CHAPTER ONE
After about a decade working as a small boutique owner in the idyllic seaside town of Magnolia Shore, Diana Madsen knew, down to her bones, that summer days were guaranteed to be busy. And that was a good thing, of course. Busy meant customers, which meant the survival of her shop. She was doing well, but she was still a small business. She wasalwayshappy to have someone come into her store.
But there was busy, and then there wasbusy, and today had been the latter.
Diana bid the last customer goodbye with a smile and a wave, then turned the lock on the front door and flipped the sign to closed. As soon as she’d done so, she slumped, like a marionette with her strings cut.
She rubbed her cheeks, which hurt from putting on her customer service smile all day.
Diana loved her job, she truly did, but today had felt endless. She’d barely had time to even eat; instead of getting a proper, sit-down lunch, she’d scarfed her sandwich in stolen bites here and there, feeling grateful that she’d had the foresight to pack a lunch instead of planning to go out and grab something. She never would have eaten, otherwise.
She had survived until closing time, but her feet ached, she was a little bit sweatier than she ever liked to be, and her brain felt like it was about to fall right out of her head, that’s how tired she was.
And then there was the stack of boxes from a new shipment. Staring at her. Taunting her.
“I donothave to unpack you today,” she told the boxes sternly. “You can’t make me. And now I’m talking to inanimate objects,” she added with a sigh.
It was moments like these, moments when she was weary and a little lonely, that those old questions started nagging at her.
Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you didn’t have to do this alone? Wouldn’t it be so much better if you had someone to come home to at the end of the day? Haven’t you been by yourself for far too long? Don’t you wish you had someone else’s strength to help bolster yours when things got tough?
Diana hated these questions because, of course, the answers were: Yes, yes, yes, and yes. She wanted a partner, a family. She knew it would improve her life.
But wanting something was very different from having it. And after having spent the last ten years focusing on her business, on making sure that her professional dream had the kind of solid foundation that it needed to grow…
Well, she didn’t knowhowto get her personal dreams moving. Dating in your late thirties was not at all like dating in your early twenties, which was the last time that Diana had really tried to meet someone, back before her shop had become her life. Back then, she’d either been in college or just finished with it, which meant she always knew somebody who was having a party, or was grabbing drinks at a bar, or had a friend who would bejust perfectfor her.
Now though, all thosejust perfectfriends seemed to be married. Her friend group didn’t have the kind of parties that were overrun with singles; she was more likely to find herself at a kids’ birthday party than anything else, not that she minded. She loved her sort-of niece and nephew, Izzy Meadows and Benjamin Caldwell, daughter and son of her friends Cadence and June, respectively.
But seeing all the other parents at kid events did cause a pang in Diana’s chest, one that reminded her that her own chances at parenthood were likely slipping through her fingers. She wasn’t old, of course, but she was getting older, and she hadn’t even met her person yet, let alone gotten to know them or gotten married or planned for kids.
And going to a bar? She wastired. Just theideamade her tired.
Diana plopped herself down in the chair behind her front counter, the chair she’d hardly gotten to use all day, since she’d been running back and forth helping customers. She drew her long, dark hair back into a quick ponytail. She liked wearing her long, dark hair down when she worked. It made her feel professional, competent, and, yes, pretty. But the day was done and she was too hot to think about being fashionable. Summers in Massachusetts could gethot, even if she was lucky enough to have a sea breeze.
As she stretched out the kinks in her back, her gaze landed on her phone. Maybe…
She picked it up with a tiny sigh and flipped to the online dating app that her friends had cajoled her into trying earlier in the spring. When she flipped to the messaging tab, however, she realized that this hadn’t been her best move, as far as improving her mood went.
The messaging section was basically a visual representation of how hard it was to find someone she liked enough todate. There were the messages that hadn’t gone anywhere, the conversations that had fizzled out after a few exchanges.
But worst, in Diana’s opinion, were the reminders of the conversations that had gone well, or at least well enough to turn into dates.
Never second dates, though.
There had been the man who had thought that Diana’s career was basically a hobby, there to tide her over until she got married. And then there had been the other guy who thought that. And theotherguy…
She was starting to suspect the reason that those guys were still single was because they wouldn’t know the meaning of the wordsupportiveif bit them in the behind.
There were also a few people with whom she just hadn’t jived. The guy, for example, who had been so passionate about fly fishing. She’d admired his passion, to be sure. But he had been looking for a partner who wanted to go camping with him while he caught some prize trout. And Diana… that wasn’t her.
“Okay,” she breathed. Time to try to shake off her funk. Time to try again. “Let’s see what we have here.”
Except the new prospects, the matches that had just arisen in the seemingly endless stream, were disappointing too.
She tossed the phone away. It was hard to tell if she was being unfair or if trusting her gut was the right move. It was hard to tell what her gut was signaling at all, through the impersonal remove of her phone.
She was not a fan of online dating, as it turned out. But that was apparently how everyone did things these days.
