Chapter 1
If there is one thing I have learned from my time as an emergency room nurse, it’s that change is inevitable.
One moment, you’re minding your business thinking about whether you want to add whipped cream to the coffee you’re going to cross the street for, and the next, your life is changed in the blink of an eye, all because some teenager got a text and didn’t see a red light.
True story of a call I had… just this last week.
Being on the front line, trauma after trauma, from small to horrendous, it jades you.
Chips away at your soul a little. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what I did day in and day out, but somewhere along the lines in the last few years since I’d returned to Moonlit Pines, my life had become about two things: work and my girls.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my life. I didn’t feel like anything was missing.
Not even when Rosie started talking about how our twenties were almost gone earlier in the year was I fazed by it.
But somewhere along the lines of seeing Tabitha with her guy and watching Abby fall hard and fast in love with hers after Thanksgiving, it made me open my eyes. It was like I’d seen something, and my body and heart kind yearned for it.
I wasn’t jealous.
I was happy, ecstatic even, for my two best friends. It was just that… seeing them in love and happy, having more than their work to look forward to, made me realize that there was more to life. And maybe I was missing out on it.
Not that I wanted to rush love. God, no. I’d been that boy-crazy, in-love-with-love girl in high school. A cheerleader who dated the famous running back all through high school until he left for college and we broke up my senior year, holding the pieces of my broken heart.
Or that’s what I thought it had been, but as a grown woman, I knew now it was more like the cracked bits of my ego.
I stretched in the chair and turned just in time to watch my beautiful redheaded bestie walk in through the front doors of Pine and Grind.
It still left me stumped as to what the hell she was still doing in our little mountain town.
Rosie Atwood was beautiful. Tall and willowy, her slender, lithe body a high-end fashion designer’s wet dream.
She’d traveled the world modeling, fashion week after fashion week, until Tabby and I returned.
Not three months after I graduated and got my dream job at the hospital, she was back, too.
There was no ignoring the way the people in town looked at her. It was impossible not to look at her. She was beautiful, like walking, breathing art. If that wasn’t enough of a draw, she was genuinely one of the best, most kind-hearted people I’d ever met in my life. And that was saying something.
“Hey!” She smiled brightly, bending to hug me before she sat down. “Uh oh, what’s that look about?” she asked. Did I mention she was also annoyingly intuitive and observant?
“What look?”
“You know what look? Like you’re guilty of something.” She stared at me for a moment. “Did you already have a cookie or something? You look like you got caught red-handed.”
“No,” I laughed. Rosie was hilarious and had quite an imagination.
“Let me guess, then.” She sipped her coffee. “You are ditching me for New Year’s.” I blinked and then laughed.
“Wait, how did… what?”
“Let me guess? Work?”
“Work?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged with a smirk. “Last year, you had to work, remember? I figured that guilty look on your face is you letting me know that as much as you would love to hang with me at the Black and Gold Ball at the brewery, you have to work.”
“I…” It would have been so easy to lie. To tell her I had to pitch in at a sister hospital for a week, but I couldn’t do that to her. Not only was it dishonest, it was crazy unsafe.
“Actually, no.”
“No?” Her eyes widened, and her head tilted.
“I have the week off from the twenty-eighth through the fourth.”
“Really? You took time off?” I opened and shut my mouth and nodded.
“I rented a cute little cabin. In Sugar Loaf.” She blinked her bright green eyes, obviously confused.
“Sugar loaf’s like an hour away. Why would you…” Her words drifted into nothing as I tried to get mine together.
“I need a break, Rosie,” I finally said, breaking the momentary silence. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t react. It was one of the many things that made it so easy to talk to her. “I know we talked about doing things a little different and out of our comfort zone for the holidays but––“
“You need a break,” she repeated gently, and I nodded.
“Work’s been… a lot this year. And I think the challenge you tossed us got me thinking and… I know it’s not what you wanted, but I need this.”
“Then you should go,” she said, her hand covering mine.
“I’m sorry.” The guilt of leaving her on her own for New Year’s still prickled at the back of my neck. “I did think about getting on that dating app you mentioned.”
“You did?” Her eyes widened.
“I did, and maybe when I get back, I will.”
“Hmm…” Her eyes twinkled slightly before she pulled her hand back and sipped her coffee again. “Maybe… We’ll see what this trip brings.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… you just never know who you will meet.”
“In a one-bedroom cabin in the middle of nothing?” My lips twitched as the mood lightened, and my shoulders relaxed. “You think I’m going to meet some kind of Prince Charming in the middle of the woods?
“God, no,” she huffed. “What good would Prince Charming in the woods in winter be for you?”
“Oh, lord,” l giggled, sipping my cider.
“Maybe some grizzly lumberjack with a big hard––“
“Rosie!”
“I was going to say ax! You’re going to need a lot of wood to stay warm there!” She laughed, and I playfully rolled my eyes.
“So, you’re not mad?”
“Me, mad? No!” She shook her head. “I actually had news of my own, so I’m glad you’re doing this.”
“Oh, what’s going on?”
“My agent called,” Rosie shared. “I have a photoshoot booked in London then Dubai for the new year. I was actually going to cancel on you because work… I need it.” She sighed, and my brow lifted.
“Money?” I asked, because if she was having financial issues, this was the first I was hearing of it.
“No.” Her smile was genuine and honest. “It’s just… my time to stop modeling is coming, so I should book as many gigs as I still can before they tell me I’m too old for them.”
“This almost thirty thing is really getting to you, huh?” I asked quietly, leaning closer. She simply lifted a delicate shoulder before letting it drop.
“It’s not that bad. It’s just…”
“What?”
“I just thought I would be somewhere else in life by now.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know, nothing huge.… just two or three adorable kids. A husband who is obsessed with me and how much he loves me,” she half-joked. I pressed my lips together.
“Oh, is that it?” I had to cough away a laugh.
“I don’t know… Life’s been good. I’m lucky. I’m not ungrateful for the experiences I’ve been able to have thanks to modeling. I’ve seen the world, almost in its entirety.”
“But?”
“But what now?” she asked.
“What about opening a business? You always used to talk about that.”
“And open it where? Here? In Moonlit Pines?”
“You could always move.” I hated the suggestion but knew my best friend needed to leave if it meant spreading her wings to find happiness.
“I don’t want that, though. I love it here. Maybe finding the guy and starting a family isn’t in the cards for me.”
“Babe, if it’s not meant for you, I don’t think it’s meant for me at all whatsoever,” I shared, and her eyes softened.
“We both know that’s not true. You’re going to meet someone. I know it. feel it in my bones. The winds of change are coming.
“The winds are just winter calling,” I teased.
“I’m serious, Em! I feel it.”
“Really? Like you felt Tab and Abby finding someone?”
“Hey, you gotta admit that this whole thing of doing something out of our norms found results.”
“True.” I nodded. “But I highly doubt I’ll meet anyone.”
“What if I make you a deal?”
“Ooo, this is intriguing coming from you.”
“We both make a profile on Locked 4 Love when we get back in the new year. So that we have a date for Valentine’s Day.”
“Hmm… that’s not a terrible idea. Deal.” We shook on it, but her hand didn’t let go. Her green eyes locked on mine. “That’s if you don’t meet someone on your little adventure.”
“Look who’s talking!” I laughed. “For all you know, you could meet some gorgeous prince in Dubai or London.”
“London doesn’t have any more princes available over the age of consent,” she pointed out, and we giggled.
“I’m just saying… you go out to these things where you’re surrounded not only by stunning locations but by beautiful people as well. There is never anyone at all who calls your attention?”
“Honestly, no. They’re all too… vain.” She made a face.
“I know that sounds terrible because I’m one of them, but…
with the people I work with, its all about working out, skin care, looking as young as possible, or getting some kind of work done all while wearing the hottest newest thing.
People in my industry can be… exhausting. ”
“Was there ever someone?” I asked. Rosie was usually very tight-lipped when it came to romance and love.
Which was crazy because she was the biggest romantic of the bunch.
If anyone was meant for a family, it was Rosie.
It’s why I knew without a doubt that someone would show up when she least expected it.
“Maybe.” Her lips twitched. “A photographer,” she confessed. “But we both knew it was for fun. He made it very clear that whatever fun we had wasn’t shelf stable, if you know what I mean?”
“It had an expiration date,” I answered, and she nodded.
“Oh yeah, very much so. After him… I didn’t want to go there with anyone else. Not with people I worked with.” I wondered if he’d meant that much to her or if people she worked with were dicks after they found out.
“What was he like?” I asked instead.
“Older. Gorgeous. Seriously sexy.” She smiled. “He got married a couple of years ago and had some kids. He’s still a photographer I bump into, but he’s like an old friend now, you know? It was never more than a hot fling,” she added, letting me know that chapter was closed shut.
“Wow. And no one else? Just a photographer? No models? Or designers or, I don’t know, some kind of international businessman who looked like James Bond?”
“No one,” she laughed. “But I love your imagination. Businessmen who look like James Bond.” She snorted adorably with an eye roll. “But the deal is sealed on the whole looking for a Valentine’s Day date. Maybe we could even do a speed dating event?”
“Speed dating,” I started to say with a grimace and sighed. “Fine. I’ll do all the crazy wacky dating crap to get a date.”
“No, you won’t,” she said, making me still. Those beautiful green eyes were laser-focused on me in a way that when you added just how freaking beautiful she was, it could be jarring. “You’ll be taken by then.” She sounded like she believed it with her whole heart.
“I seriously doubt that.”
“We should make a bet about that! But I think if we do, it will mess up the manifestation I’m putting out into the universe.”
“Oh my god. I think we need something stronger than this if we’re talking about manifesting men.” I grinned. “How about we hit up the wine bar and get some tapas there?”
“That sounds like a deal,” she said, so we both stood and walked out of the coffee shop together.
Rosie and her manifestations, I thought to myself. She was usually right on the money when she did that. But this one? Me finding someone in the middle of the woods? I had a feeling it would not be one of them.