Almost Just Friends (Wildstone #4)(2)

“I’m going to take your word on that since it’s been a while.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Jenna leaned in, trying to get a peek. “What’s today’s entry?”

“A list for figuring out what’s next on fixing up the property.” Piper and her siblings had inherited from their grandparents a house and some cottages on Rainbow Lake. “It still needs a lot of work. I’m in way over my head.”

“I know.” Jenna’s smile faded. “I hate that you’re going to sell and move away from Wildstone.”

Wildstone, California, was Piper’s hometown. Sort of. She’d moved here at age thirteen with her two younger siblings, Gavin and Winnie, to be raised by their grandparents. But in the end, Piper had done all the raising. It’d taken forever, but now, finally, her brother and sister were off living their own lives.

And hers could finally start.

All she had to do was finish fixing up the property; then she could sell and divide the money into thirds with her siblings. With her portion, she’d finally have the money and freedom to go to school and become a physician assistant like she’d always wanted.

So close. She was so close that she could almost taste it. “I plan to come back to Wildstone after school.”

Because where else would she go? Her only other home had been following her parents all over the world, providing healthcare wherever they’d been needed the most. But her mom and dad were gone now. Her family was Gavin and Winnie, and everyone in this room.

“But why the University of Colorado?” Jenna asked. “Why go so far? You could go thirty minutes up the road to San Luis Obispo to Cal Poly.”

Piper shook her head. She’d been stuck here for seventeen years. She needed to go away for a while and figure some things out—like who she was if she wasn’t raising her siblings. But that felt hard to explain, so she gave even her BFF the ready-made excuse. “U of C is one of the really strong schools for my program. And I think I’ll like Colorado.”

Jenna looked unconvinced, but she was a good enough friend to let it go.

“Don’t worry,” Piper said. “I’ll be back.”

“You’d better.” Jenna took another look at Piper’s list. “I can’t even make a shopping list.”

“That’s because you don’t go food shopping. You order in.”

Jenna smiled. “Oh, right.”

Outside the bar, they could hear a storm brewing. The news had been talking about it all week. Wild winds pushed against the building, making the lights flicker and the walls creak, but nobody even blinked. Wildstone people were a hearty bunch.

“Paint samples!” Piper remembered suddenly, and wrote that down.

“You know you’re a bit of a control freak, right?”

When you ran your world, everyone in that world tended to depend on you to do it right. That’s how it’d always been for her. She’d been in charge whether she liked it or not. Piper chewed on the end of her pen. “I’m forgetting something, I know it.”

“Yeah,” Jenna said. “To get a life.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do here?”

Now it was Jenna’s turn to roll her eyes. “Everyone else is talking about the new hot guy in town, and you’re over here in the corner writing in your journal.”

“Hot guys come and go.”

Jenna laughed. “Yeah? How long has it been since you’ve had a hot guy in your life, or any guy at all?”

Piper looked across the bar to where Ryland was currently chatting it up with not one but two women. Her ex was apparently making up for lost time.

“And whose fault is that?” Jenna asked, reading her mind. “You dumped him last year for no reason, remember?”

Actually, she’d had a really good reason, but it wasn’t one she wanted to share, so she shrugged.

“What you need is a distraction. Of the sexy kind,” Jenna said. “You carry that journal around like it’s the love of your life.”

“At the moment, it is.”

“You could do a whole lot better.” Swiveling her barstool, Jenna eyed the crowd.

“Don’t even think about it,” Piper said.

“About what?”

“You know what. Fixing me up.”

“And would that be so bad?” Jenna set a hand on Piper’s writing arm. “You’re the one always fixing everyone’s life, everyone’s but your own, of course. But even the Fixer needs help sometimes.”

It was true that she’d gone a whole bunch of years now being the one to keep it all together. For everyone. Asking for help wasn’t a part of her DNA. But Jenna did have a point. Today was her birthday, a milestone birthday at that, so she should do at least one frivolous thing, right? She turned the page of her journal and glanced at her secret bucket list.

Take a cruise to Alaska.

Get some “me” time every day.

Learn to knit.

Buy shoes that aren’t nursing shoes.



“Okay, no,” Jenna said. “You’re not sitting at your birthday party eyeing a list about buying nursing shoes.”

“About not buying nursing shoes,” Piper corrected. “And this isn’t my party.”