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  For Avery

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my editor, Michele Bidelspach, for her sharp insight, thoughtful guidance, and encouragement with this book. I couldn’t have done it without her. I’d also like to thank my copyeditor, Lori Paximadis, for her remarkable attention to detail; my publicist, Julie Paulauski, for her enthusiastic promotional help; and everyone else at Grand Central Publishing who has had a hand in the creation of my books.

  Thank you to my family, husband, and daughter for their love and encouragement. Special thanks as well to authors Natalie Charles and Victoria James for their ongoing support.

  To all my friends and family who have cheered me on and celebrated with me on this wonderful journey: thank you.

  And to my readers: thank you for spending hours with my characters, writing me heartfelt letters, and allowing me the chance to brighten your day the way you have brightened mine. I’m humbled and forever grateful.

  CHAPTER

  1

  A strong friendship is always the best foundation for a lasting romantic relationship.”

  Anna Madison stopped arranging the wild blueberry scones on a ceramic tray and frowned. Not always, she thought.

  Up until now the chatter from the weekly book club had been nothing but a pleasant buzz, a lively and comfortable backdrop to an otherwise quiet morning in the shop, but now Anna strained her ears over the percolating coffee machine to hear the details of the conversation. Sliding the tray onto the polished wood counter, she narrowed her eyes at the group of women who were gathered around the antique farm table near the big bay window of Main Street Books—or the Annex, as the café extension was called—as they were every Saturday morning since the bookstore had reopened. From her distance behind the counter, she watched them sipping cappuccinos and enjoying fresh pastries, and wondered which of them would be foolish enough to make such a grand statement.

  Her gaze fell on Rosemary Hastings, sitting at the head of the table, clutching this month’s book club selection, Sense and Sensibility, with determined hands. Rosemary’s ruby-stained lips were pinched with certainty, her back straight and proud, revealing years of professional dance training, her graying hair pulled back in her famous bun.

  “I always told my children to start with a friendship first. If you build on that, true love will follow,” she continued sagely. The rest of the group nodded their consent or politely sipped their coffee and tea, knowing better than to voice an opinion to the contrary. “Men and women are never only friends,” she went on. “A friendship is just the beginning. It always blossoms into something more meaningful.”

  Oh, now this was too much! “Yeah right,” Anna muttered. She shook her head and turned her attention to a basket of ginger-fig muffins, a popular item this morning, she noted with satisfaction as she mentally counted out just seven of the twelve she had brought over fresh from her primary restaurant, Fireside Café, down the road.

  “Do you disagree, Anna?”

  Well, now she’d done it. Anna glanced up to see Rosemary peering at her sharply from across the room, her head tipped in expectation. She sighed, feeling her shoulders sag slightly as ten pairs of eyes waited for her reply. She knew she should leave it—no good would come from starting an argument with Rosemary—and get on with her ever growing to-do list. Since Main Street Books had reopened, Anna was busier than she could have imagined. The expansion of the bookstore’s café was a hit, just as her older sister, Grace, had predicted, and business at Fireside hadn’t slowed either. She supposed she should be thrilled that everything was off to a good start—God knew she relied on both establishments to be a success so she could pay off the loan she’d taken out to help reinvent their late father’s struggling store—but a business didn’t run itself.

  “What’s that, Rosemary?” Anna’s younger sister, Jane, came around the corner, clutching a stack of books to her chest. She glanced at the cover of the one on top and then slipped it into its proper slot in the cookbooks section, which bordered the café.

  “Your sister here was disagreeing with my statement that men and women cannot just be friends.”

  “Sure they can!” Jane smiled. “Look at Luke and Grace. They were friends for years before—”

  “Before!” Rosemary raised her finger triumphantly into the air. “They were friends before they started dating. But I know my son.” She began to wag her finger, oddly enough in Anna’s direction rather than Jane’s. Anna bit back a sigh and swept the crumbs from the counter into her palm, before dusting her hands off over the trash can. “He didn’t want to only be friends with Grace. A pretty girl like that? No, no, no. He befriended her as a way of getting to know her. To be close to her.” She shrugged smugly. “There’s always more to it.”

  Anna snorted, causing Rosemary’s smile to immediately fade. She bristled, glancing around her group with an incredulous look, her blue eyes wide with indignation. At least five of the women ducked their heads, pretending to leaf through the pages of their well-thumbed paperbacks. Anna found herself wishing her mother had decided to join the group, but Saturdays were busy for Kathleen’s interior design business. Still, a little backup would be nice, and Jane was much too polite to stand up to the likes of Rosemary Hastings, especially because she now worked for her at the dance studio.

  “Always is a pretty strong word, Mrs. Hastings. Sometimes friendships do evolve, but sometimes they don’t.” And sometimes they shouldn’t, she thought, frowning.

  “Well, I’m speaking from personal experience,” Rosemary huffed.

  “As am I.” Anna straightened the baskets of pastries on the counter and untied the strings of her apron. She should have left ten minutes ago, and here she was engaging in an utterly pointless debate.

  “Oh?” This bit of news seemed to pique Rosemary’s interest.

  Refusing to elaborate, Anna handed her apron to Jane, who was taking over the afternoon shift while Grace manned the storefront and register. “Well, it’s been lovely, but I’m afraid I have to get to the café. Enjoy your book club, ladies!” She smiled warmly, hoping that would put a gracious end to the conversation, but the expression on Rosemary’s face said otherwise.

  “Anna Madison, in all the years I have known you, I have never once seen you with a male friend. Romantically or otherwise.”

  Oh, how little she knew. Anna folded her arms across her chest and looked to Jane for reinforcement, but her sister simply raised her eyebrows and turned back to the coffee machine, adding to Anna’s mounting frustration.

  “Well, that’s not true. I’ve dated plenty of men.” One in particular, but she needn’t mention that. Ever. No one in Briar Creek knew about the relationship she’d had in culinary school, and she intended to keep it that way. “Maybe not recently, but there have been men. Lots and lots of men.”

  From behind her she heard Jane quickly fumble for the tap. The rush of water did little to drown out her soft laughter. Rosemary, however, was not amused. Her lips pinched as she roamed her gaze over Anna’s defensive stance. “You work too hard. A pretty girl like you should be married by now.
”

  A gasp escaped from somewhere deep in her gut. Anna gaped at Rosemary’s army of hopeless romantics, now all nervously staring at their open paperbacks as if cramming for a test, and looked around the room for someone, anyone, who would find Rosemary’s opinions as appalling as she did. She turned to Jane, who had decided to keep her back firmly to the room, and tossed her hands in the air before slapping them down at her hips. “This is the twenty-first century. I’m a career girl. It happens to suit me perfectly fine.”

  “Now, calm down,” Rosemary ordered. “You clearly misunderstood me.”

  “Did I?” Anna glanced at her watch, and her pulse kicked with fresh anxiety. Already noon and the lunch crowd was probably in full swing.

  “I meant you’re all work and no play. You deserve to have a little fun.”

  All work and no play. Anna could think of one person in this town to whom the exact opposite applied. None other than Rosemary’s own nephew, Mark Hastings. Yet somehow she didn’t hear Rosemary complaining about his single status.

  Not that Mark was ever single, she corrected herself. More like Mark was never committed.

  “Last I checked, Briar Creek wasn’t exactly crawling with available men,” she pointed out, leaning back against a bookshelf. Oh, how her legs ached from standing so much. She hadn’t stopped since she climbed out of bed this morning. At four o’clock. A vision of a steaming bath and good glass of Cabernet brought a faint smile to her lips. It was Saturday after all, and it wasn’t like she had any other plans for her evening. By the time the dinner crowd trickled out and the receipts were looked over, she could be on the couch and in her flannel pajamas by eleven, easy.

  She grimaced. Better to keep that thought to herself.

  “Oh, I can think of a few available men around here,” Rosemary said cryptically, a sly smile playing on her painted lips.

  “Well, that’s a few more than I can think of,” Anna declared. A familiar pang tightened her chest when she thought of Mark, working just down the street at the diner.

  Why was she even thinking about him? She knew his reputation, knew it all too well, and she’d decided long ago to stop hoping one day he’d snap out of it. Mark was a flirt. A gorgeous, irresistible flirt. And a cad. Yes, he was a complete cad. And worse was that he knew it. And he had no intention of doing anything about it, either. So really, this had to stop. Right now.

  Anna patted her pockets for her sunglasses and realized they were in her bag. Scolding herself for letting her mind wander down paths that should have been long forgotten, she retraced her steps behind the counter and crouched down to collect her belongings from a cabinet. “Are you going to be all right on your own?” she asked her sister as she stood and gestured with her chin to the increasingly troublesome book club.

  Jane gave her a rueful smile. “Don’t worry. You’re forgetting that Rosemary is my boss for twenty hours a week. If you think this is bad, you haven’t seen her at the studio. Trust me, you can never plié low enough for that woman.”

  Rosemary had a good heart despite her firm exterior, but nevertheless Anna didn’t appreciate being on the receiving end of unwanted attention. If anyone deserved to be given the third degree in the romance department, it was Mark.

  Mark. There she went again, thinking of the one man she should have put out of her mind years ago. Leave it to Rosemary to stir things up.

  From across the room, a murmur arose, followed by what sounded an awful lot like squeals of suppressed glee. Jane’s eyes sparked with interest. “Do we want to guess?”

  “I don’t think I even want to know,” Anna groaned, hitching her handbag strap higher on her shoulder. She turned slowly to the group, sensing that Rosemary had one last matter to discuss before she could slip out the door.

  “The gals and I have discussed it, and we have an idea.” Rosemary paused for dramatic effect. “I am going to find you a man.”

  “Excuse me?” Anna choked on a burst of laughter, but Rosemary’s wide smile did not slip. Her hands remained folded primly on her lap, her back ramrod straight, her gaze locked firmly with Anna’s, whose eyes had widened in horror.

  “You heard me,” she said calmly. “I am going to find you a suitable match.”

  “Oh… please don’t.”

  “Wait, what about me?” Jane interjected, and at that, every woman who had previously been pretending to ignore the conversation snapped to attention. It wasn’t like Jane to have an outburst. “Why Anna and not me?” she repeated, setting her hands on her hips.

  Rosemary did a poor job of disguising her shock. “My dear… Anna’s been unattached for her entire life! Why, she must be coming up on thirty by now!”

  Anna felt her nails embed deeper into her hip, until she feared she might have poked a hole right through her cotton shirt. Only twenty-eight and she was already earning a reputation as an old maid. This was getting worse and worse. Deciding she would only escalate matters by reacting to the insinuation, she said briskly, “I’m the same age as Kara, Mrs. Hastings. And what about her? Why not set up one of your daughters?”

  Rosemary waved her hand through the air. “Kara and Molly don’t want me meddling in their personal affairs.”

  And I do? Anna looked past the café to the pedestal tables artfully arranged with books that dotted the storefront, craning her neck to see if another soul could be seen over the tall wooden stacks, but there was no one in sight. Grace was most likely in the back room, going over the inventory lists or joyfully opening the latest shipment of books and planning a new window display, and that left the two younger Madison sisters to keep things afloat. And my, what a mess of it they were making.

  “What about me?” Jane said again.

  Anna stared at her, trying to mask her bewilderment. For a moment she had thought this was Jane’s creative way of diverting Rosemary’s fixation, but the conviction in her hazel eyes and the pert little lilt of her nose said otherwise, even though it had been only a matter of months since Jane had filed for divorce. “Don’t you think it’s a little soon?” Anna asked gently.

  “It wasn’t too soon for Adam! He got a jump start while we were still married!” Jane retorted with a lift of her chin. Sensing the alarm in Anna’s expression, she added, “Oh, please. It’s hardly a secret.” She looked at Rosemary. “Fair’s fair. If you can find someone for Anna, you can find someone for me, too.”

  “But I don’t even want to be set up!” Anna wrapped her arm around Jane’s shoulder and announced, “Perfect. Mrs. Hastings, you can call on all these so-called available men in Briar Creek and give them Jane’s number.”

  “Nope.” Rosemary made a grand show of shaking her head until her dangling earrings caught on her red cashmere scarf, which was loosely draped around her neck. She winced as she gingerly unhooked it, and frowned as she inspected the snag in the material.

  “Jane just told you she needs help getting back out there.”

  “Oh, I heard,” Rosemary mused, dropping her scarf with a sigh of defeat. She smiled at Jane fondly. “And I’m going to help you, my dear. On one condition.”

  Beside her Jane was beaming, but Anna was no fool when it came to matters of the heart. She had been once, but that was a long time ago. “What’s that?” Anna hedged, her chest heavy with dread.

  “You have to let me set you up, too, Anna.” Rosemary hid her triumphant smile behind the rim of her mug.

  “No way—”

  “Oh, come on!” Jane begged, elbowing her gently. Anna stared into the pleading eyes of her sister, noting the flicker of disappointment she saw pass through them. It was the same look that had been there for months now, a lingering sadness behind that brave smile. Jane was the strong one, the supportive one, not the demanding one. Jane was the one who would hand you the last ten bucks in her wallet and then silently go without herself. Jane never asked for anything. And here she was, asking Anna for the one thing she didn’t want to give.

  She’d spent how many years avoiding the very thing sh
e was being asked to do: date. Dating led to falling in love, and falling in love led to heartbreak. Jane of all people should have learned that lesson by now, but from the hopeful look in her expression, for some reason it appeared she had not. Somehow, having the father of her child and the man who had vowed to love her ’til death repeatedly cheat on her, lie to her, and then leave her had not destroyed her sister’s belief in love.

  “Fine,” Anna said through gritted teeth, ignoring the whoop that went up from the table of women. She was too busy focusing on Jane’s grateful smile. It was the happiest she had seen her younger sister in months, possibly more, she realized. She blinked quickly, never wanting to think of Jane hurting that way again. “And with that, I’m really leaving now.”

  “Go, go!” Rosemary said over the ruckus. “I don’t know how you can expect to run that place if you spend all day chatting with us.”

  Anna took a deep breath, this time forcing herself to remain silent, and turned to leave. Jane grabbed her by the arm. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You owe me,” Anna warned as she slid her sunglasses over her nose. She wound her way through the maze of bookshelves and pushed out into the early spring sunshine, wondering how she could get out of this little promise she had made. There was no time in her life for men or dating or any of that nonsense. There was only time for work. That’s how it had to be, and that’s how she preferred it. Most of the time.

  She lifted her chin, focusing on the sidewalk ahead, on the hours of work that would give her the sense of purpose she craved, when panic stopped her dead in her tracks. There, at the corner of Main Street and Second Avenue, was a gray cloud of smoke. A crowd had gathered opposite the familiar brick storefront, and people along the way had stopped to stare.

  A fire truck with sirens blazing whizzed by her, forcing her long blond hair to whip across her face, and it was then that Anna started to run. Not the café, she silently begged, please not the café. She weaved her way through the shocked onlookers, almost knocking over a small child who was grinning at the trucks rushing by, knowing with each step that her worst nightmare was coming true.