Chapter 1
Octavia Lightly, aka an Heiress with Too Many Secrets to List Here
Two months ago ...
If there’s anything better in this world than coming home to someone who missed you, I have no idea what it is.
Also?
I have no idea when I started thinking of Costa Rica ashome, but there’s this peace settling over me as I pull to a stop at the end of the road leading to my cacao farm that tells me I’m finally where I belong.
Where I’m accepted.
Where I can beme.
No apologies. No excuses. Justme.
And when the door to the villa at the end of the drive flies open and Naomi Cross comes rushing out, it’s like,This.
This is what I’ve been looking for my entire life.
“We have beans!” she shrieks, holding a yellow pod aloft.“We have beans!”
“What?”
I leap out of the Jeep, grab my dog, and dash to my best friend across the small but lush yard.
And I do mean lush.
The land is wild and free and beautiful. It’s everything I’ve always wanted my own life to be.
“Beans!” Naomi crows.
“Beans!” I echo. “Our beans? For real?”
Pebbles, my teacup Yorkie, howls in glee with us, and I lift her to kiss her head as we reach Naomi.
If the photographers following me all over Milan in the latest couture with my mother’s handbags last week saw me leaping for joy overbeansin this primitive slice of heaven in Central America, they’d be much more excited to snap my picture.Tavi Lightly, vegan sugar-free fitness and fashion guru, loses it over chocolate in cotton shorts in the jungle.
Naomi flings her arms around me, and we spin in a circle. When she lets go, I grab the yellow pod from her and kiss it, then offer it to Pebbles, who licks it, too, before making a face that makes me laugh. “Beautiful, beautiful bean!”
“Sebastián says we’ll have an actual harvest this winter,” she tells me.
“No way!”
“Yes! From the trees that were started before we got here.”
I squeal.
Naomi squeals.
We hug and dance in a circle again.
Three years.
For three years, I’ve been hiding this secret from virtually everyone I know, waiting and hoping and spending money hand over fist from my trust fund to save this farm. I’ve expanded with every opportunity, buying slices of land around our mountain farm as they come up for sale and planting trees there, too, sneaking here every chance I’ve had between photo shoots and business meetings for my influencer business.I’ve also gottenexcellentat producing small-batch chocolates with beans from another nearby farm while we slowly perfect our craft.
My parents and siblings don’t know. My industry contacts don’t know, nor do any of the men I’ve dated. The five million people who follow me across all my socials don’t know.
