Page 30 of The Sugar Maple Inn

And now here this woman was, trying to do the same.

Had he taken his critique too far?

Jesus, since when had he ever cared about that?

He clenched his fists under the table then noticed Abe watching him, a curious look in his eyes. So he adjusted his face into an easy smile and looked up at Grace. At his competition.

Grace squared her shoulders, the movement straining her blouse against her breasts. He felt himself harden, found himself imagining flicking opening the top button of her blouse with his teeth, circling his tongue around…

Stop. STOP.

Grace flipped open that damp folder with hands that trembled just slightly.

“So, I might not have a helicopter,” she started and Caleb snorted into his coffee, “and I don’t have unlimited funding or international connections to fall back on if this goes sideways…”

Reese couldn’t help but smile to himself. This certainly wasn’t how he was used to pitches starting.

“But what I do have,” Grace continued, her voice steadier now, “is over thirty years of watching people come to Solace Springs looking for something they can’t find in their regular lives. Something real. Something that feels like…” She paused, searching for the word. “Like coming home, even if they’ve never been here before.”

Reese noticed Margaret lean forward slightly, listening intently.

“The Maple Inn isn’t broken,” Grace said as she looked around her, wonder in her eyes. “It’s just…sleeping, waiting for someone to wake it up and remember what it was always supposed to be. Not a luxury resort. Not a conservation project. A home away from home.”

Grace pulled out several soggy sheets of paper: hand-drawn sketches, Reese realized with surprise. The bottom edge was wrinkled from water damage, the colors slightly run where the lake spray had caught them, but the images were still clear. Watercolor washes of the inn in different seasons, rooms decorated with quilts and mason jars full of wildflowers, a dining room with mismatched chairs and candles on every surface.

This was why he refused to dismiss someone like Grace Sullivan. She was all heart…and that was dangerous.

Margaret was looking at the sketches, her fingers tracing the watercolor rendering of a guest room. “You drew these yourself?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Grace replied. “I wanted you to see what I see. Not just numbers and projections, but the actual feeling of the place.”

Reese raised an eyebrow. She’d done these herself? Not hired a designer or an architect. She’d sat down with watercolors and painted her vision.

Now Reese was leaning forward too, watching her intently. She was just getting more and more dangerous, and he was enjoying it. Relishing it.

“I want people to walk in and smell maple syrup and woodsmoke and fresh bread,” Grace said, spreading the sketches across the table, carefully avoiding the damp spots. “I want them to sit on that wraparound porch with a cup of coffee and watch the mist come off the lake at sunrise. I want them to feel like they’re staying at their grandmother’s house—if their grandmother had excellent taste and made the best pancakes in Washington,” she added with a charming smile that did things to Reese.

Caleb picked up one of the sketches of a guest room with a brass bed, vintage quilts and a window seat overlooking the water. “Oh, this is darling. Mikkel, look at this.”

Grace was gaining momentum now, that initial nervousness burning off as she talked about something she clearly loved. “Every room would have its own character. No cookie-cutter hotel design. This room might have a reading nook and that room might have a clawfoot tub. The Blackwells’ family photos would stay on the walls.”

Abe nodded at this. Damn, she had them hook, line, and sinker and Reese could feel his competitive edge rise inside him. Nothing motivated him more than high-quality competition. And Grace Sullivan, flushed and animated and completely in her element? She was competition he wanted to pin against a wall and make surrender in entirely different ways.

She pulled out more pages which looked to feature a detailed budget, some of the numbers slightly smudged from water but still legible. Logos of local suppliers she said would be willing to work with her, testimonials from people in town. People passed them around.

“The dining room would serve family-style meals using local ingredients,” she continued. “Margaret’s maple syrup, obviously,” she added with a gentle smile toward Margaret. “Produce from the farmers’ market. Fish from the lake. Everything seasonal, everything real. And during fall…” Her face lit up in a way that did something dangerous to Reese’s ability to stay detached. “In fall, this place will be magic. Apple cider on the porch. Bonfires down by the water. Guests could help with the maple syrup harvest if they wanted. Not as some performative agritourism thing, but because it’s part of what this island is.”

Damn it, she was good. Really good.

Too good.

The problem wasn’t just that she was winning over the Blackwells. The problem was she was winning him over too. Everything she described—the family meals, the seasonal rhythms, the sense of belonging to a place instead of just passing through—it painted a picture of something he’d never let himself want. Home. Not a house or a property or another acquisition in his portfolio, but an actual home. The kind where you knew your neighbors’ names and showed up for harvest season and sat around bonfires that weren’t networking events. The kind where you stayed.

He’d spent the past few years avoiding exactly that. And here was Grace Sullivan, sketching it out in watercolors and making it look like something worth having.

Which was exactly why he needed to shut this down. Now.

He studied the budget sheet that was being passed around. “What about capacity?” he asked. “How many rooms can you actually operate profitably?”