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That was a good thing.

The Children’s Fair might also be indirectly responsible, too. Being entrusted with a big job by people she respected—however scared she might be about that—was an ego boost, and her brain was just exploring that new confidence in different ways, one of them being the reawakening of her libido.

As for why her brain had picked Tate—well, that was explainable, too. Tate was genuinely nice, the complete opposite of Mark in everything from looks to personality. He was the good friend of a good friend and therefore trustworthy. He’d offered to help her in her time of need, and American culture had all but trained her to go all moony-eyed when Prince Charming rode up on a white horse to save the day.

It didn’t hurt that he was damn cute, too.

And a good-looking, kind, trustworthy man who was willing to help her out of a tight spot without first negotiating for something in return . . .
Of course
she’d be attracted to that. Who wouldn’t be? Tate was just lucky she hadn’t swooned into his arms last night from the shock.

She didn’t need to worry about her sanity. The wires might be crossed in her head, but that was okay. Now that she understood
why
she’d had that reaction last night, she could deal with it. It wasn’t completely Helena’s fault—although she was still to blame—and Molly didn’t need to worry about being around Tate now.

Her reaction had just been a confluence of many things. It would work itself out. She’d be fine. It was all perfectly normal, and, honestly, a very good sign.

She couldn’t—and really shouldn’t—act on any of it, of course, but it meant she was getting there.

Progress was often slow, but it was good, and once she progressed through
this
stage, the Tate-tingles wouldn’t be an issue.

After so much thinking last night, she hadn’t gotten much sleep, but she was in a good mood opening Latte Dah anyway.

She no longer had to dread her meeting with Tate. It was still going to be a little awkward and uncomfortable, all things considered. But she’d just act as normal as possible, treat him the same way she always had before, and this would pass.

A little after ten, the chimes over the door rang, and she looked up to see Tate.

“Sorry I’m a little late. Crazy morning,” he added with a smile and a shrug of explanation.

There was definitely something residual from last night happening in her veins, but she ignored it. “It’s fine. Is everything okay?”

“Just the usual stuff,” he answered, as if she was
supposed to know what that might mean. She didn’t, but she nodded anyway.

“Can I get you something?” she asked.

“Coffee would be great.”

She waited, but Tate didn’t expound on his order. “Want to narrow that down for me?”

Tate laughed. “Guess I need to. Just plain coffee. Nothing fancy.”

“That’s easy enough.” As she poured, she saw Tate looking around, a little crease forming between his eyebrows.

“Did you paint in here?”

“No. Why?”

“It looks different somehow.”

She looked around, trying to see if anything was out of place, but it was just Latte Dah: sea blue walls loaded with old photos of Magnolia Beach she’d found at a church rummage sale, overstuffed couches, tables with mismatched chairs—also from the rummage sale—all shabby chic and intentionally homey. “I don’t know why,” she finally said.

“Maybe I’m just tired or something.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “How’s Nigel?”

“Grumpy. I think he knew I wanted to check his weight last night and wouldn’t let me pet him.”

He laughed. “They do seem to know, don’t they?”

Tate seemed to be acting pretty normally, not showing any lingering effects of last night’s debacle, but then why would he?
He
wasn’t the one who’d spent the majority of the evening examining his psyche for cracks. If he wanted to forget the entire evening ever happened, she was good with that.

Tate accepted the coffee with a nod of thanks, and she gestured toward the table where she’d stacked all of Mrs. Kennedy’s notes. “Let’s talk about the Children’s Fair.”

He sighed. “I don’t know why you’re freaking out over this,” he said calmly.

She was not going to dignify that with a list of reasons why freaking out was the exact correct response. Hell, back in Fuller everyone would be in a panic on her behalf. No, in Fuller, no one would dream of putting her in charge in the first place. They knew she was a screwup, too flaky to be trusted not to burn the whole thing down. And while she was trying to think positively, deep down she was afraid they were about to be proven right. There were still plenty of reasons for Molly to be worried. Tate was just obviously one of those people who
didn’t
freak out about things, which was practically a guarantee he was going to grate across her last nerve very shortly. “Beyond the fact that this is quite an important piece of the weekend’s festivities that needs to be done right if I’m ever to hold my head up in town again, the truth is I have zero experience planning anything like this.”

“Attitude and personality are what’s important. Everything else is teachable,” he reminded her.

“You’re real funny.”

“I try.” At her look, he lifted his hands in defeat. “Okay, joking aside, show me what you’ve got.”

“Thank you.” She led him over to the table where her carefully organized stacks of Mrs. Kennedy’s notes lay, yellow sticky notes hanging off their edges where she’d written questions or notes to herself. Tate settled his lanky frame into one of the ladder-backed chairs and pulled the first stack toward him. “That, as far as I can tell,
might
be contact information for the people involved,” she said.

Tate chuckled. “That would be my guess, too.”

“But it doesn’t match up to her list of vendors or volunteers, and
that
list doesn’t match up to last year’s site map”—she handed the map over when he held out
a hand—“that shows where everything was set up. So I can’t tell who’s even supposed to be there.”

“Can you call Mrs. K and ask her?”

“I
could
, I guess, but until I have a better grasp on what I’ve got here, I don’t know what to ask.” Plus, that would be admitting defeat before she even got started. She still had a little pride she wanted to hold on to. So far, Helena and Tate were the only people who knew how clueless she was, and she’d like to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Tate nodded. “Let’s start with the site map, then. I can help you reconstruct the list of who was there last year.” He met her eyes. His were blue—
really
blue, she noticed, before she forced herself not to. Tate didn’t seem to notice her noticing at all, thank goodness. “I will say that I’m sure everything’s in good shape,” he assured her. “We’re less than five weeks out, so most of this is probably in place already.”

“That’s my hope.”

“Mrs. K has done this so many times, it’s probably all organized perfectly—only all the details are in her head.”

“Which doesn’t help me much,” she grumbled. But she was relieved to hear that nonetheless.

Tate pointed to a big area on the map. “So that’s the petting zoo there. Cliff Hannigan brings the animals in.”

“I’ve seen that name somewhere,” she said, flipping open one of Mrs. K’s notebooks as Tate made notes on one of the sheets. He was left-handed, she noticed, and moved his coffee cup out of the way. “He judges the dog show, too, right?”

“Yep. But that’s not you.”

“It’s not?”

“No. That’s Sunday after the parade.”

“Yay.” She drew a line through that item on her list. “One less thing to worry about.”

Tate nodded but didn’t look up, busy as he was labeling the map and annotating her list, occasionally pulling out his phone to look up a phone number or e-mail address and add it.

His confidence and no-nonsense, get-it-done attitude was a balm to her nerves, and she recanted her earlier assumption that he’d grate on her. She’d never spent much time with him alone before now, and she liked the efficient and organized way he worked. There was no unnecessary small talk, either, which made this easier for her.

She sat back sipping her drink and watched him for a minute. He had good posture, she noticed; although he leaned forward over the table as he worked, he wasn’t hunched up, and his shoulders—broad like a swimmer’s—were held straight, the green stripes of his shirt running almost perfectly parallel across his chest without a wrinkle. Dark hair fell over his forehead when he leaned over to look at something, softening the angular line of his jaw and prominent cheekbones.

There was that tingle again, but it was easier to mute today. She was making progress already.

She searched through her mental gossip file. Many a young lady had a crush on Dr. Tate Harris, and while he had a couple of exes, there didn’t seem to be any drama there. The only woman he was ever linked to was Helena, and that, she knew, was platonic. From a purely objective standpoint, Tate Harris was quite the catch. Why, then, was he still single?

Suddenly, those blue eyes were staring at her. “What?”

She cleared her throat. “What what?”

“You’re staring at me. It’s making me nervous.”

Crap.
She searched for a reasonable explanation. “Just wondering how you got pulled into this.”

An eyebrow arched up. “You were all damsel-in-distress last night, remember?”

She sat up straight, a little indignant at the comparison. “I do
not
damsel-in-distress.”

“Then I’ll just saddle up my white horse and ride out of here.” He pushed his chair back from the table.

“I do appreciate your coming to my aid, though,” she said quickly to mollify him, and he pulled his chair back again. “But you were
already
involved in this circus.”

“It’s not a circus. It’s a
fair
,” he corrected.

“Whatever. How’d you get sucked into Mrs. K’s pet project anyway?”

He shrugged. “With all the animals, it made sense for the clinic to be a sponsor, and it’s important to participate and be a part of things and . . . um . . .” He trailed off almost sheepishly.

She didn’t believe that at all and couldn’t believe he thought she might. She just looked at him and shook her head.

“Fine.” He sighed. “I have a hard time telling little old ladies no, okay? You happy now?”

That made her laugh, and it took the edge off, making her feel almost normal around him again. “Yep. That’s kind of how I got into this. I’d hate to think I was the only weenie in town.”

Tate frowned at the “weenie” comment, but he let it pass. “It’s diabolical; that’s what it is. I think this is why we’re raised to respect our elders. It makes us easy pickings later, because we can’t say no without being rude and bringing down the wrath of our ancestors on our heads.”

It would have been funny if it hadn’t been absolutely true. “And that’s why I’m reluctantly running a
children’s fair complete with a face-painting booth and—” She squinted at Tate’s list. He had the handwriting of a doctor, all right. “What are ‘dours’?”

“That’s ‘clowns.’” He crossed it out and rewrote it a bit more legibly.

She repressed a shudder. Clowns creeped her out, but now probably wasn’t a good time to mention it. “See? It really is a circus.”

Tate’s cup was nearly empty, and habit had her taking it for a refill before he could ask. On her way back, she grabbed a lemon bar from the pastry case to take with her to the table as a thank-you.

Setting it beside Tate’s coffee, she said, “You are an angel and a saint to help me with this.”

Tate looked at the lemon bar and then at her, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “I’m helping you with
this
,” he said emphatically, indicating the mess on the table. “
Just
this part. The getting-you-sorted-out part.”

“You can’t be serious.” At his nod, she added a guilt-laden wheedle to her voice. “You can’t abandon me in my hour of need.”

“I’m not. I’m here in your hour of need. But only this
particular
hour of need. No way am I getting hip deep in this.”

Doing her best to flutter her eyelashes and look pitiful, she said, “I’m still damseling
and
distressing, though.”

Tate rolled his eyes at her sudden about-face. “You are not sucking me in. I will get you going in the right direction. I will sign your checks and back your plays, but the details are all you.”

She tried to flutter again. “Tate . . .”

“You are not a sixty-something-year-old woman, so I
can
still tell you no.” He grinned at her. “Flutter those eyelashes all you want, honey. It won’t work on me.”

“Fine.” She pulled the lemon bar back to her side of the table. “But I’m blaming you if it all goes to hell.”

“I have no problem with that,” he countered. “But I do want that lemon bar.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, picking it up as if about to take a bite. His eyebrows went up. This was suddenly fun.

“Even if I told you I’d decoded Mrs. K’s notes and had all the answers you seek?”

She paused, the lemon bar inches from her mouth. “Do you?”

“Give me the lemon bar and find out.”

The door opened and a small group walked in. She looked over and called out, “Hi! Be right with you,” then turned back to stare Tate down. “
Do
you?”

He looked pointedly at the pastry in her hand. With a sigh, she set it down on the plate and slid it over to him. He picked it up immediately and took a bite, claiming it as his before she could reconsider. “Now go take care of your customers.”

“You’re terrible, Tate Harris.”

“But I’ll have this budget sorted out by the time you’re done with them,” he promised with a cheeky smile.

Damsels in distress can’t be picky about how they get rescued,
she thought, and went to help her customers.

•   •   •

Molly didn’t exactly flounce away, but it was close—and kind of funny. He’d never sparred with her before like that, but it had been more fun than he’d anticipated and, more importantly, meant that last night’s awfulness had been forgotten—or at least they would pretend it had never happened.