garner grinned to herself as she began to tidy up her baking station at Flourish Baking School. Around her, her friends were chatting and laughing about how their class had gone—they’d been making soufflés, and many of the students’ bakes had turned out terribly. Thankfully, no one had taken it too hard and everyone had laughed good-naturedly about the disasters. Paige’s soufflé had turned out beautifully, and her teacher’s praises were still ringing in her ears as she put away her ingredients.
“Are you coming for movie night tonight, Paige?” asked her classmate, Sarah, at the door.
“Yeah, sounds great!” Paige grinned. “What are we watching?”
“I don’t know, it’s Katie’s turn to pick out the movie.”
“Uh oh,” said their friend Steve. “Katie always picks tear-jerkers.”
Paige laughed. “Ask her to pick something funny this time, would you?”
“I’ll try.” Sarah laughed, and she and Steve left the classroom, waving to Paige as they went.
Left alone in the room, Paige started to hum quietly to herself. She felt proud of the work she’d accomplished that day—and all of the work she’d accomplished that semester so far. She was looking forward to the rest of her classes, and all of the things she was going to learn. Even more than that, she was looking forward to graduating. Even though she loved school and she would be sad to leave it, she was itching to get back to Blueberry Bay so that she could start her own bakery there.
Once her baking station was spotlessly clean, she swung her backpack onto her shoulders and left the classroom. From there, it was a short walk across campus and along a few of Providence’s sidewalks to her apartment building.
She climbed the staircase up to her little studio, feeling tired but happy. She unlocked the door and pushed it open, breathing deeply of the smell of her apartment. It always had a lingering aroma of flour and sugar because she baked in it so often. She practiced baking at least once a day at home, in addition to her studies at school.
She set her backpack down on the little couch she had placed against the window and walked over to the kitchenette. Resting on the counter was the notebook where she scribbled down all her recipe ideas. She kept it there because she used it so often—that recipe notebook was something that she baked out of almost every day. She wanted to make sure she had all of her recipes perfected before she graduated, so that she could begin to launch a successful bakery immediately.
Leaning against the counter, she flipped through a few pages of the notebook, wondering what recipe she should try to make that night. There was a peanut butter cookie recipe she’d been wanting to tackle, and she decided on that. Smiling and humming to herself again, she went back over to her backpack to get her phone. As she started to boil some water for macaroni and cheese, she called her big sister Josie.
The phone only rang a couple of times before Josie picked up, sounding eager.
“Hey, Paige!” she sang into the phone.
“Hey! I just wanted to call and say hi.” Paige smiled as she started to chop up some tomatoes to put in the mac and cheese. “How are you doing?”
“Wonderful!”
