Page 114 of The Sugar Maple Inn

And walking toward it in dark jeans and a brown leather jacket was Reese.

“REESE!” Grace shouted.

Nothing. The helicopter blades were already starting to turn, the noise drowning out everything else.

“REESE!” She ran toward the glass doors leading out to the tarmac, but they were locked. Security access only. “No no no NO—”

Grace took a deep breath, stuck the middle and forefinger of both hands into her mouth and let out a whistle so sharp and loud it could’ve shattered glass.

Everyone in the terminal froze. The security guards looked around, startled. Even the woman at the reception desk jumped.

And on the tarmac, Reese stopped walking.

He turned.

His eyes found Grace through the glass.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Grace’s heart was pounding so hard she thought it might actually break through her ribs. Her hair was a mess, she was wearing jeans with a hole in the knee and an old sweater, and she was pretty sure she had mascara running down her face from crying earlier.

She’d never felt more exposed in her life.

Reese stared at her for one more second.

Then he started walking back.

Grace couldn’t breathe. She could only watch as Reese walked toward her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.

Forty-Three

Reese

The thing about helicopters was they made thinking impossible. The noise drilled into your skull until the only thing that existed was the whup-whup-whup of the blades and the knowledge you were about to leave something important behind.

Reese was halfway across the tarmac, leather jacket doing nothing against the October wind cutting across Boeing Field, when the whistle cut through everything.

Not a polite whistle. Not a “hey, excuse me” whistle. A sharp, piercing, two-fingered whistle that could stop traffic or call in a dog from three states over.

He stopped walking. Turned around.

And there she was.

Grace. Pressed against the glass of the terminal like she was trying to will herself through it. Pink-tipped hair wild. Face flushed. Eyes fierce and desperate and so goddamn beautiful it hurt to look at her. Behind her, he could make out her mom facing off a security guard, Caleb waving like a maniac, her friend Sophie looking extremely pleased with herself, and—was that Zach? Yeah, that was definitely Zach. Christ.

His co-pilot’s voice crackled through the loudspeaker. “Mr. Spencer? We good to go?”

“Give me a minute.”

“Sir, we’ve got a flight plan—”

“I said give me a minute.”

He was already walking back toward the terminal, his heart doing something complicated and uncomfortable in his chest. She’d come. Grace had actually come. Which meant she’d gotten the letter. Which meant she’d read it. Which meant she either wanted to thank him or possibly murder him for the presumption that he could just buy her dream and hand it over like it was nothing.

Knowing Grace? Could go either way.

A security guard intercepted him at the terminal doors. “Sir, you can’t just—”

“I own one plane and a helicopter on this tarmac,” Reese said, not slowing down. “Open the goddamn door.”