The Strawberry Patch Pancake House (Dream Harbor, #4)

by Laurie Gilmore

Apparently, after breaking multiple plates per shift and eating her body weight in pancakes, Iris wasn’t the top contender for waitressing jobs.

‘They’re unpredictable, and I feel like they’re always plotting something. And why are they always so sticky?’

Olive hugged her stuffed wombat and grabbed the remote, flipping on her favorite thing to watch, baking competitions. A small flicker of something lit in Archer’s chest. Maybe she was his after all.

‘The one thing she did say was she thought you were destined for bigger things. She didn’t want to stand in your way. Olive was her dream. She didn’t want to derail yours.’

She had a trail of half-finished hobbies and partially read books long enough that she couldn’t see the end of it. She was good enough, but never perfect.

The man was dressed in a tight white undershirt and a pair of gray sweatpants, which, as far as Iris was concerned, was the same as a woman cooking in lingerie.

Was this a pepper-spray situation? Was it a pepper-spray situation if she liked that her new boss was staring at her legs? Maybe she should pepper spray herself.

Between the accent and the hat, Archer was wondering if maybe she was a bit more Mary Poppins than he’d originally thought. But then he remembered her ass under that T-shirt and he thought maybe not.

‘I’m pretty sure half of dealing with kids is just tricking them into doing stuff.’

It hadn’t made sense to her that Josie could simply stop existing. She was still there in her favorite soap operas and her special Sunday sauce. Iris refused to think of her as gone.

He never knew that so much of being a parent was just feeling helpless in the face of your kid’s struggles.

Was this why people wanted a partner? This feeling at the end of a rough day that they’d survived something together?

‘What flavor do you want?’ ‘I want a blue one.’ ‘Blue isn’t a flavor,’ Iris attempted to explain as they walked out to the kitchen. ‘Blue is the best flavor,’

EXACTLY

This day, this life, felt like a different type of achievement. The type that only required his presence not his perfection.

you just covered that plate of pancakes with salad dressing.’

‘I’m in love with you, Iris,’ he said, in between kisses, like it was normal, like they said it to each other every day, like it didn’t suck the air from her lungs to hear it said out loud. ‘I know it’s fast, and I know it’s maybe not what you wanted. But I do. I love you. I love every damn thing about you.’

She was going to die here in the self-help section. How ironic.