The Cozy Nook Bookshop

Chapter One

SOMETIMES, JUST FOR FUN, Emma Rogers-Li liked to google countries without extradition treaties to the United States.

Not for herself, of course. She hadn’t cooked the books for a small publishing company, bankrupted the business, and then disappeared under cover of darkness when the cops started to close in.

That had been her ex-fiancé, Brock.

He’d left a note, apologizing for draining their joint savings account and wishing her the best. There’d been no forwarding address—just a hint that he’d taken himself and his new black-market identity someplace the FBI, the IRS, and a whole bunch of other law enforcement agencies with three-letter acronyms wouldn’t be able to touch him.

That was two weeks ago. By now, he could be anywhere. Moldova. Burkina Faso. The Solomon Islands. Just to name a few.

Meanwhile, Emma was sitting here in the New York City apartment she was probably going to get evicted from at the end of the month, scrolling the internet for pictures of beach houses along the coastline of beautiful, non-extraditing Montenegro.

Huffing out a breath through her nose, she closed the browser window and sat up a little straighter on what used to be their couch. She’d indulged herself enough. It was like her dad always said: Wallowing never fixed anything. It was time to roll up her sleeves and get back to work.

So she popped open a fresh browser tab and navigated back to her favorite job-hunting site.

There wasn’t much new to see. She’d already submitted her résumé to a few dozen places, but she’d barely gotten a nibble.

It probably didn’t help that she’d started working for Brock’s family’s company the day after they graduated from college together.

She might have risen to become head of marketing, but no one wanted to hire a twenty-seven-year-old whose only job experience outside of a Dairy Queen was a disgraced publishing house.

None of her former contacts in the industry would even answer her calls.

But she needed to figure out something—and fast. It wasn’t as if she could just move back home with her recently retired parents.

They’d offered to help, of course, but they’d sold the old house and were currently living out of an RV, slowly sightseeing their way across the Midwest. She couldn’t horn in on their Great American Road Trip, and she couldn’t stand to be the reason they started eating into their nest egg faster than they’d planned to.

Maybe there was a Dairy Queen that wouldn’t mind an eight-year résumé gap?

Before she could bring herself to investigate that particular worst-case scenario, an alert dinged in her browser window.

A skitter of hope dared to flit through her chest, only to be instantly dashed when she clicked on the notification.

No one had responded to any of her applications.

But there was a new posting that met her increasingly wide set of criteria.

She furrowed her brows. A little bookshop in some middle-of-nowhere town in Vermont was looking for a new manager. Publishing experience not required but preferred. And the salary…

Her eyes flew wide. That was beyond generous, considering the position came with housing for the first year. She wasn’t really sure about working retail, or picking up everything and moving a few hours north, but what did she have to lose?

Before she could think too much about it, she clicked the button to start filling out the application.…

“Why do you want to know my favorite color?” she murmured beneath her breath.

Other questions about her preferred reading genre and her opinion on dated planners versus bullet journals were pretty random, too, but at least they had something to do with working in a bookstore.

At least she wasn’t being asked to send nudes—unlike one of the other “job postings” she’d almost gotten lured in by the day before.

Shaking her head, she attached her résumé and hit send before setting her laptop aside and stretching her arms over her head.

It would probably just turn out to be another dead end.

She started to get up to refill her water—had to stay hydrated, after all.

But before she could go far, that same alert chimed again.

There was a new message from an Alamea Smith, owner and proprietor of the Cozy Nook Bookshop in Heart’s Hope Crossing, Vermont.

All it said was: When can you start?

“Just because something is too good to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t,” Emma stated firmly, keeping her eyes on the road as she maneuvered her sensible hybrid hatchback past a semitruck barely doing fifty in the fast lane.

Her mom’s voice crackled over her car’s speakers. Her faint hint of a Chinese accent was pure comfort to Emma’s ears. “That’s my girl,” she encouraged. “Always looking on the bright side.”

Emma smiled, even though her mom couldn’t see it over the phone. That had been her job since forever. Stay positive, get the job done, be grateful.

“There’s nothing but bright side to see.”

And there wasn’t, really. Sure, this whole new job at the Cozy Nook Bookshop could be some weird scam, but the relocation allowance Alamea Smith had deposited into her account had been real enough.

Once the money had cleared, Emma had successfully closed out her affairs in the city, sold or given away the vast majority of her possessions, and loaded the rest of them into the back of her car.

There was a freedom to driving north on the highway, the gray city skyline receding in her rearview mirror, possibly for good.

And maybe there was a twinge of regret in her chest. New York had been her home for about a decade now. She’d had a great time there in college, and it had been a fun place to spend her early twenties.

She couldn’t say she’d really been in love with the hustle and bustle of daily life in Manhattan, though. It was just… sort of where she’d ended up.

At the moment, it was hard to remember why, though.

The sky above was a brilliant blue, and even with the windows rolled up so she could hear her mom, there was a crispness to the air.

The trees flying past were lush and green, with the faintest hints of yellow and orange dotting the leaves. Before long, they’d be a riot of color.

She’d basically missed autumn the past few years.

Brock had never liked leaving the city. He was allergic to everything, and he was convinced he’d get poison ivy or attract a herd of ticks if he ventured off-road.

She’d thought it was funny at first, but over the years, it had become her new normal.

She’d gone with the flow, and in the process, she’d lost track of her own roots as a suburban kid who couldn’t wait to go play outside.

“This change of scenery is going to be great,” she insisted, projecting all the confidence she had. In theory, she was reassuring her mother here, but it didn’t hurt to put the words out there as a little bit of reassurance for herself, too.

“I know, honey.” Her mom sighed. “But if you change your mind…”

“You’ll be the first person I call,” Emma promised, not for the first time, and probably not for the last.

Finally appeased, her mom let her change the subject.

Emma was relieved to be able to sit back and let her mom’s typical recitation of their upcoming travel itinerary keep her company as she drove.

Her parents were tooling around the western edge of Lake Michigan this week, and apparently it was experiencing the same gorgeous, early fall weather southern Vermont was.

Her mom clicked her tongue. “I just wish your grandmother were here to see it.”

Emma’s smile went brittle around the edges. “I bet she would have loved it.”

Her grandma Li hadn’t been able to leave the house much in those last, difficult years, but she’d always had a soft spot for the first glimpses of autumn leaves. Her mom would go to any lengths to make sure she got to see them.

They kept chatting for a while longer, but eventually Emma’s dad started grumbling in the background about wanting to get brunch.

Emma rolled her eyes fondly. “Say hi to Dad for me.”

“I will. Text me when you get there, and I want to hear everything later tonight.”

“You bet.” Emma usually only talked to her mom once a week or so, but she was sure she’d be eager to have someone to spill everything to after she got her first impressions of her new situation.

Her mouth dipped down into a frown for a moment as she said her goodbyes.

She’d thought she had a decent social life back in New York, but at the end of the day, she had a busy job, and she had Brock, so she didn’t get out all that much.

Most of the people she considered friends were really Brock’s buddies’ partners.

She’d probably stay in touch with them casually on social media, but she couldn’t really imagine calling any of them out of the blue to dish about her new life in the middle of nowhere.

The only person she could imagine talking to, other than her mom, was her friend Ji-An.

But Ji-An had been her co-worker before she’d been her friend.

When the company had imploded, Ji-An had lost her job, too, and rather than commiserate with Emma, she’d blamed her.

Sometimes Emma blamed herself, too. How could she not have known what Brock was up to? How could she have been such a fool?

Not that that kind of negative thinking was going to do her any good now.

The car was quiet without her mom’s voice in her ear, and she didn’t want to dwell too much, so she rolled down the windows and hit play on her “Keep Your Chin Up” playlist.

Before long, she was exiting the highway.

She’d thought the scenery was beautiful before, but as she navigated back roads and headed up into the mountains, the views took her breath away.

The valley opened up in front of her, the subtle changes to the foliage more pronounced the higher she climbed in both altitude and latitude.

The ascent leveled off, and the next thing she knew, the speed limit dropped, and a big, inviting white sign by the side of the road welcomed her to Heart’s Hope Crossing.

She smiled in spite of herself at the cheery red lettering and the picture of a heart hovering over a charming, old-timey street crossing.

Soon houses began dotting the road, ranging from tiny, cozy cottages to big white buildings with dramatic, slanting roofs.

Following her GPS, she turned at the first stoplight and soon found herself in a little downtown straight out of a picture postcard. Neighbors visited on benches set along tree-lined streets. Parents pushed strollers, and dogs got tangled in each other’s leashes.

There wasn’t a chain restaurant in sight. Instead, there was a mom-and-pop-style diner with a waitress in a red apron serving customers on a shaded patio. A cute bakery and a quirky houseplant store, and a charming bistro advertising their new fall menu on a chalkboard sign. And there, up ahead…

It probably shouldn’t have been such a relief to discover that the Cozy Nook Bookshop was in fact a real live place, but the moment it came into view, something eased inside her chest. The brick building was old but well-maintained, with a weathered green awning and a big display window showing an admittedly dated selection of books, but that was why she was here, right? To manage the place.

When she’d attempted to coordinate her arrival with Alamea Smith, she’d been told to just come straight to the store.

The apartment where she’d be staying was right upstairs, so that would be the easiest way to come get the key and a quick introduction to her new life here in Heart’s Hope Crossing.

It was just about noon, so the store should be open, but Emma scrunched up her brow. It looked kind of dark inside.

She parked around back as instructed, though.

Leaving all her earthly possessions in the back of the car, she wandered around front, and sure enough, the door was locked, even though the posted hours said the shop should be open.

Frowning, she shaded her eyes from the sun and tried to peer inside.

Books, books, more books. A little café. But no people.

That nervous flutter she’d been trying to keep at bay all morning dared to rear its head again.

“It’s fine,” she promised herself under her breath. She pulled out her phone and called the number Alamea had given her.

Faint ringing sounded in the distance. She turned back toward the closed store. The ringing was definitely coming from inside. Right. Because the only contact number she had was apparently for the shop’s landline.

That was fine. No problem. No reason to panic. Keep a positive attitude, and just look for the next step.

The shop wasn’t in disrepair or anything, so someone would definitely be along eventually.

She glanced around, but no one was currently heading in her direction.

The couple of dads out for afternoon walks with their babies in strollers shot her a curious look and a smile from across the street.

The veteran New Yorker inside her instinctively turned away.

Maybe she should try the back door. As she hurried around the corner, her phone buzzed, and her heart lifted. Maybe that was Alamea. She lifted the screen, tilting it to avoid the glare from the sun.

But before she could register who it was, she slammed right into a brick wall.

Only no. It wasn’t brick. It was firm and warm and smelled like fresh pine and cedar.

And she currently had her hand on its pecs.

She jerked back, apologies on her lips, because the wall wasn’t a wall.

Her gaze drifted up the length of the big, broad man standing in front of her, and her jaw dropped just a little.

He was dressed in hardworking jeans and scuffed boots.

The charcoal Henley he wore under a plaid flannel shirt showed the tiniest hint of chest hair, and she forced herself to pick her jaw up off the floor.

He was white, with a brown beard that glinted copper in the sun, and a thick head of slightly darker hair that she had the nearly irresistible urge to run her fingers through, just to find out if it was as soft as it looked.

His hazel eyes stared down at her, and she wanted to sink into them as they raked her up and down, too.

But then, before she could manage to actually, literally swoon at this man, his eyes went hard.

And in a gruff, deliciously deep voice, he barked, “Watch where the hell you’re going.”