Summers on Lemondrop Lane (Bellwater Cove #1)

Chapter 1

T he key still fit.

That surprised me—though I don’t know why.

No one had changed the locks in the past twenty years, and there was never any reason to.

It’s not like strangers came creeping through Bellwater Cove looking for beach houses to rob.

The whole damn island was only accessible by ferry, and then golf cart, or—if you were feeling dramatic—a very long swim.

Still, I hadn’t used my key in years. Holding it now, hooked on the same faded lighthouse keychain I’d had since middle school, felt like holding something sacred and slightly stupid—like a friendship bracelet I should’ve outgrown.

The brass had dulled to the color of old champagne, warm from where it pressed against my palm as I stepped up onto the porch.

I slipped it into the lock without thinking, like muscle memory, like some part of me still believed this house knew me.

The door stuck—same as it always did. I had to shove it with my hip and mutter under my breath like I was cursing an old lover for never changing.

Which, frankly, felt on-brand for this house.

The Winslow house sat at the bend in Lemondrop Lane, a little higher on the dunes than its neighbors, whitewashed and wide-porched with heather-gray shutters and a front swing that had the audacity to still creak the same way it did when I was nine.

Hydrangeas bloomed wild around the gate, and the air still smelled faintly of salt, old sunscreen, and vanilla.

Bellwater Cove didn’t feel like a real town.

Tucked right off the Carolina coast, it was a curated pocket of salt-kissed fantasy.

No cars, no chain stores, no traffic lights—just porches, sea grass, bike baskets, and people with too much money trying to pretend they were “getting back to the simple life.” I’d loved it here as a kid.

I also knew better now; it took a lot of wealth and privilege to make things feel so simple.

Everything had to be ferried out to the island as there were no roads or bridges to the mainland.

Inside, the house was too still. The air was heavy with heat and memory and the scent of sun-warmed wood and lemon cleaner. No one else was here yet. Just me, the ghosts of every summer I ever had here, and an ancient HVAC system that better still work.

I turned the fans on full blast and cranked the AC so that my brother and company wouldn’t lose their minds when they arrived.

My sweat had already collected beneath my bra, and my thighs were sticking with the kind of intimacy only humidity can achieve.

The cleaning service had done their thing—surfaces dusted, fridge humming, throw blankets folded like a Pottery Barn catalog—but the soul of the place was untouched.

I kicked off my sandals and padded into the kitchen barefoot. My sweat stuck to the backs of my knees and the hem of my tank top was damp where it clung to my spine. Welcome back, Charlie. Welcome back to Lemondrop Lane.

The house looked exactly the same. Rattan chairs around the big pine table in the kitchen.

A blue glass bowl in the middle that always had beach shells in it.

Cream walls, sun-bleached rugs, the tiniest whine of seagulls muffled behind glass.

Even the dusty smell of the pantry made my chest ache—flour and vanilla extract, heat and memory.

Somewhere in the cabinets was the big mixing bowl I used to drag to the counter when I was eleven, convinced I could make snickerdoodles better than Mom if she’d just stop hovering.

I opened the fridge. A bottle of rosé the color of a deep blush and one lemon in the crisper drawer were the only remnants of the last tenants who had vacationed here a week or two ago.

I leaned against the counter, fished a hair tie from my wrist, and twisted my beachy waves into a top knot.

The plan was simple: check the place, turn on the fans and AC, unpack my bags, and chill before my brother and the fiancé parade showed up later this evening.

I was here early because I lived ten minutes down the road now.

That still felt weird to say. I’d been a visitor here for most of my life, but now?

I had a lease. A local driver’s license. A business license for my bakery.

Bellwater Cove wasn’t a vacation anymore. It was home.

Or it would be, as soon as my kitchen remodel for the bakery wrapped up and the ovens were functional. For now, I was crashing at the family beach house for a few weeks because my brother Jack thought this would be the perfect summer vacation getaway before the stress of his wedding in the fall.

We had grown up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, surrounded by lush wine country and high brow academia.

My whole family still lived there, and I was the black sheep who skipped the fancy Ivy League degree, went to culinary school in France, and had just set off on the new adventure of moving to a beach town and opening a bakery.

How could a girl not be happy with her fill of salt breeze and pastries?

I’d only agreed to come stay at the house on Lemondrop Lane because the bakery was under construction.

I figured I could get in some family time, do some baking here, tweak some recipes, and try not to lose my mind surrounded by happy couples and sand in all my unmentionables.

Jack’s fiancée Jazz—whom I adored—wanted some girl time since Jack always bro-ed out when he was with Fitz, his best friend since third grade.

Jack, in fact, demanded that I stay even though my apartment was only a few minutes up the road, declaring that he wanted it to be just like old times.

Now I was standing in the kitchen of summers past, surrounded by polished counters and sun-dappled windows, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

I unpacked my kitchen tote slowly, pulling out my worn leather recipe journal, a few cooling racks, and my favorite utensils.

But even as I set everything on the counter, I felt it: the shift.

The hum of something old waking up in me, like a song I used to love but hadn’t heard in years.

I looked out the kitchen window. The porch swing drifted just slightly in the breeze, empty.

Somewhere beyond the dunes, the tide was rising.

I felt a hint of anxiousness, and there was no denying its source. If only this vacation had been limited to family, I’d be over the moon to hang with Jack and Jazz and my parents when they came down in a couple weeks—but of course Jack had to invite him .

I hadn’t seen Fitz in four years. My family had thrown me a twenty-fifth birthday party—a large, fancy affair—and as my brother’s oldest friend, his invitation was a given.

He had given me some snarky dickishness about not finishing my undergrad to “flounce off to culinary school,” and I had given him shit about turning thirty in the fall.

At least I still had five years to “flounce around” before becoming old and boring, I had taunted.

With the whole Atlantic between us as I studied in Paris, he gradually became more of a vague impression rather than a glaring reality.

I hadn’t even let myself think about him in the last two years.

And yet, here I was—sweating through my tank top and thinking about the one person I’d spent a decade pretending didn’t matter.

Technically I was bringing a date to this summer reunion.

I barely knew him, and no, I wasn’t proud of it.

But when your older brother says, “Come stay at the beach house with me, my fiancée, my best friend, and his girlfriend,” and you’re the single sibling with a new business and a stress rash and a twenty-year crush that you’ve tried so hard to, well…

crush, you panic. You randomly invite the hot guy who eats croissants and eats you out and doesn’t ask questions.

His name was Thatcher. Don’t judge me. He looked like he surfed. He probably did.

The point is, I wasn’t expecting to fall in love.

I was just looking for a distraction and a decoy.

I wasn’t planning to confront ghosts or old crushes or anything unspoken.

I was planning to use the industrial-sized mixer, work on my lemon glaze ratios, and maybe make peace with the version of myself I used to be in this house.

I wandered into the living room, sweat trailing along the back of my thighs, and looked toward the stairs. Jack and Jazz would be here by nightfall. Fitz and his girlfriend would probably roll up tomorrow in a luxury golf cart with matching weekender bags and weirdly expensive snacks.

Fucking Fitz. It was something about this house that made me obsessed with him.

Every. Damn. Summer. And he had always been such a dick to me.

A hot one, sure. The kind of hot that made you do dumb things like walk past the boys’ bedrooms just to hear him laugh.

I had been head over heels in love with him in the way that all teenage girls are in love with their older brother’s best friend—but he was still a royal dick.

I opened the screen door, stepped out onto the porch, and felt the heat wrap around me like a memory. The sea breeze lifted the hair on my neck. Somewhere in the dunes, a bird cried out. The summer had started—and I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to be fucked.