More Than Anything (Broken Pieces #1)(19)

And even though she had been much too busy to meet people, she was happy here, and she knew that once the dust settled, she would feel at home.

Libby had bought a decrepit house close to the beach. Tina hadn’t gotten around to finding anything permanent yet. She was renting a place farther up the hill. While it could do with a paint job, it had a killer view from the front porch, and she was happy enough there for now. And it was in much better condition than Libby’s house.

Tina had been trying to get Libby to move in with her until the renovations on her ramshackle beach house were complete, but Libby was stubborn and determined to assert her independence after being reliant on her friends for so many months. Tina couldn’t really blame her. Libby had always been fiercely independent. Everybody had been shocked when the other woman had put her career on hold to marry Greyson—it had been so uncharacteristic. Libby had continued to work locally immediately after the small wedding but had taken a break from her demanding career after learning of her pregnancy.

Tina sighed and shook herself mentally: she should be preparing for the daunting evening ahead, not speculating over things that were not her immediate concern.

And, anyway, thoughts of Greyson inevitably led to thoughts of Harris, and that would really send her down a nasty rabbit hole.

Focus, Tina. You have work to do!

“You okay?” Libby asked on her way to the kitchen from the small office she shared with Tina, where Clara was currently cozily ensconced with her young babysitter, Charlie.

“So nervous. What if nobody comes?” She couldn’t help verbalizing the fears that she had been determined to keep to herself. Libby laughed and veered away from the kitchen to give Tina a huge hug.

“People will come. The place looks gorgeous, the food will be awesome, everything is half-price, the first glass of wine is free. Why wouldn’t they come?”

Well, there was the debacle surrounding the banner, for one thing. The huge, gorgeous relaunch banner—along with a few hundred flyers advertising their opening specials—that Tina and Libby had sweated over designing should have arrived yesterday. But somehow Tina had given the distributor the wrong dates. The banner wouldn’t be ready for another week. It had been a stupid mistake, and Tina didn’t know how she could possibly have gotten something as basic as the date wrong. And the flyers—Tina regretted their loss much more than the banner’s. They had been meant for small businesses and windshield wipers and would have been handed out at the community and youth-outreach centers.

It had been a stupid, careless mistake, and Tina felt totally incompetent because of it. She had done this too often in the past. Like the time she had absolutely believed that being a travel agent was the job for her. She had invested a great deal of money in the training course without really considering what it actually involved. But when fantasy had finally met reality and Tina had found herself having to interact with real live, demanding clients on a daily basis, she had discovered an innate lack of anything remotely resembling sales ability in herself. She had started making mistakes: booking the wrong flights or hotels. Not arranging airport transfers. And once—horribly—forgetting to organize airport assistance for a lovely, undemanding elderly lady. The woman had been one of the few nice people Tina had dealt with on the job. The entire venture had been a complete disaster, and her mistake with the old lady had been the last straw. Tina had lasted less than two months before bowing to the inevitable and calling it quits. Yet another “career opportunity” dying a swift and painful death.

That was how it had gone with pretty much every other venture she had attempted. Leaping before looking was her standard operating procedure.

But this was the first time Tina had people depending on her for their actual livelihoods. That was a huge responsibility.

Tina could not—would not—make the same mistakes. But it was hard not to fall into the same familiar bad habits. Difficult not to get sucked into that awful downward spiral.

“God, Libby. I’m terrified. I have so many people depending on me. There’s so much at stake. I’ve never done anything like this before. Everything else I’ve tried have been massive failures. You know that.”

“I do not,” her friend denied, still so loyal. “I know nothing of the sort. You haven’t found something you’re passionate about before now. But this is different, Tina. I can see it in the way you look at this place, and I can hear the pride and excitement in your voice when you talk about it.”

Tina shook her head and returned Libby’s hug before stepping back and giving her friend a concerned once-over. Libby was looking so much better these days. She had lost a lot of weight in the first couple of months after Clara’s birth, but she was gaining it back, and, despite the still-lingering sadness in her eyes, she seemed more like her old self.

“And you? Are you okay, Libby?”

“Getting there,” Libby confessed, with a strained smile. “This has helped so much, Tina. Thank you.”

“Pshaw,” Tina scoffed dismissively, blinking back tears as she hugged her taller friend again. “As if I did it for you.”

And yet, they both knew a large part of the reason she’d taken this huge step was so that Libby would have someplace to call home as well.

A place where they both belonged.

“Right, enough of this sentimental stuff,” Tina said gruffly before checking her watch, just to give herself a moment to regain her composure. “It’s T minus fifty-three minutes and twenty-seven seconds to opening time. We need to hustle.”