One Last First Date Read online

  One Last First Date

  A romantic comedy of love, friendship and cake

  Cozy Cottage Café Series

  - Book 1 -

  by

  Kate O’Keeffe

  One Last First Date is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  ISBN-13: 978-1536896121

  ISBN-10: 1536896128

  Edited by Chrissy Wolfe at The Every Free Chance Reader

  Cover design by Sue Traynor

  Copyright © 2017 Kate O’Keeffe

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “SO, WE ALL AGREE? We’re really doing this?” Marissa’s upturned face was illuminated by the crackling fire as the waves continued their dark, rhythmic pounding against the shore.

  We stood in a tight little group, empty wine glasses discarded carelessly on a picnic blanket next to the glowing fire. I looked from one of my friends to the other. They were both smiling, their faces full of hope and excitement, their right hands placed on top of one another’s, awaiting mine.

  I bit my lip as goosebumps rose on my bare legs in the late summer evening breeze. “After more than ten years of dating, we need to take things into our own hands.” I placed my hand on top of theirs. A surge of anticipation hit me, and my face broke into a grin. “Let’s do this.”

  “Yes!” Paige cried, almost piercing my eardrum.

  “Good,” Marissa added more calmly, nodding. “Let’s begin, then.” She cleared her throat. “We, the three present on this beach tonight, agree that—”

  She was cut short by Paige. “Umm, Marissa?”

  “What is it?” Marissa asked.

  “It’s just . . . shouldn’t you name us?”

  “Why?”

  “To make it, you know, more official,” Paige replied.

  We were still standing in the circle, our hands piled up on top of one another. My arm began to hurt.

  Marissa rolled her eyes. “Okay, Paige. I’ll start again.” There was a sizeable note of irritation in her voice. Marissa cleared her throat once more, closing her eyes momentarily to collect her thoughts—and, perhaps, to try to remember our middle names.

  “We, Marissa Jane Jones, Cassandra . . .”

  “Clementine,” I whispered after a beat.

  She shot me a surprised look. “Really? Pretty.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Long story.”

  She nodded. “Cassandra Clementine Dunhill, and Paige Prudence Miller, agree that—”

  “Why does my name have to be last?” Paige interrupted again, sounding indignant, as she dropped her hand from ours.

  I let out a frustrated breath. “Does it matter whose name comes first, Paige? It’s getting cold here.”

  “Of course it matters, Cassie,” she insisted. “It won’t be real otherwise. Plus, Marissa always puts herself first. We need to be more . . . egalitarian.”

  “Egalitarian?” Marissa questioned. “This isn’t some sort of committee, Paige. We’re just three friends on the beach, who have, quite possibly, had a little too much to drink and have decided to make a pact.”

  There was a low rumble of thunder in the distance, diverting our attention. All three of us broke into nervous laughter as the wind picked up, whipping our hair around our faces. I glanced around the deserted beach. All we needed now was a cauldron on the fire and we’d look like a coven of witches, brewing up a spell.

  Paige shrugged, looking wounded.

  “I guess this was Paige’s idea,” I offered, ever the peacemaker.

  Marissa’s hands shot up into the air in surrender. “Okay. Do you want to do it?”

  Paige’s face beamed. “Yes, I do.” She smoothed her full skirt down and stuck her hand out in front of her.

  Marissa and I added ours once more.

  Paige looked from Marissa to me and back again. She tossed her dark hair in a dramatic fashion, and then began. “We, the three maidens of the beach—”

  Marissa sniggered. Paige glared at her. Unperturbed, she continued, “The three maidens of the beach, Paige Prudence Miller, Cassie Clementine Dunhill, and Marissa Jane Jones—”

  Marissa scoffed.

  “—agree that the next date each of us goes on will be with the man we marry.”

  A Girl Scout knot looped in my belly.

  “We agree to this pact in the presence of the Goddess of the Beach,” Paige continued.

  My eyes darted around, half expecting to see a goddess floating nearby. Hmm, definitely too much chardonnay for me tonight.

  Marissa scoffed again. “I don’t remember agreeing to any goddess crap,” she protested.

  “Just go with it, will you?” Paige replied, arching her eyebrows. “I know what I’m doing; this isn’t my first beach pact.”

  I looked at Paige in surprise. “It’s not?”

  Paige shook her head. “No.”

  I let out a breath. Goddess or no goddess, I didn’t care; it was the pact that mattered to me—and meeting the man of my dreams. “I agree to the pact.”

  “I agree to the pact, too,” Marissa said at length.

  Paige held her chin high, a strange look on her face—perhaps triumph? Or solemnity? Or a combination of both. “Then, it is set.”

  There was a sudden flash of lightning followed immediately by a loud crash of thunder. Marissa and I leaped a good four feet back from one another. Marissa fell on her butt, narrowly avoiding the fire. I stumbled but managed to right myself.

  “What the heck was that?” Marissa exclaimed, pushing herself off the ground and brushing the sand off her jeans.

  “Whatever it was, it scared the living daylights out of me.” I let out a short, sharp laugh, my heart pounding in my chest.

  Paige remained standing stock still, a look of pure exhilaration on her pretty face as the wind whipped her hair and made her skirt billow around her. She looked like something out of Game of Thrones. “That, my friends, was the sealing of the pact. There’s no going back now.”

  The sealing of the pact? I looked at her, wide-eyed, half expecting her to regale us with some lame ghost story, a flashlight illuminating her face in a prepubescent attempt to freak us out.

  “Actually, I think it was that storm we’re expecting,” Marissa replied in her pragmatic way. She leaned down and scooped the picnic blanket and the empty bottle and glasses up. “We might need to take cover, girls.”

  I looked up and scanned the dark night sky, shivering as the evening turned cold. A large blob of rain landed on my face. I blinked. Within a heartbeat, the heavens opened and the rain came pouring down on us. I pulled my hoodie up and made a dash for shelter, followed closely by a loudly protesting Marissa.

  “No way am I getting wet,” she exclaimed, pulling her own hood up as protection from the ele
ments.

  “Wait! We haven’t finished!” Paige called out to us both, her voice thin through the growing storm. “Come on, you two. We have to do this right.”

  I paused to squint back at her. She hadn’t moved from her spot by the dying fire. I glanced up at the house, the windows glowing with light. I let out a sigh. Warmth and dry clothes were so, so close. “Marissa! Let’s finish this off, then get back to the house, okay?” I called out.

  “Have you seen what happens to my hair in the rain?” she called back.

  “I’ll sort it out for you, I promise.” I clambered up the beach and grabbed her arm, pulling her back with me. She muttered something about hair straighteners and ice cream under her breath.

  Once back by the smoking fire, Paige extended her now wet arm toward us once more.

  “Make it quick,” Marissa warned.

  We resumed our positions.

  Another flash of lightning illuminated the beach as the waves crashed with force against the shore. When the thunder hit, my heart leaped into my mouth. This was like something out of a movie!

  Paige continued in her Hammer House of Horrors voice, louder this time to be heard over the lashing wind and rain. “From this day forth, we, the maidens of the beach, have just One Last First Date.” She paused between each word, piercing us with her intense gaze.

  “One last first date?” I questioned, panic inching its way up from my toes. In my bid to find Mr. Right, I’d been on so many dates I’d totally lost count. Having only one more really put the pressure on. It was going to have to be with the perfect guy. I swallowed.

  “That’s right,” Paige replied, looking at me intently. “One Last First Date. We’ve got one shot at this, ladies.”

  “Agreed,” Marissa said quickly, possibly more to get out of the rain and save her hair from the dreaded frizz than for any real desire to agree to Paige’s terms.

  I chewed the inside of my mouth and glanced at both of my friends. One last first date meant whoever I next dated would end up being my husband. Either that or I’d become celibate, adopt seventeen cats, take to wearing ill-fitting mismatched clothes, and possibly smell a little funky to boot.

  I chose dating.

  “Cassie, come on!” Marissa urged, the rain still blobbing heavily down on us.

  “Agreed,” I added as a surge of nerves, excitement—and hope—rose in my chest.

  One Last First Date it was.

  Chapter 2

  - 3 Months Later -

  “CASSIE!”

  I looked up at my boss, mortified I’d been caught so obviously daydreaming, not only in front of him but the entire sales team. A bit of quick thinking was required. Stat!

  “Sorry, Richard, my mind was on”—I glanced down at the file on the table in front of me—“the Nettco account.” I gave him my best professional-serious-sales-representative look, hoping he’d buy it.

  Richard peered at me across the table through narrowed eyes. “Is there an issue with the customer, Cassie?”

  “Ah, yes. And no,” I bumbled. What?! “What I mean is in some ways yes, and in other ways . . . no.” I smiled at him. Perhaps my smile was so dazzling he would ignore my frankly ridiculous answer? My right eye began to twitch.

  Will Jordan, the company’s most successful sales rep, and possibly the most annoying man on the face of the earth, sniggered under his breath beside me. I shot him a don’t-mess-with-me stare, something I was forced to do with annoying regularity around him.

  Richard slid his fingers down his notes until he found what he was looking for. “Ah, here we go. Nettco Electricity. Expected revenue of three hundred thousand per annum. You’ve said here the likelihood of success is ninety-nine percent.” He looked up again. “That’s confident in anyone’s books. If there’s a problem, we need to know about it, Cassie.”

  I swallowed as my cheeks heated up. “It’s nothing I can’t handle, Richard.”

  Can’t we just move on?

  “Good, good. This is shaping up to be a tough quarter, and when you estimate success at almost one hundred percent, you set a certain expectation. Will?”

  “Yes, Richard?” Will asked, smiling like the smarmy suck-up he was.

  “Can you go through the deal with Cassie, see if you can add any value?”

  Will’s grin was broad. “Absolutely, Richard. You can count on me.”

  I closed my eyes. That was all I needed. Will Suck-Up Jordan helping me fix a fake problem with one of my accounts.

  Turning to me, he added, “It will be my pleasure to help you with this problem, Cassie.”

  My eyes almost popped out of their sockets, I rolled them so much. I pursed my lips as I looked at Will’s smug face. “Thank you so much,” I managed through gritted teeth. Wonderful. I had to spend more time with Will Jordan. And all because I had been caught daydreaming about what will most likely be the biggest date of my entire life tonight.

  Talk about the punishment not fitting the crime.

  Truth be told, I was a bit of a star at work. I’d been at AGD for four years and had worked my way up through the ranks to the heady heights of Senior Account Director through hard slog. Although I didn’t quite have Will’s sterling success rate, I didn’t trail too far behind. Richard telling Will to help me on an account in front of everyone felt like a slap in the face with a wet fish—not that I knew what that felt like, but I bet it would be pretty unpleasant. And smelly. Definitely smelly.

  “That’s settled then,” Richard said, collecting his files. “Thanks, everyone. Now get out there and bring in those sales! The clock is ticking on the financial year.”

  As the team filed out of the stuffy meeting room back to their respective desks, I felt a hand on my arm.

  “I bet I know what you were really thinking about,” Marissa said under her breath, grinning at me. “And it had absolutely nothing to do with Nettco Electricity.”

  A smile spread across my face as a group of construction workers fired up in my belly. “I can hardly believe I’m going out with him tonight.”

  Marissa smiled back at me. “Cassie, I’m so happy for you. I have a really good feeling about this guy.”

  “Me, too. I think he’s the one.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Well, after all the research and vetting you’ve done, he’d better be.”

  I had met Parker Hamilton, my One Last First Date, almost five weeks ago. He was a good friend of Ryan, Marissa’s older brother, and he had to be as close to flawless as any guy could be. With his sandy blond hair, sea-green eyes, and square jaw, he was good-looking enough to make many a woman swoon. Plus, he was smart, he was sweet, and he was a doctor. You heard me: a doctor. All in all, he was easily Mr. Great-On-Paper—and I had high hopes he’d be Mr. Great-Everywhere-Else, too.

  I mean, I was taking this whole One Last First Date thing very seriously. He had to be the right man for me. No question.

  Since we’d met at Marissa’s apartment, I had found out absolutely everything I could about him. Ryan must have thought I was some kind of super-stalker, I asked him so many questions: from Parker’s shoe size to his family and everything that fell between. Which was a lot of stuff.

  I got a little borderline obsessive over it all, I have to admit. Perhaps to the point of mental imbalance? Who can say? What I can say is Parker Hamilton passed with flying colors. And he needed to; tonight was The Big One. There were no second chances.

  Parker and I had been texting, emailing, Facebooking, Tweeting . . . you get the general picture. But no actual date. Yet. He’d been asking me out since the day we met, and I had come up with excuse after excuse as to why I couldn’t go. My best work to date had been that my dog had had puppies, my dog’s puppies were sick, my dog’s puppies were better but now needed ’round the clock walking to help them regain their strength.

  The fact I didn’t have a dog, let alone one with health-challenged offspring, was totally beside the point.

  And, for me, this was so much more than the pact
we had made on the beach back in summer. Since I was eleven years old, I’d had The Plan: get my career where I wanted it, married by twenty-eight, followed by baby number one (a boy called Christopher) by age thirty, baby number two (a girl called Charlotte, Lottie for short) by age thirty-two. That way, I’d be fifty when the youngest left school and would have my beautiful grandchildren (names to be determined) by my mid-sixties when I was still able to enjoy them and not laid up in some old people’s home on a respirator or something.

  Problem being, at twenty-seven, I was at risk of falling behind schedule. And for an organized girl with a plan like me, that could spell potential disaster.

  There was a lot riding on tonight.

  We walked through the meeting room door, out into the corridor.

  “One Last First Date,” Marissa said, as though echoing my thoughts.

  I sucked in a breath of air. “I know. This is it, right?”

  She grinned. “Sure is. You’re the first of us three to actually do this. Nervous?”

  I shrugged. “A little.” A lot!

  “You’ll be fine. He’s been more closely vetted by you than even the CIA could manage. If he had any skeletons in his closet, you’d have them jangling on a string by now.”

  Paige slunk up to us. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?” Her voice was quiet, conspiratorial, as she leaned in.

  “Sure are,” Marissa confirmed. “Cassie got busted in our meeting for daydreaming about him.”

  “I don’t blame you.” Paige crossed her arms, shaking her head. “Tonight is a really big deal. Huge. Bigger than huge.”

  Those construction workers got out the jackhammers. “Not helping the nerves, Paige.”

  She waved her hand at me. “Oh, you’ll be fine. This is meant to be. I just know it. What are you wearing?”

  “Well, it’s dinner, so I thought that blue cocktail dress I wore to Marissa’s birthday bash last month. You know, the one with the full skirt?”

  Paige clapped her hands together with glee. “Oh, gorgeous!”

  “Great choice,” Marissa confirmed, always more sedate. “It sets the right tone: ‘this is a date, I’m serious about you.’ You need to look sexy but not cheap, classy but not boring. Striking the right balance is imperative.”