Page 29 of Curve Balls and Second Chances (Pickwick Pirate Queens #1)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
T he Pickwick Yacht Club on a Thursday night was the closest thing the town had to sophistication.
Its heavy velvet curtains blocked out the streetlamps, the chandeliers gleamed soft gold, and the white-tablecloth tables glowed like snowdrifts in the low lighting.
People came for the steak, but they stayed for the talk. Everyone knew that.
Briana leaned over a glass of wine, her voice low and sugar-slicked as she chatted with Marlene Greaves —who just so happened to run the town’s gossip column.
“Rose?” Briana said with a tinkling laugh. “ Oh , bless her heart. She’s been through so much. But you know what they say—some people thrive on drama. I just hope she knows how to protect her business. Small -town reputations are so delicate.”
Marlene leaned in. “ What are you saying, dear?”
Briana offered a helpless shrug. “ I’d never say a word out of turn. But … some people might want to know who they’re buying their coffee from. Especially if there are secrets. Old … scandals.”
She sipped her wine, eyes glinting.
If she couldn’t tear Rose down with the truth, she’d do it with suggestion.
The kind that stuck harder than fact.
And Briana knew how to work a room.
She’d chosen her spot carefully, near enough to the bar that anyone waiting on a drink could overhear just a note of her conversation with Marlene , but far enough back that it looked private, intimate. It was theater, every drop of it, and she played her role like a woman born for the stage.
Marlene, bless her nosy little heart, was leaning forward, her pearl necklace gleaming under the light. She smelled blood, and Briana was more than happy to give her the faintest taste.
“You don’t mean…” Marlene whispered, her eyes wide.
“I don’t mean anything,” Briana said smoothly, her tone laced with the same false innocence she’d been perfecting since high school. “ I only think about the community. How we all depend on each other. Coffee , fellowship, Sunday mornings after church—it’s all connected, isn’t it?”
Marlene’s lips pursed thoughtfully. “ It is.”
“And Rose , well… she’s done a wonderful job building that shop. I admire her grit. But sometimes grit hides other things. Painful things. Things people might rather forget.”
Marlene reached for her glass, nearly sloshing the wine down her sleeve. “ You’ve got me on pins and needles, Briana .”
Briana gave a demure laugh, the kind meant to look like she was brushing it all aside when she was really feeding the flame. “ Oh , I shouldn’t say another word. Wouldn’t want to add to the rumor mill. You know how this town can be.”
Marlene nodded slowly, though her expression told a different story. The gossip column she typed up every week was the most widely read part of the county paper. A hint from Briana tonight would ripple out by Sunday morning, carried from pew to pew, whispered over casseroles at fellowship lunch.
Exactly as Briana intended.
By the time Briana left the club, her heels clicking confidently against the brick walkway, the match had been struck.
And the next morning, the first whisper hit.
It wasn’t loud, not at first.
A woman at the farmers market leaned toward her friend as Rose passed by, murmuring behind her hand. Their eyes darted away too quickly when Rose offered a polite smile.
At the coffee shop, Rose caught a group of teenagers pausing outside her window before ducking in. Their laughter seemed sharper, though no words were clear enough to grab hold of.
Even at the church parking lot, where Rose had parked to drop off muffins for a fundraiser, the hush fell thick when she walked past two women arranging flowers for the sanctuary. One of them offered a too-bright “ Good morning!” but her eyes flickered with something sharper.
It was subtle.
But it was spreading.