At 5:00 p.m., Luna sat in her beat-up truck, stunned. She’d just left Silas’s attorney’s office and now sat in the parking lot of the local tavern Olde Tahoe Tap, her feet not in sync with her brain. This was what happened when you got life-changing news, which in turn pulled the rug out from beneath your feet, leaving your world in free fall. She glared at the mirror. “Just get out of the car.”
Her reflection did not, in fact, get out of the truck.
“Talking to yourself again?” came a female voice from outside Luna’s open driver-side window. The voice belonged to Willow Green, her best friend since the dawn of time, and the farm’s botanical gardens genius.
Luna drew a careful breath. “First off, thanks for the almost heart attack. And I’ll have you know, talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence.”
“Except you only talk to yourself when something’s wrong. Plus you’re never late for our weekly drink date, and yet you’re twenty minutes tardy. So what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Willow pointed at her. “You just blinked twice.”
“So?”
“So, that’s your tell. You’re lying.” Willow gasped. “Wait. Are our jobs okay? Omigod, please tell me the attorney said our jobs are okay. I just bought this jacket. Do I need to return it and commence panicking?”
“No panicking.” Luna was doing enough of that for the both of them.
“Then what’s wrong?” Willow put her hand to her heart. “Don’t tell me. Silas didn’t make my promotion official before he died.”
Luna drew in a careful breath because she was about to lie to her very best friend. A few months back, Willow had started asking Luna to see if Silas would promote her to manager, meaning that some of the farmhands would report to her directly. And Luna had actually started to bring it up in her last call with Silas, but he’d stopped her halfway.
“Don’t ask me,” he said. “Leave yourself room for plausible deniability because my answer is a resounding ‘hell no.’”
Because he knew that while Willow was amazing at running the botanical gardens, she wasn’t amazing at managing people.
In fact, she was shit at it.
“I’m sorry, Willow,” she said softly. “He didn’t leave any word.” See, that wasn’t a regular lie, it was a mercy lie, because she saw no reason to hurt Willow’s feelings with Silas gone.
Willow was quiet a moment, then nodded. “Thanks for trying.”
Feeling like a jerk, she nodded. “Of course.” Desperate to deflect to give herself time to process what she’d learned at the attorney’s, she searched for a diversion. She took in Willow’s new killer leather jacket, dark jeans, and knee-high boots, making her look as if maybe she just walked off the shoot for the cover of a magazine. “You work in dirt for a living. How do you always look like a million bucks all the livelong day?”
Willow shrugged. “Look like a million bucks, feel like a million bucks.” She paused. “Even if on the inside my yoga pose is downward spiral.” She opened Luna’s car door. “Come on. Suddenly I really need that drink.”
“I’m so sorry, Willow.”
“Not your fault.” She looked Luna over as she slid out of the truck. She wore one of only two dressy outfits in her closet: a black fitted blazer over a silky white tank top, a short black skirt, and her one pair of strappy heels, also black.
Willow shook her head. “You’ve had that outfit since our junior year in college when you had both a job interview and a funeral for a professor in the same week.”
“And?”
“And . . .” Willow gave a reluctant admiring smile. “It still looks great on you. But you’ve got to dress for the life you want if we’re ever going to get to our success pact. Which I now need more than ever to happen.”
They’d promised to someday open a B and B together and be their own bosses. They’d been sixteen at the time, working for a veterinarian, shoveling out the animal crates. It’d been a shit job. Literally. But they’d had a lot of time on their hands to dream big. Guilt lancing through her, Luna started walking toward the tavern. The building, just across the street from the stunning Lake Tahoe, had been designed to look like a Swiss Alps village, the walls stone with wood accents, pitched roofs, faux balconies and balustrades, all of it lit with fairy lights, looking welcoming and warm.
Luna was glad they’d decided to meet here. She also really needed a drink, considering the stress and shock bouncing around in her chest from what she’d learned at the attorney’s.
Silas Wittman had left her 50 percent ownership of the farm.
Fifty percent . . .
The other half had gone to a man named Jameson Hayes, a business associate of Silas’s, and she was to meet this new partner of hers tomorrow morning at the farm.
Oh, and they owed a big fat balloon payment to a group of investors in sixty days for the loan the farm had been given for renovations done five years ago.
But none of that had even been the doozy. Nope, that honor went to the fact that, as it turned out, Silas had been her biological grandfather.
No word, of course, on why he’d kept that a secret. The attorney had said Silas hadn’t commented on it, but his personal theory was that her grandfather hadn’t known how to approach her after all this time, and was concerned she might even resent his interference in her life at this late date. He’d possibly been worried she’d leave the farm, and he clearly wanted her to feel like she belonged.
So . . . guilt had kept him silent. That was her takeaway, and her head was still spinning.
She’d always been so proud of the fact she’d gotten her job on merit. But she hadn’t. Clearly, Silas had brought her here out of a sense of guilt. Why else wouldn’t he have also told her who he was? Hell, maybe she’d disappointed him. Or worse, he’d been ashamed of her . . .
And now she’d never know.
Willow’s phone rang, but she made no move to pull it from her pocket.
Luna looked at her.
“I’m not answering.”
“Maybe it’s Shayne,” Luna said, looking for any conversation that didn’t involve what had happened today.
Shayne had always been their third musketeer. He and Willow had eloped at age eighteen because their parents had forbidden them to.
“Look,” Willow said, “some things are just not meant to be.”
Truer than she could know. “But you and Shayne aren’t one of those things.”
“Well, the universe super disagrees with you, so . . .”
“Do you know how I know love exists?” Luna asked.
Willow sighed. “Luna—”
“Remember that barbecue you had five months ago now with a whole bunch of people, and you ate too much and accidentally farted at the exact moment the room got quiet—”
“Oh my God.” Willow looked around them. “Shh!”
“And Shayne fanned his hand in the air and said ‘Sorry, everyone, I just stepped on a frog.’” Luna smiled. “He claimed your fart, Willow. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is. It was always love at first sight for you two.”
“I don’t believe in love at first sight. I believe in annoyed at first sight.” Willow paused. “He called me twice today, and I didn’t pick up.”
“I know. He came by work to make sure you were okay, but you’d left to go make a supply run. He brought you one of your ridiculously complicated coffee orders. It was very romantic. And delicious.”
Willow’s mouth fell open. “You drank my romantic coffee?”
“Well, I couldn’t let it go to waste.”
Shaking her head, Willow opened the front doors to the tavern, music and laughter spilling out. They found two empty barstools.
“He brought me coffee,” Willow muttered, still shaking her head. “How is that respecting my request for space? I need it after what he did.”
“Bringing you coffee doesn’t mean he’s not respecting your need for space. It means he misses you. And I know damn well you miss him.”
“Do not.”
Luna rolled her eyes. “You hate to sleep alone. When we were kids, you’d climb out your window and into mine and make me share my pillow.”
“You had a good pillow.”
It was much, much more than that, and they both knew it. Neither of them had grown up in the best of circumstances. “And,” Luna went on gently, “two nights ago you knocked on my door at two in the morning.”
“Well, your bedroom window was locked.”
Luna felt her heart squeeze. “You wanted to have a sleepover.”
“Because my feet were cold. You always have warm feet.”
“Just admit that you hate to sleep alone,” Luna said.
“Fine. That too.”
They ordered a pitcher of Hawaiian margaritas because Willow loved an umbrella in her drink. When it came, complete with two glasses and the required umbrellas, Willow poured and they silently toasted. That was the thing about being best friends with someone since the age of six. Sometimes words weren’t needed.
Although Luna needed to find the words to tell Willow about Silas’s will. Mind whirling, she looked around. The crowd was mostly local this evening, the music an eclectic mix. A few brave souls were even on the dance floor.
Willow took it all in with a grim expression. “I just still don’t get it. Shayne and I were happy in New Mexico, and then out of nowhere, he took the interim fire captain’s job here without even consulting me.”
“I’m not excusing that,” Luna said. “But you’ve been wanting to come back to Sunrise Cove since the day you guys moved away for his first firefighter job in Mammoth seven years ago.”
“And instead we bounced to Denver. Then Spokane. And Albuquerque.”
“Wasn’t that to log the experience he needed to end up back here?”
Willow sipped her drink. “Next convo, please.”
Right. She was up. “So—”
“Omigod.” Willow leaned in close. “Okay, don’t look, but just behind you is a hottie suit—”
Luna swiveled on her barstool. Next to her was an empty barstool, and then the “hottie suit,” or so she presumed since there was only one man in the place who fit the description.
“I said don’t look!”
Yeah, well, she’d never been all that great at following directions. The man was leaning against the bar like he had all the time in the world; tie loose, top two buttons undone on his shirt, hair a little tousled like maybe he’d shoved his fingers through it.
“He’s looking over here,” Willow whispered.
“Yeah, at you.”
Willow grinned in delight. “Nope, it’s the mile of leg you’re showing. I don’t know when you finally shaved above your knees in celebration of winter going away, but I approve. And you’re even wearing mascara. Didn’t know you had any. The last time you used mascara was at senior prom, and you ended up in the ER for poking yourself in the eye.”
“It wasn’t prom, it was seventh grade, and I wear mascara all the time.”
“Name one time.”
Well, crap. She couldn’t remember.
“Exactly,” Willow said smugly, then got serious. “Look, you’re already wearing your good clothes. You might as well show off, especially since out of the two of us, you’re the one with your shit together.”
Luna snorted. Whatever the opposite of having your shit together was, she was that.
“Just casually turn back and make conversation. See where it goes. Maybe you’ll get lucky tonight.”
“Oh, no.” Luna shook her head so vehemently she got dizzy. “The last time I had a one-night stand, I ended up in a long-term relationship with a guy who three years later realized he was gay.”
“Okay, that was bad,” Willow admitted. “But you and Chef are still great friends, so there’s that. And you’ve dated since then. Just not successfully. And honey, if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that you deserve a man who’ll give you everything and respect the wonderful, fiery, generous, kindhearted, independent woman you are. Besides, one of us needs to get back up on that horse. It can’t be me because I’m still stupidly in love with my stupid husband.”
Luna squeezed her hand. “You know he loves you.”
“Oh shit.” Willow slid lower on her seat. “A bunch of Shayne’s coworkers just showed up.” She put on her fake smile and waved at a table. “It’s a birthday party for the police chief,” she whispered. “I forgot that was tonight. I RSVP’d that I couldn’t make it.”
“They’re gesturing for you to join them.”
Willow reluctantly got to her feet. “Go flirt with the hottie suit, okay? For me? Just don’t talk about the farm.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because that’s all you ever talk about.”
Okay, possibly true. But the farm was her life. “You’re just leaving so I won’t keep bugging you about your marriage.”
“Bingo.”
“Come on, you don’t have to—” But Luna was talking to air, and guilt swamped her. She’d just let the perfect opportunity to tell Willow walk off. She’d clammed up because the truth was she felt guilty about the unexpected windfall. And there was something else. She was terrified of Willow and her crew looking at her like she was the new Grinch. Just the thought had indigestion bubbling up in her chest, and suddenly she was breathing funny. Panic, of course. It’d been a while since her last panic attack, but she remembered what to do. She inhaled through her nose for a seven count, then held it for four, then exhaled for . . . Crap, was it seven-four-eight, or seven-eight-four?
“Actually four-seven-eight works best.”
Startled at the realization she must have spoken out loud, she swiveled to find Hottie Suit looking at her, not with interest but concern. Great. On top of lying to her best friend, she now also made men look at her with worry instead of interest.