Page 1 of Lovewell Lane (Honeyfield Dreamers #1)

Margo

“Maybe I’ll join one of those farm worker websites and muck pig stalls in Australia.”

“You complained about getting rained on after walking from your Uber to the front door this morning. I’m not sure you could hack it,” Scarlet said with just a hint of sarcasm.

I sighed, twirling the red coffee stirrer around my fingers in one hand as I scrolled through websites on the giant monitor in front of me with the other. “I could deal with a lot for an Australian accent.”

“Do pigs have accents?” Scarlet’s voice echoed in the cavernous lobby we were alone in. She stood up from where she was resting her butt against my desk and stole the computer mouse from me.

I scoffed and took another big gulp of my macchiato. “No, but pig farmers definitely do.”

A pitiful attempt at a joke, since Scarlet and I both knew I leave men at any hint of inconvenience. An Australian pig farmer could be tall, tanned, and kind, but I would still find something wrong with him.

My best friend, however, was infallible.

Living in Seattle with Scarlet entertained me for the last six months, which I have to say, was longer than I’d stayed anywhere in a long time.

She was the light of my life. I would never get enough of her dry humor and judgy stares.

But growing up in Washington made the state unappealing to me, and I needed excitement.

Staying put always made me antsy, as if I were missing out on what strangers across the world were doing without me.

“You could go to France like your Mom,” Scarlet teased.

I scoffed, not hiding the disgust on my face.

I turned away from her to stare at the streams of people walking in front of our building's glass doors.

They weaved in and out of each other, a mesmerizing blend of leisurely strollers and speed walkers, each person maneuvering their own way through the crowd.

My mom was originally why I came back to Seattle.

I left my waitressing job at a small English pub to come home, just to find out her ‘love emergency’ was resolved mere hours before my plane landed.

Margaret Sinclair taught me everything I knew about traveling.

And while I inherited her love of sightseeing and her overly flexible joints, I did not inherit her need to love a new man every place she went to.

The countless times in my life that I had to nurse her back to health after a breakup put me off of relationships entirely.

This time, however, my presence wasn’t necessary.

Her long-term boyfriend– Salamander? Salmon?

Maybe it was Sawyer. Whatever his name was, won his way back into her heart all on his own.

And instead of spending time with her daughter in Seattle, she let him take her to France to ‘make it up to her’.

Which left me with Scarlet. I much preferred her company anyway, but despite my best friend’s best efforts, I still felt it was time to leave Seattle.

Being the secretary of a giant office building only made me want to leave sooner.

Everyone was always rushing somewhere to go do something, and I was nothing but a statue they passed on their way to get there.

Scarlet got me this job, so I vowed to be the best desk ornament there ever was.

Until today.

Scarlet typed another search into my computer before stepping back and scrolling through the results. My ears perked up when I saw ‘Dreamers Initiative’. I was a dreamer. Plus, the fifteen thousand dollar bonus under it was plenty appealing.

“Click on that one. What are these?” I asked.

“They’re programs for moving to other states. This one doesn’t apply to you though, you’d have to start a business in Honeyfield, Georgia.”

I glanced at my red-headed friend. “Pause. How do you know about all this?”

She shrugged. “You’re not the only one that gets the urge to up and move on a whim.” Her perfectly manicured nails tapped on the desk as she scanned the website. “But you are the only person I know that would actually do it.”

“Fair enough, but I could totally start a business,” I defended.

Her beautiful chestnut brown eyes distracted me as she shot me a look. “You typically have to stay in a place for longer than a year to run a business.”

“It’s called Honeyfield, come on, that sounds like the cutest place in the world,” I gushed. “When I lived in Chicago, I was a manager at a bakery. I could totally open a cute little bakery in a place called Honeyfield.”

I also spent nearly every summer as a kid with my dad in Boston, working at his diner, but I didn’t say that part out loud. Scarlet and I both were a part of the dead dad club, and neither of us talked about it much.

“What job haven’t you had?” Scarlet snarked. She felt my glare and murmured under her breath, “Your sourdough is to die for, though.”

I took the computer mouse back from her and bookmarked the page.

The sound of sliding doors snapped me back to reality, and my practiced smile appeared on my face without a second thought.

I looked up to find a very fashionable man in a suit walking up to the desk as Scarlet stood up straight and turned to face him.

“Good morning, sir, how can I help you?” I greeted cheerily.

Not to brag, but I was a great desk ornament. My entire life I’d perfected my craft at charming people. And I was damn good. The secret is to always act as a prism. Take in what the person offered you, and use that to refract the most colorful light that will dazzle them.

He flustered as he tried brushing rain droplets off of his suit coat. “Ponce. I have a meeting with Ponce. In a few minutes.”

I made an effort to keep my smile intact and glanced at Scarlet while I looked up the meetings on Ponce’s calendar for the day. “It looks like he’s waiting for you in meeting room 4B, it’s on the fourth floor. If you take the elevator, it will be on your right.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a mint, would you?” He asked.

I smiled and held out my candy bowl so that it was nearly in his face. “Right here, have a good day, sir!”

Scarlet waited until he was out of view before she relaxed into her previous position of leaning against my desk. “I should get back, Tracy will,” Scarlet threw up air quotes with both hands, “ accidentally, throw away my lunch again if she finds out I’m down here.”

“You’ve been gone for ten minutes, you’re allowed a bathroom break,” I groaned.

“Turns out there’s a bathroom right there on the third floor.” She leaned down to give me a quick side hug. The most intimate gesture in Scarlet’s arsenal. “Good luck with your hunt, let me know if you find anything good.”

I watched solemnly as the elevator doors closed, separating me and my beautiful red-headed friend, before returning to my computer.

A Google Maps search told me that Honeyfield was so rural that the camera trucks hadn’t been there yet.

We were really off-roading here. That only made me more curious.

Pulling up the map showed a couple of stores in town, but seemingly no restaurants whatsoever.

I was beginning to think the ‘Dreamers Initiative’ was all a scam to harvest my organs when the shiny highrise’s front doors slid open again.

Letting in a gust of chilly Seattle air.

A tall brunette man with eyes so dead he must have sold his soul to either a tech start-up or some finance venture entered the lobby. His too-white teeth nearly blinded me as he shook off his umbrella right in front of my desk on the polished marble floor.

“CFO’s office. I have a meeting,” he barked.

Bingo. I should be a fortune teller.

I smiled in a way that almost felt like a grimace. People rarely gave greetings to the secretary, since I was just a pit stop, but it never failed to irk me.

“That would be on the tenth floor,” I said. Despite my annoyance, my customer service voice remained as pleasant as a peach.

At the sound of my response, the man looked up and raised his eyebrows, as if realizing there was an actual human behind this desk for the first time. He nodded with a sleazy smile while his eyes trailed down my face to my dress shirt.

“Thanks, I’m one of the top financial advisors in the city, Tom Sanders.

And you are?” His suggestive tone put me off immediately.

I had to focus to hear his words. Usually, when men lowered their voices like that to speak to me, I drowned them out like the Charlie Brown teacher.

Womp womp womp. What about my polite smile, collared shirt, and name tag said, ‘Please hit on me’?

“Jane. You have a great rest of your day, Mr. Sanders,” I said with a smile.

I never actually wore my own name on my badge.

Scarlet and I recently rewatched Pride and Prejudice, and I was a big Jane Austen fan.

I stole names since it freaked me out when strangers called me Margo casually, as if they knew me.

He looked miffed at my polite dismissal of his presence and set his damp umbrella down on top of the counter. “Hold this for me, will you?”

I waited until the elevator doors closed before sliding his umbrella into the trash bin behind my desk. My eyes flitted back to the computer screen as I opened the application to the Honeyfield Dreamers Initiative.

Holding damp umbrellas for pervy finance bros or starting my own business? Easy choice.

-

“Honey, I’m home,” I called.

The apartment door swung shut behind me with a satisfying thud whilst I lifted the reusable grocery bags on my arms up onto the kitchen counter.

I rummaged around the bags until I found the precious goods that I was looking for.

Cheap wine and assorted cheeses were necessary fuel for creating any good plan.

Scarlet rounded the corner from her bedroom in her designated off-work attire. That girl loved leggings and a hoodie more than anyone I had ever met. As she shuffled into the open-plan living room, I set my provisions aside to finish putting away the lesser groceries.

“I got you those honey roasted nuts you love,” I called over my shoulder.

Scarlet hip bumped me out of the way of the cabinet so that she could put away the pasta I bought. “Do you really have to leave me? Maybe we can just find you a better job in Seattle.”

I laughed at her whiny tone. “You could come with me, you know.”

“No, I’m too much of a homebody. Besides, I’ve dumped four years into both my job at Asan and my relationship with Chad. I doubt he’d appreciate me moving across the world.”

Always so pragmatic.

Even though I expected her answer, it was still a buzzkill. I finished folding the last of the reusable bags and stored them under the sink where Scarlet liked to keep them. Resting against the counter, I turned to watch my best friend putting away the last of the snacks I bought.

“I might be going across the country instead of the world. Does that change your mind?”

Her eyebrows raised. “I should probably stay. Did you find something good?”

“Nothing new, I just applied to that Dreamers Initiative. It sounds pretty awesome if it isn’t all a scam to draw newcomers to an abandoned location to crazy murder them.”

Scarlet sighed and grabbed the bottle of wine to open. “You worry me sometimes.”

“I keep you young,” I reasoned. “Now come help me plan out my new restaurant, I could use that beautiful brain to give me marketing ideas.”