Page 102 of The Sugar Maple Inn

Grace’s heart started to pound. “What?”

“Apparently,” Victoria’s smile was poisonous now, enjoying every second of this, “the Spencer family has something buried under that inn. Something Reese’s ancestors hid there before they headed to Canada. Reese is planning to buy the inn, demolish the whole thing and excavate. Get to that treasure. Quite clever, really.”

Grace actually took a step back, champagne sloshing in her glass. “No. No, he wouldn’t. Are you sure you heard right?”

“Oh, I didn’t just hear it.” Victoria pulled out her phone, scrolling through her messages with manicured nails. “Erika emailed me directly. I sit on the town council’s development committee, so she needed my approval for the permits. Here, take a look.”

She held out her phone.

Grace didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to see proof that everything she’d feared was true. But her hand reached out anyway, taking the phone with fingers that had gone numb.

The email was there. Official letterhead. Erika’s name at the bottom.

Dear Ms. Warren,

On behalf of Reese Spencer, I’m reaching out regarding the Maple Inn property on Solace Lake. Mr. Spencer is interested in acquiring the property for excavation purposes related to historical Spencer family artifacts. We’ll be requesting permits for demolition and ground excavation once the purchase is finalized. We understand this is sensitive given the inn’s historical significance to Solace Springs, and Mr. Spencer is prepared to make substantial donations to the town’s historical society and community development fund in exchange for expedited approval.

Please let me know your availability to discuss the details and please keep this strictly confidential for now.

Best regards,

Erika Wei

Executive Assistant to Reese Spencer

The words swam in front of Grace’s eyes. Demolition. Excavation. Expedited approval.

Reese was going to tear the inn down.

Everything he’d said about the inn being perfect for her vision, about her deserving it more than him, about maybe sharing it…it was all lies. All manipulation.

She looked up at Victoria, who was watching her with a faux sympathetic look.

“You didn’t know,” Victoria said softly. “Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry. I assumed—well, I thought maybe you two had worked out some kind of arrangement.”

An arrangement. Right. Because of course that was what this was. She was never random. She was a means to an end. A local who could help smooth things over with the town’s residents, who could be charmed and distracted while Reese worked his real plan behind the scenes.

Get close to Grace. Make her trust him. Make her fall for him. Make a grand display in front of people in the local café, like he did the day before, so word got around what a great guy he was. What a wonderful owner he’d be for the inn. And then what? Convince her to back out of her bid? Convince the Blackwells that Reese was the better option?

God, she was so stupid.

The tower. The British pub setup. The ten dresses and the diamonds and the way he looked at her like she was something precious—

All of it. Every moment. Every touch. Every kiss.

A lie.

“I have to go,” Grace said, shoving the phone back at Victoria.

“Grace—”

But she was already moving, pushing through the crowd, her heels clicking against the marble floor. She pulled them off, damn things, and continued running in her tights. She didn’t know where she was going. Just away. Away from Victoria’s pitying smile. Away from the ballroom full of people who belonged here in a way she never would. Away from Reese and his perfect tux and his perfect lies.

She made it to the lobby, her breath coming too fast, her vision blurring at the edges. The doorman looked at her with concern but she waved him off, stumbling toward the exit.

The Seattle evening air hit her like a slap: cold and sharp and real. Grace sucked in a breath, then another, trying to calm the panic rising in her chest.

She’d known. Some part of her had known from the beginning that this was too good to be true. That for men like Reese Spencer, there was always an angle, always a reason, always something more going on beneath the surface.