Falling for Mr. October (Apple Ridge #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

BIANCA

If there’s any magic in Apple Ridge, it lives in the old bench atop the hill in Gallagher Park. It’s well over a century old but looks and feels as solid as if it had been built yesterday.

Legend has it if you throw seeds from that bench and make a wish, your wish will come true if any of the seeds sprout. After all, our town’s founder, Elliot Gallagher, threw an apple core from this very spot, and it grew into the first apple tree in Apple Ridge.

It would be just like the Gallaghers to dump their trash without a second thought, but everyone agrees it was for the best that Elliot was a litterbug, because we’re famous for our orchards.

We may be smaller than Hendersonville to our north, but anyone who’s honest will attest that our apples are a damn sight better.

Of course, the story of the bench’s magic can’t be disproven, which is probably why it has been passed down for so many years.

Personally, I think it’s a crock of shit. But I need hope as much as the next person, which is why I’m here this evening. That, and because this is where I come to talk to Kitty.

When an Apple Ridge native dies, their family can purchase a memorial brick engraved with their loved one’s name and have it placed here in this park.

Kitty’s brick is up here next to the bench she loved.

I lean down and rub my fingertips over the rough surface of the brick that bears her name—Kitty Gallagher.

Yes, she was one of those Gallaghers, a great-great-grand-descendent of Elliot’s and the great-aunt of Rhett Gallagher, current mayor and part owner of this entire town.

I am not a Gallagher, even though I almost made the mistake of marrying Rhett. But Kitty was one of my patients when I was a hospice nurse, and she soaked into my heart and changed me. She’s been gone for nearly a year, but the wound of loss is still raw.

“I need something good to happen, Kitty,” I say softly. “Great-Uncle Ted’s with you now. Has been for about a month. His will stirred my brothers up something fierce. Everything’s falling apart. I need help bringing my family together. But I’m not like you. I’m not…”

Charming.

Kitty had possessed that rare ability to talk in a way that made people want to listen.

“Well, you know. And I don’t believe magic’s real.”

The only kind of magic I believe in is the everyday kind—the wonder of the leaves turning from green to red and orange and yellow. The way the world cycles through the seasons each year as if it’s falling asleep and waking again. That magic is about to wrap its arms around Apple Ridge.

I heave a sigh, feeling stupid as I pull a handful of zinnia seeds I pocketed from my brother’s shed and scatter them in front of me. My breath catches when a warm breeze practically snatches them from my hand. I watch with wonder as they skitter away.

“Is that puke I smell?” asks a familiar voice behind me, pulling me back to earth.

It’s my best friend Emily. I’d recognize her dry tone anywhere. I asked her to meet me up here, a short walk from her bookstore downtown, for a quick chat before I head home to my grandmother’s house.

I take a big sniff, and discover she’s right.

“I’m a mess,” I complain. “The Rotten Apple felt like the inner circle of hell today.”

That’s not the actual name for the retirement home I work at, but everyone in town uses it. Its actual name, the grandiose “A Room with a View” is an open joke, given none of the units have a pleasant view.

Emily circles the bench and sits beside me, leaning in close for a hug before she has second thoughts and scrunches her nose.

“I know. Believe me, I know. Don’t fuss, but Luanne threw up this morning. You know how she is. She says she has a toxic relationship with dairy.”

Emily pulls a face. “I suppose this isn’t a good time to tell you that I snuck ice cream in to her.”

Luanne isn’t any relation to Emily, but a few months back I started a buddy program, pairing up older people who don’t have much family with younger people willing to visit them regularly. The two of them hit it off immediately, bonding over their shared love for romance books and shows.

“So I have you to blame for the puke smell?”

“Will it help if I don’t complain about it anymore?”

I shrug, and Emily gives me a sidelong look.

“Any news about Miles?” she asks.

Miles is my twin. He took off from Apple Ridge five years ago, when we were twenty-four. He had his reasons for leaving, and I don’t blame him.

As his last act, Great-Uncle Ted did his damnedest to lure my brother back by leaving the family orchard and Christmas tree farm to both of my brothers.

My older brother, Theo, who was named after Uncle Ted and has worked for him since high school graduation, has not taken it well. Especially since the only time Miles came back to Apple Ridge since leaving was to see Uncle Ted buried in the cemetery.

I’ve seen Miles more than that, because I’ve gone to him.

To the tattoo shop he was apprenticing at in NYC…

the bar he tended in Pittsburgh…the wilderness camp he worked at just a few hours’ drive from Apple Ridge, which Theo called a slap in the face since Miles still wouldn’t visit home.

There were a few other stops too, including a six-month stint in Los Angeles, after a talent scout met him in a shopping mall while he was on vacation and cast him in a TV pilot.

But acting ability was a requirement, apparently, and Miles is no actor.

He’s in Vermont now, working at…wait for it… someone else’s orchard.

Nonna Rose says Miles has been “sowing wild apple seeds.” But maybe he’s ready to stop. He texted our whole family a couple of days ago, saying he was going to be out of touch for several weeks, without access to his phone, but we shouldn’t worry, because he was going to come home a new man.

“We haven’t heard from him since he sent that cryptic text,” I say with a sigh as I pull a couple of final loose seeds from my pocket and let them fly.

Emily huffs out a laugh. “You’re taking no chances. How many have you thrown?”

“Enough that one of them is statistically likely to sprout.” I wave a hand at the land in front of us. “Not that I believe it’ll do any good. But I might as well stack the odds in my favor. One of the old guys at The Rotten Apple has tokens from dozens of religions ‘just in case.’”

She laughs. “I’ll bet the pastor loves that.”

I hesitate, watching the sun continue to descend over the rolling blue mountains spread out before us.

It’s mid-September, and the air already cools faster at night.

Enough that I need the black cardigan I’m wearing over my scrubs.

The leaves haven’t started changing in earnest yet, but it will happen soon.

At this time of year, it’s hard to believe anyone would purposefully stay away from Apple Ridge.

I have half a mind to hire a mercenary to drag Miles home, and yet…

“I don’t even know if I want Miles to come home to stay,” I admit, immediately feeling like a traitor. It must be against some social law to throw your twin under the bus.

She lifts her eyebrows, probably because she can’t think of anything nice to say about Miles and figures it would be best to say nothing.

Of course, she doesn’t really know my brother.

He left town soon after she arrived, and they didn’t interact at my uncle’s funeral.

She’s only seen what’s happened in his wake.

My phone starts buzzing, and I pull it out.

I flash the screen at Emily. “It’s Nonna Rose.”

“So you’d better answer,” she says with a knowing smile. “I don’t want that woman pissed at me.”

Grinning back, I answer the call. “Nonna?”

“Where are you?” my grandmother hisses into the receiver. “I thought you’d be home by now. You’re going to ruin the surprise.”

My heart immediately starts beating faster. “What surprise?”

“Come home,” she says fiercely. “We’ll be expecting you for dinner.”

With that, she hangs up on me.

I stare at the phone as if it might spontaneously give me answers. And hell, maybe it will. This bench is supposed to be magic, isn’t it?

“What’s wrong?” Emily asks.

Without glancing up, I answer, “Unless my grandmother has started using the royal we, she’s with someone. She said there’s a surprise.”

Emily’s eyes widen behind her glasses, proving that she definitely gets why I’m concerned. “Do you think…?”

“She would have said if it was Miles,” I insist, even though I’m not sure about that.

Nonna Rose has been acting erratically ever since Uncle Ted passed.

While he was her brother-in-law, not her brother, they were close.

She’s grieving—we all are—and I’m trying to support her, but some of her decisions have been flat-out strange.

Just last week, I saw her emerging from Theresa’s storefront on McIntosh Way.

Theresa, my brother Theo’s ex-girlfriend, is a “psychic” whose “clear sight” can’t get her safely out of the grocery store parking lot.

About ninety percent of her clientele is made up of bored tourists.

The rest are elderly people desperate to connect with lost loved ones, which puts her firmly on my shit list. It doesn’t help that every time she sees me she rattles off the names of all the townspeople whose deaths I’ve witnessed, acting like it’s impressive and not depressing.

When I asked Nonna why on earth she’d been talking to Theresa, she told me to stay out of her business.

Then, a few days back, Nonna was watching something on the laptop Theo bought her, which she never uses.

As soon as she saw me, she slammed the lid shut so hard I was surprised it didn’t crack.

I joked about it being silver fox porn, and the glare she gave me was so withering, I felt it in my soul.

Even this morning, she did something strange. She got up at the crack of dawn to prepare the dough for panettone, which is so labor intensive we stopped making it at Christmas nearly a decade ago.