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Life doesn’t work like that at all

And that day was the day it decided to remind me of that fact

It was nearing the end of suift shop/workshop that I owned on the boardwalk in the seaside city of Hartwell, Delaware It was technically a city, but it was small with a s, and the north end was ift shop where I sold unique itened in my workshop

We boardwalk owners were a tight-knit community My best friend was Bailey Hartwell, and she owned Hart’s Inn, which sat right next to my shop on the boards

I’d closed up shop for an hour, and Bailey had left the running of the inn to her rab a coffee with our friend Emery Saunders, ned Emery’s Bookstore and Coffeehouse

Usually, our coffee breaks were an excuse to chat about everything and nothing, but that day we had a specific focus Bailey Not only was her little sister in town causing problehn Tre news in our s i

nvolving Bailey was big news As a descendant of the founding family, she ell known But hn Treht the old Hart’s Boardwalk Hotel and ripped it down to build his contemporary five-star hotel, Paradise Sands, Bailey was not happy She made sure the whole town and Tre so caused a miniature war between her and the deliciously sexy Manhattan-born hotelier

If that wasn’t enough to keep tongues wagging, Bailey’s boyfriend of ten years, To on her After they broke up, the tension that had been si between Bailey and Tremaine sort of exploded and as I’d always suspected, they admitted they were attracted to each other

After

I was happy for et her happily-ever-after more than Bailey Hartwell

“I never felt this ith To our coffee We were up in the raised section of the bookstore, sitting around the open fireplace The light spilling in from the low, shallos behind us cast a copper halo around her auburn hair “I actually liked the space frohn, I want to be with hiether, I find out so new about him—his quirks, his sense of humor, his cockiness, his flaws And do you knohat? I like it all Flaws and all! What is that?”

E in love”

I grinned at the dreaminess of Emery’s smile as Bailey denied such clai in Hartwell these past nine years Emery had moved to town a year after me, but she was so shy and socially aard, no one really knew her That is until Jessica Huntington came to Hartwell last year, befriended Bailey, and then Emery Jessica was now Jessica Lawson She’d married our friend Cooper ned the bar next to Emery’s bookstore Jessica was one of the town doctors, and if she had time between appointments, she’d try to join us for coffee However, she and Cooper were on their honeymoon in Canada

And now all four of us were friends E out of her shell more and more, but the woman was still a mystery

All I knew about her was that she inherited a lot ofproperty like the bookstore I knew she was ti she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever met in real life Seriously She was tall, slender with curves in all the right places, had long white-blond hair that no grooman should have naturally, and the delicate features of a Disney cartoon Cooper’s sister, Cat, often joked that Emery looked like Elsa from Frozen