Chapter One

On a warm Thursday in early October, Juliet Montgomery ran her hand along the gray-washed surface of her brand-new IKEA desk, inhaled its fresh wood scent, and whispered…“I finally made it.” She just knew that, after so many years of being AWOL, the karma of the universe was finally by her side.

Her one minute of revelry at being in a real office with her name on the door ended with a firm knock.

“May I come in?” her boss and mentor, Char Gohara, said, poking her head around and giving a little wave.

“Of course. Have a seat,” Juliet said, thrilled to be able to actually have a seat for someone to sit on. Office furniture was thrilling! It would be to anyone who had made her own way through college and grad school. After ten years of working in her family’s tiny bread shop, tutoring and doing odd jobs, she’d finally earned her graduate degree in marriage and family therapy.

A gentle autumn breeze wafted in through the open window, carrying with it the distinctive earthy scent that arose from the rows of crabapple trees that marched in two straight lines down Blossom Glen’s Main Street, their leaves golden in the sunshine. A parking ticket on Juliet’s desk flapped in that breeze, anchored by a pink lotus paperweight her sister Vivienne had gotten her for good luck, reminding her it was due today. She made a quick mental note to run over to city hall and just pay it at lunchtime before it killed her perfect-office vibes.

“It looks very nice,” Char said, glancing around.

“Thank you.”

As Char took a seat, Juliet sat back in her comfy ergo chair. Everything about her new office was wonderful. From her name and credentials on the door to the fresh pack of pens and sticky notes she’d stocked in her center drawer.

A real job. The job of her dreams. Now she could finally leave her past behind. She would help people, have the respect of the community, and everyone in town would forget the mistakes of her youth. And not-so-youth.

With her stylish short, dark hair, artfully tied scarf, and easy smile, Char projected professionalism and confidence. She was everything Juliet aspired to. And one of the therapists in Headspace, Blossom Glen’s only Psychological Services practice, that she admired most.

A piece of paper rattled in Char’s hands.

“Is that the form from the mental health center about my credentialing?” Juliet asked. “I just faxed that over to them.” Yep, she was on it, and she wanted Char to know she would do everything, anything, to succeed.

“No. It’s…something else.”

Juliet picked up immediately on the concern in Char’s voice. And her serious expression. Her heart gave a sickening little jolt.

“Is this about…last night?” Juliet blurted. Char had known her for years. She’d helped her family through their own mental health crisis when she was a teenager, pointing them to therapists and resources. She’d counseled Juliet about her college major and graduate programs as she sought to enter the mental health field. She’d even written letters and helped her find internship opportunities. And then she’d hired her.

Char had been a mentor in every way.

And now, the look in her eyes was wary and guarded. Her lips were pressed together hard, as if someone had just asked her to chug a bottle of vinegar. All of which triggered a big whopping uh-oh in Juliet’s head.

Char looked her directly in the eye. “In part.”

“I know I didn’t handle that interaction well. I—”

Char held up a hand. “Juliet, please let me speak, okay?”

“Okay,” she croaked. Already, she could feel the flare and itch of hives on her back, where they always started. Soon she’d be covered with them. That’s how she knew this was bad. Really bad. She fought the urge to scratch her back on her chair like her sweet yellow tabby cat Ellie would do.

“Chris called me this morning with a complaint.”

Chris was the female half of the couple Juliet had been counseling last night. Her very first couple in her new job. She knew the session hadn’t gone well, but oh, to have a client go to her boss? How humiliating. A rush of heat flooded her face. “I—I got caught off guard. I…blanked.” She forced herself to breathe. “It was a one-time thing,” she added hastily.

Okay, she was sounding too eager to please. But she was finally living her dream, a dream she would protect at all costs. To return home to Blossom Glen to work as a therapist. To help people the way she’d been helped as a desperate teen in a small town in Indiana where sometimes the needed services didn’t quite reach.

She sat up straight in her chair. “It won’t happen again.”

Char’s look was not unsympathetic. “Chris put you on the spot. She brought up your…romantic history during the session. Specifically, the three engagements.”

Juliet winced. “Two and a half,” she whispered, which made Char frown.

“The number’s not important.” Her perceptive brown eyes flickered to Juliet’s. “Or maybe that is the issue—clearly it still matters to you.”

Juliet leaned forward in her chair, hands splayed out on her brand-new leather-bound desk pad that not coincidentally matched her new organizer. “Chris questioned if I was qualified to counsel them. Actually, her words were, ‘Why should we listen to you? You’ve had three failed engagements.’”

Ouch.

Char shook her head. “You know how to deal with people who use projection to avoid talking about their own problems. You are a professional.”

Juliet clutched her chest, which was suddenly burning worse than if she’d just eaten a bowl of her brother-in-law’s chili-pepper-madness bucatini from his amazing Italian restaurant downtown. And she really shouldn’t have devoured that 85 percent cacao chocolate bar for breakfast as a substitute for coffee, because it was making her shake all the way down to her toes.

“I am a professional.” Her voice sounded watery and diluted, like she was trying really hard to convince herself.

That self-assurance she’d tried so hard to hone was circling the bowl fast.

“And…” Char added, “professionals don’t say ‘You’re right.’”

Oh dear. She had said that, hadn’t she?

“You were supposed to be helping this couple deal with their marital problems. Instead, you took their comments personally and injected your personal point of view.”

“I’m so sorry,” Juliet whispered. She’d screwed up. Badly.

Char stood up and paced the tiny office, past the real rubber tree plant from her grandmother, past the basket where she hid her stress knitting. Char was usually calm and not easily unnerved, but now she was clearly on edge. Like, maybe she was questioning hiring Juliet. Could she lose her job before she even got a chance to do it properly? She grasped onto her beloved desk, as if someone were going to burst in and cart it—and her—away.

And she hadn’t even opened her pack of rainbow-colored sticky notes yet.

“None of us is perfect,” Char said. “I’m divorced, but I have a lot of expertise in conflict resolution. Plus, I’ve worked on my own wounds. You have a master’s degree in how to do that, too, and I know you’ve worked on yourself in therapy, but apparently you’re missing something to go along with it.”

Juliet had put in the hard work and got the stellar grades to prove it. She loved people. She got along with nearly everybody, the result of being the middle child of three sisters. “What am I missing?” she asked.

“Confidence.”

Ugh. Of course, it wouldn’t be something she could easily obtain to set things right.

“Are you letting me go?” Juliet asked, her voice coming out more like a croak, choked and foreign sounding. Her airway was closing. And the hives had now reached her ankles. She used the base of her desk to scratch them.

Char sighed. “I’m not letting you go.”

She paused, and Juliet managed to breathe again.

“But I’m suggesting that you take a break from relationship counseling. Take some time to work on your own traumas and attitudes and get an armamentarium for when this might get brought up again.”

Juliet fought the urge to bang her head against the desk. This was too much, and all before coffee. “I’ll work on it,” she said. “I’ll be sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Char frowned and held out the paper she’d been holding. The plain white sheet was just that—completely blank.

Wait a minute…her name was at the top.

Char was holding up Juliet’s schedule for the week—which was whiter than her grandma’s French table linens. The few clients actually in time slots were referrals from school counselors for family therapy. Thank goodness she had those.

“Yes, it’s a small town and everyone knows you,” Char said. “Now it’s your job to figure out how to be okay with that. I’ll help you in any way I can, you know that.” She walked to the door. “You can still take on your family clients. And Jordan’s going to take your couples temporarily. But take today off to regroup, okay?”

“Wh-when—how long—I—” The tightness in her chest felt suffocating. Jordan Greer was a high-achieving, beautiful, and put-together colleague from grad school who had also wanted this job. And once she started taking Juliet’s clients, Juliet might never get them back.

“Do what you need to do to get your head straight,” Char said definitively. “Then we’ll talk.”

As soon as she was gone and the door shut, Juliet broke out in a cold sweat and lifted up her blouse to give her now-giant hives a scratch. The room was spinning. She felt flushed and woozy. She was a failure in her own hometown, a place where it actually counted what people knew.

She figured she had about a minute before she dissolved into a hot mess. Dumping the entire contents of her purse out on her desk, she found her bottle of antihistamines.

Tears were already stinging behind her lids. Her nose was running, something that always happened before she started to ugly cry. And her face was burning like she’d forgotten to wear sunblock all day at the beach. Except she knew that meant the hives were about to pop out there, too.

She had the day off now. But what would she do?

Not give in to the crying. Or the hives. Juliet had come too far to give in to despair.

A paper on her desk fluttered again in the breeze from the open window, catching her eye. Her overdue parking ticket. This, at least, she could fix. “I’d better go pay you while I can still afford to,” she muttered, then snatched it up and headed out the door.