Page 81 of The Pumpkin Pie Book Nook

Emma sighed, disappointment thick in her exhale. “Fine.” Then, quieter, she added, “I just like her.”

Tyler’s throat tightened, but he kept his voice steady. “Me too.”

Robyn looked at him then and something warm flickered in her eyes. Today had been bliss. And he wasn’t about to ruin it by pushing for more than Robyn was ready to give. He knew she was still wrestling not to fall for this. For him. For Maple Falls. For a life that didn’t fit the one she’d so carefully planned.

So he smiled at Emma and said, “Let’s get these pumpkins home. Then we’ll talk about tomorrow.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

ROBYN

Sunday arrived the way it always did in Maple Falls: slow, golden, and deceptively calm.

Robyn had spent Saturday afternoon and evening at the bookshop, shelving returns, fielding questions from curious customers, and pretending the walls weren’t quietly waiting for a new buyer to show up and claim them.

She’d tried to distract herself by recalling the day. All the perfect moments with Tyler and Emma, and the growing realization of how hard it would be to leave all this behind.

When the shop closed, Robyn had gone upstairs and told herself she would sleep.

Instead, the evening hours slipped into early morning as she curled into her favorite spot on the couch, laptop balanced on her knees, and wrote.

Not AfterHoursAuthor’s story or Isabel’s.

Her own.

It was a romance, of course. That was where her heart always returned. But this one felt different—less like escapism and more like something she couldn’t stop dragging into the light. It was about the risk you took when you loved someone. About what it meant to choose a person even when the universe tried to wedge itself between you—expectations, distance, old plans.

It was, if she was being honest, a form of therapy.

A way of telling herself something she hadn’t been ready to admit out loud: Sometimes loving someone meant letting go of the life you thought you wanted and stepping into the unknown with both hands open.

The story consumed her so much that she wrote well into the early hours of Sunday morning, before finally getting a few hours of sleep before having to be up and opening the store at eleven.

Now with the store open, Robyn was back behind the counter, waiting with Mr. Darcy for Emily to arrive with a fresh batch of pumpkin pies while the church bells chimed the hour, the sound carrying across the lake.

Robyn was about to text Emily to see if she needed some help when the bell above the shop’s door jingled.

But it wasn’t Emily who arrived.

It was that potential buyer, Estevez Rodriguez, and he wasn’t alone.

A man followed him in wearing a work jacket and carrying a clipboard. He looked sharp, brisk, and too impatient to be charmed by small-town quirks. He glanced around the bookstore and wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Robyn’s spine straightened. Beside her, Mr. Darcy rose slowly to his feet on the counter, his fur bristling along his spine, ears flattening. A low, guttural growl rumbled from his throat, a sound he usually only reserved for the vacuum cleaner and, apparently, these men.

Estevez didn’t greet them. He didn’t even pretend to browse. He walked past the front displays, talking over his shoulder to the contractor.

“We’ll need to open this up,” Estevez said, gesturing vaguely toward the book nook. “Move the front tables. I want sight lines. Big ones.”

The contractor was already pulling out a tape measure.

Robyn watched, stunned, as the man started measuring the width of the aisles. Then, without asking, he shifted one of the small tables near the window two inches to the left.

Two inches that did not belong to him.

Robyn came out from behind the counter before she could stop herself. “Excuse me,” she said, and the sharpness in her voice surprised even her. “What are you doing?”

Estevez glanced up like she’d interrupted something important. His smile was quick and humorless.