The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob(36)

So while it would be easy to hate her for making the rest of us look bad, I realize it’s her way of handling the stress and expectations of modern motherhood.

Also, when Hudson sneezed his red slime, Brittany was the one who whipped out baby wipes and mopped the coach’s wife up before half the other parents noticed what had happened.

Brittany’s youngest is Piper’s age. They’re seven. Rapidly approaching eight.

And she still carries baby wipes to save the rest of us.

“I heard Levi Wilson came to your store the other day,” she whispers.

My heart pitter-patters, swells to exploding, and then sinks to my toes as a million scenarios play out in my head, the first being that I’m suddenly uber-popular for nothing more than proximity to one of Copper Valley’s favorite sons, the last being that my kids never get a moment of peace again.

But it’s not like that. Levi’s spotted in stores all over Copper Valley. Brittany’s not asking if we’re dating. She’s asking if my store was blessed by the pop god.

“Oh my god, he did.” Brittany’s whisper is the kind of shriek that shrieks I have gossip, and every mom in the stands knows it.

Zoe looks at me.

I silently telegraph to her to keep her mouth shut, since Hudson wouldn’t stop talking about the magic babysitter and her friend who was a boy, which Zoe has deduced to mean that I had a man-visitor.

She seems on the fence about believing if it was a late-night plumber.

“I shouldn’t talk about my customers,” I say to Brittany.

“He’s a regular?”

“No, he—”

“Are we talking about Levi Wilson at Ingrid’s store?” Akiko Takahashi drags her five-year-old son down the steps to sit on Hudson’s other side.

“Local celebrities come in from time to time.” I shrug, but my face is getting hot, and I don’t know if they’ll buy it with me brushing this off like it’s nothing. “We had a few Fireballs players at the book club meeting the other night too.”

“When Levi was there?” Alyssa Perlman joins us too. She’s firmly in the middle camp of moms—middle management at one of the many environmental engineering firms in town, planned to stop at one kid, and instead got twins who like completely opposite things.

And clearly, she has the gossip. “Where did you hear that?” I ask.

She pulls out her phone and swipes over it, then holds it out, screen first, showing a social media post with Levi right there in his goofball big eyebrows and extra-thick graying beard that he pulled off once all the other customers had left. “My friend said he was there in disguise.”

I’m blanking.

I’m completely blanking.

“Oh my god, Ingrid, is he going to use your store for a video or something?”

“Tell me he secretly loves to read. What book were you talking about?”

“He probably lost a bet. I heard he and Cash Rivers make crazy bets all the time.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out and glance at it. “Sorry, guys, it’s the store. Hold on.”

Thank god.

I swipe to answer, and when I put the phone to my ear, all I can hear is the swell of voices. “Yasmin?”

“Don’t freak.”

That’s not reassuring. “About what?”

“The cash registers just went down.”

“What do you mean, down?”

Yasmin has been with Penny for Your Thoughts since it was my grandparents’ store. I used to babysit her kids. She’s seen a lot. She can fix a lot.

Calling me on my day off is not a good sign.

“I think the wifi is going wonky,” she says, “and I can’t log onto the iPad for backup either, so we’re having to do hand receipts, and we’re a little busier than normal since all those gossip pages are covering the Fireballs players being here the other night…”

I look up at the ice, at Piper skating around a line of orange cones with the puck firmly in her control, then at the crowd of moms gathered around me, watching my every move.

My gaze lands on Brittany. “Can I ask a favor?”

She beams. “Anything at all.”

Crap. She probably thinks this means I’ll give her all the gossip. “Can you bring Piper home? There’s a problem at the store.”

“Of course.”

Twenty minutes later, I’m walking into the back door at Penny for Your Thoughts. I hand Hudson an iPad in the stockroom and tell Zoe to sit on him if he tries to get away or shove anything into his nose or ears or let the squirrel in, then push through the more-crowded-than-average aisles to get to the register.

Yasmin’s smiling like a champ, but I recognize the tightness in it, and the worry lines around her eyes.

“Still nothing?” I ask as I point to the computer.

She shakes her head. “Still nothing.”

I’m already dialing our web support, ignoring the pinging in my own heart and the little voices demanding to know why a single day can’t just go right. The store does pretty well, but a Saturday with a lot of customers when we can’t take credit cards?

This isn’t good.

“We should get a sign on the door until we can get this fixed. Cash only today.”

“I’m on it.” Her eyes flicker down. “And I’m sorry I called you on your day off.”