Page 94 of The Sugar Maple Inn

But that was exactly why she hadn’t replied.

Because maybe this was a test. Not for him. For her. To see if she could handle the reality of whatever this was. If she texted back, if she kept this going, then what? Did she become the girl who dropped everything when a billionaire snapped his fingers? Did she become someone who waited around while he jet-setted off to handle empires and save jaguars?

You’re being ridiculous, she told herself, for the fourteenth time that morning.

You’re protecting yourself, another voice countered.

Both were probably true.

She tied her apron tighter, grabbed the coffee pot and headed toward the dining area. Time to pretend her life wasn’t a complete disaster.

“Grace, honey!” Julie Chen who used to own Sophie’s boathouse-now-turned-bookshop waved her over the second she emerged from the kitchen. She’d been in Japan for the past few months, seeing her ill mother, and was now sitting with Ray Wakeman, local fisherman and wind-up merchant.

“Is it true?” Julie asked.

“Is what true?” Grace poured her coffee, already knowing she was about to regret this conversation.

“The tower!” Julie replied. “Margaret messaged the whole knitting circle after she got cell phone coverage back to tell them you were stuck in the tower with one bed…with Reese Spencer. The Reese Spencer. During the storm.”

Oh, fantastic. Margaret and her big mouth.

“We were stuck, yes.” She kept her voice neutral. Professional. “The door got blocked when a tree came down in a storm.”

“For two nights?” Ray’s bushy eyebrows disappeared into his fringe. “With the Canadian Golden Wolf?”

“The storm was bad,” Grace said. “Tree came down.”

“But what was he like?” This from Isabel, who’d just walked in with her baby strapped to her chest. She slid into the booth next to Julie, eyes gleaming. “I looked Reese Spencer up online. Is he really that gorgeous in person? I missed the Harvest Festival as this one was ill so I didn’t get to see him.”

More gorgeous in person, Grace’s traitorous brain supplied. So much more.

“He’s…fine,” she managed. “Just a regular person.”

Ray snorted. “Regular person who was in Forbes last month.”

“A regular person with those arms,” Isabel added dreamily, then caught herself when her husband walked in behind her. “I mean, theoretically. From what one reads. Online.”

The café door chimed again and the ladies from the knitting circle filed in. All except Margaret, thankfully, who was probably still at the inn, dealing with the storm fallout. Linda, Doris, and Cheryl made a beeline for Grace, clearly having designated her as their morning entertainment.

“Grace!” Linda called out. “Tell us everything!”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Nothing?” Cheryl looked scandalized. “You spent two nights in a tower with a man who looks like he was carved by Michelangelo himself, and there’s nothing to tell?”

Grace wanted to point out that Michelangelo carved David, not golden-haired mountain men who smelled like pine trees and made you forget your own name when they kissed you. But that seemed like information best kept to herself.

“We played Monopoly,” she said instead, face flushing as she remembered what kind of Monopoly.

Dead silence.

Then Ray started laughing so hard he nearly spilled his coffee. “Monopoly! Oh, that’s rich. That’s really—” He caught Grace’s expression. “Wait. You’re serious?”

“Dead serious. What else were we supposed to do?”

“I can think of several things I’d have been doing with that hottie,” Doris muttered as Linda elbowed her.

The worst part? They weren’t wrong to be curious. If anyone else in town had gotten stuck in a tower with a billionaire, Grace would be dying for details too. It was the stuff small-town legends were made of. The type of story that would get passed around Solace Springs until it was more fiction than fact.