Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Thom
From the moment he’d set foot on this property as the owner, Thom Sheffield was convinced Solstice Deep was quietly judging him. And that no matter how much sweat and money he poured into the place, it was never quite enough. That the house thought he could do better.
A lot better. Standing on the wide porch, to the right of the front door, he stepped away from the windowsill he was sanding—one of a million—and dusted off his hands by slapping them against his denim-covered thighs.
Sometimes, very imaginatively for him, he felt like the big, brooding Victorian inn was squinting at him, unimpressed by his lack of progress.
The place reminded him of a haughty old lady who’d fallen on hard times, her once exquisite navy dress now baggy and saggy, tired and worn out.
She’d been grand once—he could see that.
Hell, you couldn’t miss it. She was three stories of fancy flourishes and pointless curves, built by someone with far too much money who wanted everyone to know it.
She sported too many turrets, gingerbread, narrow windows topped with fussy arches, and a wide porch that wrapped the ground floor in a three-armed hug.
The house creaked constantly, a never-ending complaint that had started, he was sure, in 1890 and never quite stopped.
Still … he cherished some things just as much as he did when he was a child.
The way colored shards of sunlight spilled through the stained-glass panels above the front door onto the rich wooden floor of the hallway.
The hand-carved newel post shaped like a lantern, the hidden staircase, the many spacious bedrooms, most with a view of the lake—solidity, history, and stubbornness melded together over one-hundred and forty years.
He liked stubborn things. Stubborn things he knew how to fix.
And there was a lot to fix. She needed new wiring, new plumbing, new shingles, new everything. On good days, he could imagine what she would look like restored. Standing proud again. Alive again. On bad days, he wondered if he was as delusional as everyone said.
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.
H-Town’s True Believers were convinced she was haunted.
Thom was firmly Team Skeptic; he had too much to do without wasting energy on bullshit like ghosts and hauntings.
But he did admit she had a … let’s call it a personality.
Sure, it was only a building, but on days like today, when he was tired and pissed off, he thought the house wasn’t sold on his idea of a makeover.
That she didn’t like surprises and enjoyed reminding him that, through her creaking, swaying, and a series of bumps-in-the-night noises, she was in charge.
He sighed. Solstice Deep was a cranky old bitch, but he loved her, and he far preferred to wrestle with her than with people. Rebuilding the inn was far safer than rebuilding trust, with his family or with anyone else.
He’d first visited this property as a child with his family, back when his father was newly remarried, when Thom had acquired not only a stepmother but a legally adopted brother.
He’d been nine and Benji seven when they’d spent their first summer here getting to know each other and the woods and lake of H-Town, picking up friends as spring turned to summer.
Seeing how much fun they had in the area, his dad had bought a house just a few doors down from here, and he and Benji—and other H-Town kids—regularly ambled up to Solstice Deep to join Grandpa M.
for fishing, kayaking, and boating adventures.
Grandma M., in turn, fed them cookies and sandwiches, and handed them Band-Aids or bandages, depending on the severity of their wounds.
She also supplied Thom with books and quiet corners when he wanted to retreat from the mayhem the huge group of summer kids generated.
With the McMasters he felt … peace. So, when his world fell apart and his career disintegrated, he ran back to the inn, to the one place he felt …
well, safe. But nothing remained the same: Grandma M.
had died just six months before he arrived at Solstice Deep a little more than two years back, and with the inn long being closed, Grandpa M.
rattled around the huge house. Grandpa M.
appreciated the company, and during the summer of 2024, the number of heartbroken bachelors, for different reasons, soared to the grand total of two.
He returned to live in Boston but by the Christmas of that year, he’d bought and paid for the house, with the agreement that Grandpa M.
could live there until he died. That happened sooner than anyone thought, just six months later, and currently there was only one bachelor in residence at what used to be the town’s oldest inn.
Not emotionally shattered anymore, but oh-so-wary and comprehensively distrustful.
Walking inside, Thom crossed the hallway and walked down the short passage into the extensive, mostly gutted kitchen.
He had a fridge and a gas cooker, but no cupboards, and just a single countertop.
He’d moved most of the inn’s furniture—included in the sale—into storage, but he’d kept the kitchen’s long wooden table, battered and weather-worn.
It was his desk, his dining table, the center and heartbeat of the house and the renovation.
He walked to the vintage fridge standing in the corner of the kitchen.
Back in the day, Grandma M. filled it with fresh fruit, cartons of milk, and plates of sandwiches piled high.
These days, it contained leftover Chinese and pizza from Il Fantasma, the Italian place in town, bottled water, and a few beers as a reward for his hard work at the end of the day.
He reached for a bottle of water, cracked the top, and chugged half.
It was the end of September but still warm; late-summer storm clouds that refused to break made the air heavy and humid, and sweat ran down his back and plastered his T-shirt to his chest.
He finished the bottle, reached for another one, opened it, and heard footsteps on the shaky steps leading up to the kitchen door.
Who was outside, and what did they want with him?
The few people he still knew in town—Hayes Wellington, an old friend from childhood, Luna, and one or two others—usually gave him a heads-up when they made the short trip out of town to the inn, and the inn hadn’t seen a guest for more than ten years.
He kicked the fridge door shut, but before he could reach the kitchen door, it flew open, and he blinked at the vision standing in the doorway.
A bride stood in his doorway.
Which was alarming, given that he hadn’t ordered one.
Why the hell was a bride standing in his kitchen in a grubby wedding dress?
She reminded him, in ways big and small, of that bride from a musical Benji’s mom took them to when they were kids.
The Rocky Horror Show. With her red eyes and smudged eye makeup, she looked like a hyperactive panda who’d been awake for days, living on coffee and speed.
A short veil was pinned to her hair, half of which tumbled down the side of her face in a bright-blonde fall, ruthlessly straight.
Her dress was obviously expensive and … yeah, ridiculous.
But the body within it was slender, curvy. All woman.
She wore no shoes, and she clutched a cell phone.
“What the fuck have you done to my grandma’s kitchen?”
Although he wasn’t a guy who scared easily, her high-pitched yell caused him to drop his open bottle of water, splashing water on his trainers and the hems of his jeans.
It instantly mingled with the dust on the floor and painted brown streaks across his shoes and up his jeans.
It rolled across the floor and came to rest by her pretty, but grubby, feet.
Her hand clutched her phone in a too-tight grip, highlighting the scar running around the knuckle of her thumb. Poppy had a scar like that. Shit. Thom’s eyes widened, and he hauled in a shocked breath as he took a closer look at the hands-on-her-hips bride.
This was Poppy?
Holy fucking crap.
She glared at him and lifted her finger to point it at him.
“I desperately need to pee. Do not move.” Grabbing the bottom quarter of her dress, she whirled around and stomped out of the room, presumably to use the small bathroom off the hallway.
He winced. It was clean and usable, but bare of anything but the essentials.
His brain stuttered, misfired, and it took him a moment to make sense of what was happening. He’d heard from—Hayes? Luna? Someone in town?—that Poppy McMaster was marrying his brother, Benji, but hadn’t realized the wedding was today. Or judging by the state of her, it wasn’t.
He hadn’t been invited to witness his childhood devotee marry his so-called brother. Not that he would’ve gone. He’d have preferred an afternoon with a nail gun and his own eyeballs.
Three years younger than Thom, Poppy’d followed him around with the devotion of a golden retriever puppy.
She’d latched on to him shortly after he’d caught her older siblings bullying her—holding her down and tickling her so hard that she turned hysterical.
Ever since that day, he’d somehow became her protector, and she his constant shadow.
Once they knew Poppy had someone in their corner, they did what all bullies do, backed off and lost interest. Every summer, Poppy’s devotion to him was renewed.
Everything changed the summer she turned seventeen—and a seismic shift occurred between them.
Somewhere in the space of a year, Poppy had shed her baby fat, chopped her hair, grown into her body.
She wasn’t a kid anymore. And in her eyes, that unwavering devotion had picked up an edge he couldn’t ignore. Awareness.