Page 107 of The Sugar Maple Inn

I wreck things, he’d said.

Maybe he’d been warning her.

Maybe she should have listened.

So she shoved the memories away. Locked them in a box labeled “Stupid Mistakes” and threw away the key.

At least she’d had fun, Grace told herself. At least she had a story. That time I slept with a billionaire in a tower during a storm. That would be worth a few drinks on a girls’ night, right? Make everyone laugh? Proof that boring Grace Sullivan could do something spontaneous and reckless?

Except it didn’t feel like a fun story.

It felt like someone had reached into her chest and rearranged her organs. Everything hurt. Everything ached. Because stupid, naive Grace had imagined something more. Something deeper. Had actually started believing that maybe this could be real.

She’d fallen for him. Actually fallen. Like an idiot teenager instead of a thirty-two-year-old woman who should’ve known better.

And now the inn.

That was the other knife, still twisting.

She’d expected Abe to turn to her after Reese left. Expected him to say something like: Obviously we’re selling to you, Grace. You’re local. You love this place. You won’t tear it apart looking for buried treasure.

But he hadn’t. Which meant the billionaire would probably win again.

Which meant Grace would get to watch Reese Spencer own the inn she loved. Boss people around. Then leave it once he’d found his treasure.

Her mom strolled over. “You’re avoiding me, darling,” she said.

“Nope, just busy.”

“We need to talk, properly. Not the facts, the emotion.”

“No, Mom. The facts are all that’s needed. I’m just a waitress. A single mom. I fell for a man who dates actresses and models and Oscar-nominated directors. I was a distraction. A fun couple of days. That’s it.”

Mabel grabbed both of Grace’s hands. Forced eye contact.

“You’re not just a waitress,” she said. “You’re a single mom who’s been busting her ass for fourteen years. You’re smart and funny and you make the best coffee in Washington State. You raised an amazing kid basically alone. You’re trying to buy a whole damn inn. You’re gorgeous, too, thanks to your genes.” Grace rolled her eyes. “You’re not just anything, Grace. And any man who can’t see that isn’t worth your time.”

Grace’s throat tightened. “He made me feel like all that, for a while. That’s what makes it worse. He—” She stopped. Swallowed hard. “It doesn’t matter. He’s gone. The inn’s probably his. And I need to move on.”

Mabel looked like she wanted to argue more. But she just squeezed her daughter’s hands and pulled her into a hug instead.

“Now can we please talk about literally anything else?” Grace’s voice was muffled against her mother’s shoulder.

Mabel examined her face for a moment then nodded. “Well, I was in the bookshop yesterday and this woman came into the bookshop convinced Sophie was hiding a first-edition Agatha Christie in the back room. Spent forty minutes trying to convince Sophie she was part of some rare book conspiracy…”

Her mom launched into the story and Grace let herself be pulled into it. Laughed at the right moments. Made appropriate horrified sounds when her mom described the woman’s increasingly elaborate theories about bookshop cabals.

And if her heart felt like it had been put through a blender, well. That was her problem.

She’d survive. She always did.

Forty-One

Reese

Reese was merely surviving. Not participating. Not engaging. Just…surviving.

He gave himself a week. Seven days to go through the motions without actually being present. Eating because his body required fuel. Drinking coffee because the alternative was staring at walls. Breathing because the biology demanded it.