Page 70 of The Sugar Maple Inn

Grace stood in front of the tower’s well-stocked food cupboard, the 1920s dress still on because…well, if you were going to throw a surprise birthday dinner, you might as well commit to the theme. She’d found a floral apron hanging on a hook and tied it over the beaded velvet, the combination absolutely ridiculous but somehow working.

Grace Sullivan: time-traveling domestic goddess. Or something.

She decided on pasta, easy to make romantic with the right sauce. Vegetables that could become a decent salad. Bread that just needed warming. And there, in the back of the cupboard, a jar of Margaret’s preserves that would work perfectly for a makeshift dessert.

Wine was the easy part. The bar was well stocked and Grace was absolutely going to confess to theft tomorrow, but tonight she needed the good stuff. She selected an expensive Pinot Noir.

Sorry, Abe. It’s for a good cause.

Candles. She needed dozens of candles. Grace raided every drawer and cupboard, finding a pack of tea lights and placing them on every surface, every windowsill, transforming the space into something out of a dream. Or a fire hazard. Probably both.

During her search, she’d even found an old record player covered in dust but still functional, from the looks of it. And next to it, a stack of records in paper sleeves. Grace flipped through them. Jazz standards from the twenties and thirties, big-band numbers, exactly what she needed. She selected one—something instrumental—and carefully set the needle.

The sound crackled to life, filling the tower with music from another era.

Perfect.

Back in the kitchen, Grace fell into the rhythm of cooking, the kind of meditative flow she’d always loved about this work. Dice, sauté, taste, adjust. Her hands knew what to do without her brain having to direct them.

Grace was covering the small table with a white cloth when she heard laughter drift up from outside. Zach’s voice and the German girl, both of them cracking up about something outside in the fog.

Her chest tightened with relief. He was okay. Having fun, even. The suspension, the fights, the sullen anger all forgotten. For right now, he was just a fourteen-year-old kid laughing with a girl he liked.

He’d be fine.

We’ll both be fine, Grace told herself, even as doubt whispered in the back of her mind.

She forced herself not to think about the last few hours. About waking up tangled with Reese, about the way he’d looked at her by candlelight, about how he’d kissed her like she was something precious instead of just convenient.

It felt like fantasy. Like they’d stepped outside reality into some bubble where billionaires and single moms could actually work, where competition didn’t matter, where the world was just the two of them in a tower during fog.

But reality was waiting. Tomorrow the fog would probably clear, boats would cross, and they’d go back to being opponents. Back to the real world where Grace was scrambling to make the rent and Reese bought properties like other people bought coffee.

Back to where this—whatever this was—didn’t make sense.

Stop it, Grace told herself firmly. You have tonight. Let yourself have tonight.

She adjusted the feathered headband, smoothed the apron over her dress. “It’s ready, birthday boy!” she called.

Reese climbed down from the attic still wearing the pinstriped suit, dusty and disheveled and utterly gorgeous. He pushed the ladder back up, then stopped when he saw the room: the candles, the table, the record player spinning its vintage music, Grace standing there in her 1920s costume waiting for him.

“Happy birthday!” she said, smiling even though nerves were tangling in her stomach.

Grace watched his expression shift from surprise to something softer.

“Grace—”

She gestured to the table, suddenly worried this was too much, too presumptuous, too something. “I made do with what was in the kitchen. It’s not fancy, but—”

“It’s spot on,” Reese said, his voice rough.

He crossed to her, cupped her face, kissed her with enough intensity that Grace forgot to breathe. When he pulled back, his eyes were bright in the candlelight.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Now sit. I even made dessert. Well, assembled dessert. From things I found.”

They sat at the little table and Grace felt ridiculously proud of what she’d managed. Not to mention Reese in that 1920s suit by candlelight looked like every romantic fantasy she’d never admitted to having.