Page 43 of The Exit Strategy

“Bless your heart, Mae Belle, dear. Your little festival is so…quaint.”

Oh, this bitch is going down. I lift my gaze just as an Elle Woods wannabe steps up beside her.

“You remember Lola, don’t you, Mae Belle?” Paula’s voice is syrupy sweet.

I almost gag.

“Lola,” Nana Mae replies, and dang. I might be falling in love with Mae’s spiteful side.

“Where’s Cole?” Lola asks. She doesn’t even spare me a glance, but I’m used to it. She’s probably the kind of woman who only acknowledges other women she views as competition.

If I had long sleeves on right now, I’d be rolling them up and ripping out my earrings.

“He’s around,” Nana Mae hedges. “Junie, dear. Put this back on. I think we’ve squeezed enough lemons for a bit.”

Before I can ask what the hell she’s talking about, she reaches for the ring she set on a glass dish and forces the giant diamond onto my ring finger. Then she has the balls tosqueeze the sensitive skin between my thumb and forefinger hard enough to hurt.

She’s sending me a warning. I’d be impressed if my entire body wasn’t sweating.

Nana Mae turns back to Paula and her mannequin granddaughter. “But before you run off Junie dear, let me introduce you to the woman who got turned down by my Arthur. Repeatedly. Junie, this is Paula Van Holten. Paula, this is Cole’s fiancée, Junie Mercer.”

I’m mid-swallow when Nana Mae shoves me forward ring-first by holding my wrist in a grip so tight I’ll wear her bruises for a week.

“His what?” Lola whispers. “Since when? Gran, you didn’t tell me?—”

“Well, this is…interesting.” Paula’s Southern charm has worn off.

Nana Mae pinches my side, and I stumble forward. “Ah, yup. I’m going to go find my ah, Cole. I’ll be back. Nice to meet you. I think.”

Shaking my head, I practically sprint through the festival with one thing on my mind—kill Cole Whittaker for his grandmother’s lies.

It takes me twenty minutes to find him. Mostly because Katie made me sign an agreement about attending the next S&S meeting that turned into drinks on Wednesday too.

But even after I find him, I can’t bring myself to interrupt. I don’t mean to watch him. But Cole Whittaker running a community festival is a spectacle I’m not equipped to ignore.

He’s…everywhere. Setting up folding tables with a speed that suggests he does this a lot and doesn’t like it any more than the first time he did it. Then he adjusted the orientation of Stanley’s entire booth, which Stanley promptly moved back, only for Cole to readjust it a second time and then lock it in place with foot-long metal stakes.

I’m about to intercept him when he hauls a cooler full of drinks onto his shoulder while directing a group of teenagers with the warmth of a man being forced to adopt seventeen puppies at gunpoint.

Then my thumb hooks on the ring I can’t get off no matter how many times I twist it.

“Thanks, Mr. Cole.” one of the teenagers waves with his whole body and a smile that says Cole might be his hero.

Cole grumbles, then drops the cooler onto an open table just as another teen approaches him with cups. I can’t hear what Cole says, but I can tell by his expression he’d rather shart himself than continue the mindless small talk.

Yet everyone in his sphere keeps gravitating toward him. They always do. He’ll grumble about their issue, fix it, then act personally offended when they come back to thank him.

He put up those lights last night. I’d bet my entire bank account on it.

Freaking asshole.

When I look up again, he’s closer, with his sleeves shoved up to his elbows, and he’s talking to a little boy holding Frank’s hand.

“That’s not a dog,” the kid protests, pointing at a balloon blob in Cole’s hands.

When the hell did he learn to make balloon…animals?

“It is a dog,” Cole snaps.