The Fate Date (Glengarry Curse #1)

8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Sabrina

T he oven chirped out its celebratory tune and Sabrina popped in the tray of cookies, the final touch for her “business coaching casual” apartment aesthetic. She had rosemary in the diffuser for concentration, a citrine crystal centrepiece, and every colour of highlighter next to a stack of rainbow Post-its. She’d curated the perfect playlist, the acoustic version of Kesha’s Timber almost soothing her nerves. She even found her favourite cat-eye glasses under a stack of magazines when she’d tidied. They weren’t prescription eyewear, but they made her feel professional.

She checked her phone for probably the fifteenth time in the past five minutes. Seven on the nose. She could wait for him downstairs? She popped on her slippers and crossed the “I see London, I see France” doormat that strategically covered the worn parquet flooring. Yet when she opened the door, she was greeted by a navy suit and Gavin’s signature scowl.

“Welcome,” she said. He eyed her slippers, which didn’t exactly match her plaid wiggle dress. She kicked them off hurriedly as he stepped into her living room. Her cats, unaccustomed to visitors, came out to greet him, winding between his legs.

He picked cat hair off his pants. “How many cats do you have?”

“Just five.”

“Just? ”

“I tried partnering with a cat adoption agency to drum up business at the shop, but…I ended up with new pets instead.”

“Of course you did,” he mumbled under his breath. His comment caused her insides to shrivel, but she silenced her retort. She was determined to keep the peace today. Since she couldn’t control Oscar the Grouch’s behaviour, she would mind her own. She could put up with a little surliness if he solved all her business problems.

“Make yourself at home.” She gestured to the table and its eclectic unmatched chairs. Gavin’s gaze snagged on the mustard accent wall, covered floor to ceiling in a rainbow assortment of Post-it notes.

“Wh-what is that?” The furrow in his brow deepened.

“It’s our calendar. Or was. Still is. But I’m the only one who writes things now.” Was that weird? After her mother passed, she couldn’t bring herself to remove all the little notes, the years of messages that they’d shared. Every so often her mother’s looping cursive would catch her eye, offering the answer to a problem she’d been having, or drawing her attention to a helpful reminder like “pick up milk”.

He stepped closer to the wall to examine it further. In fairness, it did look like a unicorn had barfed Post-its everywhere. “Is there a…system? Different colours for different categories? Placed in a certain spot?” His eyes searched the wall, which in some places was probably about five Post-its deep, desperate for a pattern.

“Nope.”

“But how do you find new or important information?”

“That’s half the fun.” She’d loved searching the wall each morning to find her mother’s message and leaving one in return.

Gavin just nodded, eyes wide and haunted like he’d walked in on his mother having sex or something. He turned away from the wall and began scrutinizing the rest of the apartment. His eyes roved over the salt lamp, the gauzy embroidered curtains, crimson velvet couch, and the rude embroidery hanging on the wall, before he crossed back to the dining table, head shaking.

He took off his suit jacket, giving Sabrina another whiff of lavender. It wasn’t a traditionally masculine scent, but on him it was so faint that she couldn’t help but be drawn to it; it made her lean in closer just to make sure that was what she detected. He placed his jacket on the back of one of the antique chairs before sitting down. His biceps strained the seams of his white Oxford shirt.

“Shall we get to work?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She took the seat next to him, feeling even smaller than she actually was.

He looked around and under the table. “Do you have any of your financials to look at? The paperwork for your mom?” Elgin, one of her cats, all black with white paws, jumped up onto Gavin’s lap. He shooed him off.

“Yes.” She tried to shake herself out of her stupor. There was no solving the enigma of Gavin Glengarry, or why she felt this strange pull to strip back his layers to see what lay beyond his guarded exterior—physically or emotionally. She pulled out her laptop and logged in to their accounting software and then handed him her purse. “Some of the stuff for my mom is in here, the rest is in my room.” She ran to dig through the “important documents” box buried in the back of her closet.

“Found it,” she yelled and jogged back out to the main room to see Gavin’s hand hovering over her purse, pinching a baggy that still held bits of her sandwich from the other day. They were green.

“Sorry,” she said, mortified. “I’m not a fan of crusts.” She grabbed the bag out of his hand and tossed it in the garbage can at the end of the island separating their galley kitchen from the rest of the main room.

“I think I found it.” He winced as he pried the paper open, the sounds of some sticky remnants evident .

He took out his own laptop and began making notes of things, his efficiency unnerving. No, “How was your day, Sabrina?”, no appreciation for the crystal centrepiece, just straight to business. Was she supposed to do anything? Or just stand here and let him figure it out?

“Your mom left you in a pretty decent financial situation,” he said as he typed.

“She owned the apartment and the shop. We were able to pay most of her nursing costs from her retirement savings,” Sabrina said.

“Most?”

“Things got a little tight towards the end,” she admitted.

“Hmph,” was his only response.

Was he judging her? It was impossible to tell from his monosyllabic grunts. She shifted on her feet. She was starting to feel slightly exposed by this whole ordeal.

“Is something burning?”

“What…no!”

She rushed to the oven and pulled out the now brown and crusty cookies, the scent of burnt sugar clinging in the air. She used a spatula to pry the crumbling mess from the baking sheet as Gavin started to look through her laptop. He rubbed his chin, face stuck in that impassive scowl. Every time he gave a heavy sigh or shook his head it made her want to scrape more aggressively. The cats mewled in the background, alternating with Gavin’s abnormally fast typing, both sounds clashing with her heartbeat.

“Sit,” he said, not looking up from his laptop.

Sabrina uncurled her fingers one by one from the spatula, after being overwhelmed with the impulse to slap him with it.

“Please,” she said.

He looked up. “What?”

“Have a seat, please .”

“I’m already sitting. ”

Sabrina threw the spatula in the sink and stomped over to the table. Her deep breathing techniques made her sound like a raging polar bear. The sooner he gave her a business plan, the sooner they could be done with his end of the bargain and she would be on her way to financial safety.

She pasted a smile on her face. It was fake. She hoped he noticed.

He turned and looked at her, right in the eye. “Why do you want to run the shop?” he asked her simply. He leaned back in his chair to study her further, like she was another spreadsheet in this financial puzzle. He looked confident, and yes, kind of sexy. Her disloyal stomach flipped over.

Thankfully it was an easy answer. “To honour my mother. This was her dream.”

“That’s a terrible answer.”

There was a pause. Sabrina didn’t know for how long, as she felt her chin wobble, her eyes sting, and her breath turn hot. She would not let herself cry in front of him. She would save it for Rose and Jack capsizing on the Titanic and burnt cookies.

What had she been thinking? This plan was terrible, like every other foolish scheme she’d concocted to save the business. She’d known Gavin was as personable as her moldy sandwich crusts but even her mother’s memory wasn’t worth subjecting herself to this sort of judgement.

So instead of weeping, she stood as tall as she could. All five feet and one-and-a-half inches of her. “Look, if you came here to judge the shit out of my home, my livelihood, my finances—there’s the door.”

He looked stricken. And she felt a moment of guilt, but then remembered that he had coal for a heart and probably didn’t care what she thought of him, so she added, “Does it make you feel better about yourself, being such an ass? Schadenfreude? Laughing at the misery of others? ”

She stormed back over to the sink to start scrubbing the destroyed cookie sheet, taking her frustrations out on the pan.

“I, no…fuck.”

She looked back over her shoulder and found him at the kitchen island, running his hands through his hair.

“I, uhh, sorry. I’m not good with small talk and I have a tough time with chaos. Sometimes I default to critical instead of supportive.”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “I know, I know, all the earth signs…” She’d texted Gladys to get his birth info and all her worst fears had been confirmed. His Sun and Mercury were in Virgo. His Moon, Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn in Capricorn, and his Mars in Taurus. He was a stubborn, judgmental, perfectionist.

“I don’t know or care what that means. It doesn’t excuse being a jerk. I’m sorry.”

She turned and leaned against the other side of the island from him. She picked up her spatula.

“Look…can I be honest with you?” he struggled out.

Sabrina gripped her weapon tighter.

“I meant it was a terrible answer because I’ve been there. Still am. My father’s house, our family home, is falling apart. We really should sell it, the maintenance on the place, mowing the grass, plowing the snow—it’s all too much for my mom. She doesn’t want to leave, and I can understand why. I know it’s only a house, but selling it would mean giving up that last physical part of my dad—even though he’s been gone for years. I imagine the shop holds a lot of the same memories for you too.”

She nodded. That’s exactly how she felt.

“The house was my dad’s pride and joy. He was a general contractor and did all the maintenance himself on the ancient place. Every time I get another bill I can’t help feeling like I’m letting him down.” He gave her a little smile. “So, what I meant to say is that you need to find a reason to keep the business for yourself too. If you don’t, it will feel like a burden and breed resentment. Trust me. You can’t live your life hiding behind someone else’s dream.”

Sabrina rubbed her exposed arms. That made sense. Only she had never really considered why she wanted the business.

“I brought rice bowls, why don’t we…talk and eat. Start over?” he said, voice gravelly.

She nodded again, beginning to feel like a bobblehead. She set down the spatula in the sink and accepted the truce he offered.

He pulled out the takeout bowls and she supplied forks and then he asked, “What did you love most about the shop growing up?” Elgin jumped up onto Gavin’s lap again, but he didn’t shoo him off this time, just watched. The cat purred, and Gavin’s shoulders relaxed as he reached for his fork.

“The community.” Sabrina took a bite of spicy pickled cucumber, thinking back on her literally magical childhood. “Before social media, this was our coven. A safe gathering place for people interested in magic. Mom would host all kinds of events. I loved meeting the most interesting people. There wasn’t anywhere else like it, at least not in Ottawa. I loved that it brought like-minded people together, created a found-family of sorts.”

“It sounds like a special place.”

“It is. Or, it was. As online communities grew, it meant being able to connect with others on a larger scale, but also negated the need for in-person meetings. The market became more saturated with online shops. Mom was the leader. She was an Aries,” Sabrina added, though Gavin probably didn't know what it meant. To Sabrina it was the simplest way to capture her mother's passion, drive, enthusiasm and leadership. “When she got sick, and then the pandemic hit…it hasn’t been the same since. ”

Gavin’s hand came to stroke across Elgin, still perched in his lap. “Businesses need to be able to pivot. Think Netflix versus Blockbuster. One changed with the times and was wildly successful, and the other…”

“…is extinct.” Sabrina suddenly didn’t feel as hungry anymore. “So you’re saying, it may not be all my fault the business is failing?”

“I didn’t say that. It just may not be entirely your fault.” The slightest hint of a smile crossed the corner of his mouth.

“You’re teasing me, aren’t you.” She narrowed her eyes on him.

“Is that something a Plesiosaur rising would do?”

“There are no dinosaurs in astrology.”

He shrugged. “At least they were real.” And then she saw it, a tight curve came across his lips. He was making a joke. His eyes crinkled at the corners in laugh lines that must be used so infrequently they were undetectable otherwise, which was a real shame. She thought pouty supermodel Gavin was hot—damn, his face was meant to smile. The barely-there-joy did inconvenient things to her insides. In fairness, he was kind of laughing at her, but she’d coaxed it out of him. It felt like a secret smile, just for her, and she enjoyed it an ill-advised amount.

She flashed her most sparkling grin in return. His body froze, his eyes dipped to her mouth. But her unabashed optimism seemed to startle him. His grey eyes widened, as if the humanoid that had peeked out the windows on his grump-fortress had been caught. Then he averted his gaze, sealing up the tiny slivers of light that had shone out. He cleared his throat and reached for a Post-it.

“Homework,” he said, so brusquely that Elgin jumped off and went to rejoin his friends on the cat tree.

“What?” It took Sabrina a moment to remember that they were in the middle of a business coaching session. Were they done already? Could he come up with a plan that quickly?

“Number one.” He wrote the word Financials on a neon orange Post-it. “Let’s at least try to stop some of the bleeding. Really comb through your documents—tax returns, inventories, sales records. Organize them and look for trends. We need to see how bad things are before we move forward and identify your strengths. For example, if crystal dildos are a top seller, maybe you can redouble your efforts in that department.” His dashing half-smile flashed so quickly she didn’t have the chance to revel in it again.

“Number two—make an effort on social media. Focus your content locally until we can come up with a plan for online sales.”

“Number three.” He selected a pale purple note this time. “Market research. A lot has changed since your mom started the shop and since you took over. I’ll send you a spreadsheet to help you keep it organized, but look online to find similar businesses. Collect their name, contact info, their revenue streams, what is different, what is similar. And most of all—what excites you about their business.”

“That doesn’t seem very logical.”

“That’s the beauty of business. It’s a bit of both. When I make investment decisions, the prototype needs to look good on paper—but there’s a gut instinct that goes along with it. Business isn’t just logical.”

It was an unexpected statement, coming from him. He crossed to the Post-it wall and stuck them next to her mother’s note: I love you more than Lorelai loves snow .

“You really should have chosen the same colour Post-it. Is there any logic to where you’ve pasted them?” she asked.

He leaned over her, yet his scent didn’t stop, wrapping her in a lavender haze, transporting her back to that field outside the farmhouse at sunset.

“This wall personally offends me,” he said, pointing at it accusingly before grabbing his jacket and bag at the table.

“Wait, we haven’t discussed your homework,” she said.

“My homework? ”

“Birthdays. As many as you can get. And birth times if it’s not too awkward. See if you can drop it into conversation casually.”

He gave her a look that she was coming to realize meant “no fucking way”. Perhaps it was for the best, ethically. A birthchart was a very vulnerable thing. Sacrificing the birth time was a moral compromise—she could glean some of the high-level impressions without digging into all their childhood baggage. “Alright, look through past emails and see if anyone sent out birthday wishes.”

He shook his head and made for the door.

“Hey,” she grabbed his upper arm before he could escape down the stairs. Her thumb stroked his bicep, the wool of his jacket surprisingly soft. His arm was as muscular as she’d surmised in the car. He glared at her hand, and she removed it quickly. Not a toucher, apparently. “I wanted to say thanks. When you’re not being a total ass, you’re a half-decent business coach.”

“Thanks.” He defaulted to his gruff nod.

“Maybe we can meet this Saturday?” she asked. He nodded again and absconded out of the apartment, as abruptly he’d entered.

Sabrina let out a breath and considered the unfamiliar scratchy writing on their calendar wall. She had been expecting Gavin to swoop in like a knight in shining armour, inspired by the quest to save her business. In reality, he was more of a freakishly tall bridge troll, full of riddles instead of answers. But she had homework. Where her path forward had felt dark and impossible before, she now had a flashlight. Not a big one, just one of those tiny key-chain ones. Her next steps were becoming clearer, although her feelings about the man guiding her were anything but.