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“Why don’t you have a seat, and we can talk?” he suggests as he steps aside to allow me to walk back into the office.

“Here you go,” Joy says hurrying in with a giant pair of white men’s socks. “I swear they’re clean. And here’s a warm cider for you,” she offers as she sets both down on the table in front of me.

“Thank you,” I say softly as I pull the socks on and hope they don’t fall off because they are huge. I take a sip of the drink and moan.

“That’s from our farm,” Joy says proudly as she takes a seat at a desk.

I raise my eyebrows. “Wow! If this is yours, it is not going to be hard to market it.”

Eric takes a seat in an old leather chair across from me. He raises an eyebrow. “Tell me more.”

His eyes seem to penetrate my soul as he stares at me. But instead of feeling intimidated, I feel at ease as I look between him and Joy. I want this job. I need this job. I swallow and hope I can impress him.

CHAPTERFOUR

Eric

I watch as she takes small sips of the cider. Her big, bluish-green eyes take in her surroundings. I can’t quite figure out what to make of her. She’s young. At least ten years younger than I am. I try to remember her résumé and application, but in the end, I can’t remember much and decide I’ll interview her on the fly. Worst-case scenario, I hire her for a few weeks and it doesn’t work out.

“So,” I begin and her eyes dart back to meet mine. “Ariana Harlow, remind me, what did you study in college?”

She sets the mug in her lap. “I just graduated with a major in marketing with a concentration in social media marketing and I double minored in event planning and business administration.”

I nod. “Impressive. Do you have any work experience?”

Her cheeks turn pink and her eyes dart down for a second before tracking slowly back to mine. “Yes,” she says quietly.

I wait for a second because I’m wondering if she’ll continue, and just as I open my mouth to speak, she continues.

“I was fortunate to get several prestigious internships while in college,” she starts. She clears her throat and takes a sip of cider.

I motion for her to continue. It’s almost like she’s stalling, which is strange. Normally people her age would jump at an opportunity to tell a potential employer about a fancy internship.

“I worked for Levitz and Canterbury one summer. I had an internship for credit with the in-house marketing division ofVintagemagazine. I worked at Cannon and Fairfax another summer. I had an externship at the Galaxy Studios, and I also interned for Grayson Mitchell,” she rattles off as if working at all these world-famous companies is some sort of everyday occurrence.

It takes me a full ten seconds to recover and lift my jaw off the floor. “Well, that’s…uh…impressive. What were some of the projects you worked on that interested you?” I question as I glance at Joy, whose jaw is still somewhere in my basement.

“Oh, well, at Cannon and Fairfax, I was part of a team that made the marketing campaign for Fruity Sorbet lip balm,” she says.

“The one where all the celebrities were on the ads and all over social media?” I ask.

She nods and blushes again. “The idea of the celebrities being on Team Fruity or Team Sorbet was mine,” she says in almost a whisper.

“Wow. That’s…just wow,” I manage. “Do you have any references?” I ask because this can’t be true. There’s no way someone this talented just landed on my doorstep…or in my pigpen in little Storyview Falls.

We might have a few billionaires that reside here, but this is not a rich-and-famous sort of place. This is the place where everybody knows your name, your favorite food, and what time you go to bed at night.

“Of course,” she says in an almost insulted way.

I scratch the back of my head. “What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made?” I ask. There has to be a catch twenty-two.

Her lips twitch as if she’s fighting a smile. “I was at this photoshoot for a social media campaign atVintagemagazine and the magazine editor wanted me to pick up these scarves. So I went and I didn’t confirm which bag of them when I picked them up, I just grabbed the one closest to me when the girl at the store said it was on the counter. Anyhow, I get back and we open it, and they are not scarves, but berets. We didn’t have time to switch.”

“Wow, she must have been pissed,” I mutter, knowing the editor only by her infamous temper.

She giggles. “Yeah, until the photographer put a few on the models and then they both were like, yes, this is even better. Thank God they loved them, or I would have been fired on the spot.”

She pauses. “Anyhow, I learned always to double-check even if I think it’s obvious.”