Page 14 of Must Love Lavender and Little Lies
“Ugh, come on,” I said, taking her hand. “And no tea. An occasion like this definitely calls for orcish spiced water…and a lot of it.”
CHAPTER 5
JUNIPER
The magical messenger box on Granik’s wall trilled with excitement all afternoon until he finally convinced his mother that a) he was telling the truth and b) he really needed to get back to work. But what he was not able to do was convince her not to come.
“She’s coming,” he said, reading the last message. “They all are. They can’t wait to ‘remeet’ you as my fiancée.”
I had met Granik’s family before, but always as his friend. They had treated me kindly and were all very dear, but I had pulled back from the cloud of noise that seemed to surround them. Only now was I realizing that I would soon be pulled into that vortex with no means of escape.
“Junie,” Granik said, looking pained. “This is going to be…a lot. She’s talking about traditions I don’t know anything about,” he said, looking over his mother’s messages. “It’s too much for you. You don’t have to do this.”
“Saving you from a marriage you don’t want is a little price to pay.”
“We need a plan. And Junie,” he said with a gasp. “Everyone in Moonshine Hollow… My family is going to be here in a few days. They are going to tell everyone we’re engaged. People herewill know we’re lying. When they find out, my family will be humiliated,” he said with a groan, rubbing his face. “What are we going to do?”
Granik looked so miserable. All I wanted to do was pull him into my arms and make it better. I couldn’t let him be married off to a stranger, but he was right. The people in town knew us. And they would know if we were lying. We couldn’t ask an entire town full of people we loved and trusted to lie for us.
“Well, I guess we need to get engaged,” I said. “We will tell everyone in Moonshine Hollow that we realized we love one another. It won’t be hard to spread the lie. Once Winifred finds out, everyone will know.”
He chuckled lightly but said, “We can’t lie to our friends.”
“We don’t lie to everyone. We can have allies. Portia will have books on orcish customs and will be able to guide us. And Emmalyn is the master of subterfuge. She’ll know what to do. And I’ll tell Rosalyn, Primrose, Zarina, Tansy, and Polly, and swear them to silence. They can all help us.”
“But my family, and all of Moonshine Hollow, will think we’re really in love. I… I don’t know, Junie.”
“We stick to the plan. We pretend to be engaged, and after a time, we break it off. We say we realized we were better off as friends. People will understand,” I said, sounding more hopeful than I felt.
“Maybe… If we get engaged in public, that will do a lot of the heavy lifting for us. But it has to be soon, or my family will realize something is afoot.”
“Okay. So, somewhere public,” I said, thinking through the possibilities.
“Pig and Piper?” Granik offered.
“Well, that is public.”
“Not romantic, though,” Granik said with a frown. “I always thought if I ever asked you to marry me, I’d want it to be romantic.”
“If you ever?—”
“A proposal should be romantic. Not the tavern.”
What did he just say?“I… Well, okay. Maybe we should?—”
“You know what, I’ll handle the proposal if you talk to our friends. We’ll split the work.”
“I…” I said, still mulling over his words. Maybe I’d misheard him. That had to be it. I considered for a moment, then said, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Granik replied with a nod, even though he didn’t sound entirely convinced.
I reached out for Granik’s hand. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Tradition or not, you shouldn’t marry someone you don’t love.”
He nodded slowly. “Right.”
“Want to go plant seeds and forget about this whole thing for a while?”
“Yes, please.”
