Page 24 of The Sugar Maple Inn

He shook his hands and clenched his fists.

Head in the game, Reese.

Reese caught a flicker of movement on the water below them. A small boat was cutting through the increasingly rough swells, heading straight for the island’s dock. Even from this height, he could see it was struggling against the waves, the bow slamming hard into each swell.

“Someone’s got more courage than sense,” Sam observed, following his gaze. “That’s not exactly pleasure boating weather down there.”

Reese watched the boat’s progress with growing interest. Was Grace on there? The craft looked sturdy enough, but the lake was getting angrier by the minute and whoever was steering that boat was clearly fighting for every foot of forward progress.

Damn, that woman was a fighter…and he was so here for it.

Sam was already looking for a landing spot, the helicopter’s rotors whipping the treetops as they descended toward a small clearing near the inn. “You sure about this?” she asked. “Once I’m gone, you’re stuck until this blows over.”

“I’m sure.”

The helicopter touched down with a gentle bump and Reese grabbed his overnight bag from behind the seat. Truth was, he was going to ask if he could stay in the inn overnight, hoping his enthusiasm would show the owners just how much he wanted the place.

“Call me when you need a pickup,” Sam shouted over the engine noise as Reese ducked out. “I’ll try my best to get to you.”

Reese gave her a thumbs-up and jogged clear of the landing zone, watching as his friend lifted off and banked toward the mainland. Within minutes, the helicopter was just a distant speck against the storm clouds.

He stood for a moment, enjoying the sound of the wind in the trees and the waves growing angrier by the minute. Somewhere out there on the water, Grace Sullivan was fighting her way through conditions that were getting worse with each passing moment.

Reese shouldered his bag and started down the hill toward the inn, his boots slipping slightly on the wet leaves.

Whatever happened next, at least it wouldn’t be boring.

Ten

Grace

The last hundred yards to the dock were pure hell.

Grace’s stomach had staged a full-scale rebellion somewhere around the halfway point, and now she was just concentrating on keeping her lunch where it belonged while Luke’s boat bounced over waves that felt way too aggressive for October.

“You doing okay back there?” Luke called from the helm, one hand steady on the wheel.

“Great!” Grace lied, knuckles white on the bench seat. “Just practicing my meditation breathing.”

“Z-dog?” Luke asked Zach.

“Yeah, cool,” Zach said without looking up from his phone, somehow completely unbothered by the fact they were being tossed around like a cork.

Grace watched him, her mind still replaying the scene in Principal Sergeant’s office. The sterile room with its motivational posters that felt like accusations. The way Zach had sat slumped in the chair, arms crossed as he refused to meet her eyes.

A particularly vicious wave caught them broadside then, sending Grace sliding across the bench seat. Luke managed to grab her arm before she went flying overboard, but her carefully prepared folder of documents went sailing into the bilge water at the bottom of the boat.

“Perfect,” she muttered, fishing out soggy papers. “Nothing says ‘serious business owner’ like waterlogged financials and bad hair,” she added as she caught sight of her wild hair in the bell’s reflection.

The distinctive whup-whup-whup of rotor blades cut through the air above them. Grace looked up to see a sleek black helicopter passing overhead, heading away from the island.

“Whoa, nice!” Zach put down his phone, craning his neck to watch. “Looks like a real high-tech one, too. Probably costs more than our apartment. Actually,” he corrected himself with a frown, “probably costs more than the whole building our apartment’s in.”

“That’ll be our new friend,” Luke said sarcastically, wrestling the wheel as another wave tried to push them off course. “Playing with his fancy toys.”

“Right?” Grace said, pleased he wasn’t as impressed as her son. “I mean, who needs a helicopter to visit an inn? What’s wrong with taking a perfectly good boat like the rest of us mere mortals?”

As if on cue, the boat lurched violently, sending a sheet of icy lake water over her lap. Grace shrieked, clutching her papers to her chest as Zach looked down at his drenched jeans.