Chapter Four Reese
Four
Reese
Reese watched Grace step out from behind the stall, chin raised like she was ready to take on the world.
Made sense now, her trying so hard to talk him out of buying the inn.
Haunted inn, my ass. She wanted it herself.
Question was, how could a café server afford a property like that?
But then, who was he to assume what people could or couldn’t manage?
He’d learned that folks found ways to make things happen when they wanted them badly enough.
Still, he remembered Mabel talking about Grace taking over the family business. Clearly Grace hadn’t shared her plans with everyone. Mabel’s reaction confirmed it. The woman went pale as old snow, staring at her daughter like she’d just announced she was joining the circus.
“Grace Elizabeth, what in the world—”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Grace said quickly. “I just…I just haven’t found a moment.”
“How in the hell are you going to pay for it?” Mabel’s voice climbed about two octaves. “Do you have any idea what that property costs?”
“I’ve been saving for years. And I’ve got my loan application just about ready.”
Grace’s jaw set in that stubborn line Reese was starting to recognize.
Starting to enjoy too, in more physical ways judging from how uncomfortable his pants were suddenly getting.
“I need to do this, Mom,” Grace continued.
“I need something that’s mine, not just something I inherited because I was the only one left to inherit it. ”
That hit home harder than it should have.
Reese knew something about needing to prove yourself, about building something from scratch instead of just taking what was handed to you.
Grace turned toward him then, blue eyes bright with challenge.
She looked like she was ready to arm-wrestle a bear for that inn. “So,” she said, “you ready?”
Reese’s competitive instincts went into overdrive. The harder the problem, the more it interested him. And right now, the pink-haired woman standing before him was looking like the most interesting problem he’d encountered in years.
“Always ready,” he said.
“All right then,” Jake called out, clapping his hands together. “Let’s get this show started. First up, logrolling. Last person standing wins.”
Reese strode beside Grace as the crowd started moving toward the water.
“You done this before, eh?” he asked.
“Every summer since I was twelve. You?”
“Once or twice.” He’d actually spent a month working with a logging crew in northern Manitoba during his early twenties, back when he was still figuring out what he wanted to do with his life.
They’d messed about with logrolling during breaks.
But Grace didn’t need to know that. He’d learned it was best to surprise your opponents.
The logrolling setup was professional-grade: a debarked pine log floating between two docks.
“If you don’t know already, Trust Fund Thor,” Jake said, “you both stand on the same log, try to knock the other person off by spinning it with your feet. Rules are simple. Stay on longer than your opponent, you win. Fall in, you lose.”
Grace kicked off her boots, rolled up the bottom of her jeans and stepped onto one end of the log. Reese stripped down to his sage-gray T-shirt and took the other end. They faced each other across about six feet of pine, testing their balance.
“Don’t go easy on me because I’m a girl,” Grace called out to him.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Jake dropped his hand and they started. Grace was better than Reese had expected. Way better. She had this fluid way of moving with the log instead of fighting it, adjusting to his rhythm while trying to impose her own. The crowd was getting loud, cheering for both of them.
“Come on, Grace!” a dark-haired woman with a British accent called out.
“Yeah, show the rich boy how it’s done!” the tall, muscled man with his arms wrapped around the Brit added.
“Don’t let her psych you out, dude!” a skinny man who’d been serving behind a food truck called out. “Solace Springs girls know how to mess with your mind.”
“This is better than going to the movies!” Caleb called out, actually chewing on cinnamon popcorn as he said it.
Three minutes in, Reese could feel his legs starting to burn. But he was used to that, used to riding the pain, almost enjoying it. Grace looked like she could do this for hours, too, but there was a slight tightness around her eyes that suggested she was working harder than she wanted to let on.
He shifted his weight, found his balance and used Grace’s momentum against her. She overcorrected, wobbled for a split second and went in backward with a splash that sent water flying everywhere.
A win!
When she surfaced, she was cursing. “Damn it!”
Reese jumped off the log and offered her a hand out of the water.
But she refused, splashing her way to the shore.
Reese couldn’t help but notice how her honey-colored sweater clung to every curve, the wet fabric outlining the lean strength of her waist, the slight flare of her hips.
The cold water had done exactly what cold water does, making her breasts impossible to ignore beneath the soaked wool.
Christ, she was all compact curves and fierce determination, every inch of her body broadcasting a kind of athletic grace that hit him like a punch to the gut.
She looked like trouble. She looked like everything he shouldn’t want.
She glared at him, wringing out her sweater hem.
“It’s not over yet, Grace!” the British girl said as the dark-haired guy behind her gave Reese a cold look.
“All right, folks,” Jake called out, gesturing to two huge barrels of water, each brimming with floating apples. “Next challenge. Double Bob rules! First one to grab three apples with their teeth wins. No hands, no cheating, no mercy.”
Reese eyed the barrels like they were enemy territory. “That’s it? Bite fruit?”
“Don’t underestimate it,” Jake said. “Looks easier than it is. Plus locals have been training for this all their lives.”
Grace tied back her wet hair. “Yeah, locals like me,” she said, competition in her eyes.
That spark in her eyes caught him in the chest. He grinned. “Guess I’ll have to represent the outsiders, then.”
Abe smirked. “Just don’t embarrass yourself, city boy. Last year’s champ was eight.”
Reese rolled up his sleeves. “All right then, let’s do this.”
The crowd started the countdown—“Three, two, one!”—and both of them plunged face-first into the freezing barrels.
Grace was out first, triumphant, an apple clamped between her teeth. She spat it neatly into the bucket beside her and went straight back under. Reese surfaced a second later, sputtering lake water and cursing under his breath, earning a wave of laughter from the crowd.
“Come on, billionaire!” the muscular dark-haired man with the Brit shouted. “Where’s all that drive now?”
Reese gritted his teeth and went in again, snagging two in quick succession. He wasn’t losing this to a small-town waitress with a killer smile and zero mercy.
Grace surfaced beside him, soaked, breathless, apple number two in her teeth.
For a split second, Reese forgot about the crowd and the damn apples.
All he could see was her, flushed and determined, water trickling down her neck.
He didn’t even notice when she went in for number three, too hypnotized by the sight of her peach of a butt bending over.
“Three!” she shouted as she emerged with another apple, muffled but victorious.
The crowd roared and Reese dropped his apple in defeat, laughing despite himself.
“Guess that’s what happens when you go up against a pro,” Grace said, wringing out her hair. “Been bobbing since I was five.”
He ran a hand through his own soaked hair, grin lopsided. “Enjoy it while you can,” he said, voice carrying over the cheers. His eyes found Grace’s. “Round three’s mine.”
“You wish,” Grace shot back.
The trivia was the tiebreaker, set up near the historical society booth by a woman called Ella with messy light brown hair and oversized glasses, wearing long autumn-leaf-pattern socks over brown leggings. She was juggling a clipboard, a coffee thermos, and several pens.
“Ten questions each about Solace Springs history,” Ella announced, dropping one of her pens and nearly upending her thermos as she bent to retrieve it.
“Most correct answers wins. Oh, and fair warning, I’m a stickler for pronunciation because words matter and also, I may have been watching too much Jeopardy lately and it’s given me a power complex about being the question master.
” She laughed at her own joke, pushing her glasses up with the end of her clipboard.
Reese wasn’t worried. He’d done his homework before coming to town, researched the area’s history as part of his due diligence.
They went question for question. Grace knew everything: founding dates, historical figures, even the story behind the controversial fountain that caused a three-year feud in the 1960s.
“That’s correct!” Ella said after Grace’s answer about the fountain.
“Though fun fact, the feud actually lasted three years and two months if you count the passive-aggressive church bake sale incident of 1967, which I personally do because my grandmother was involved and she held grudges like—” She caught herself. “Sorry, tangent. Next question.”
By the tenth question, they were tied at eight correct each and Grace was looking annoyed, chin tipped, eyes sparking like she might bite. Reese’s grin deepened. She reminded him of a wild horse he’d had brought into his ranch in Andalusia: beautiful, furious and untamed. Made him want to tame her.
“Sudden death,” Ella declared. “First person to miss loses.” She paused dramatically. “Grace, what was the name of the indigenous tribe that originally fished these waters?”
Grace’s confident expression faltered for just a second. “The…Stillaguamish?”
“I’m sorry, that’s incorrect.” Ella winced sympathetically, like it physically pained her to deliver bad news.
Reese was sensing some bias here. “Though interesting guess because they were in the broader region, just not these specific waters, and there’s actually this fascinating connection to the fishing rights treaties of the eighteen fifties that—” She stopped herself. “Reese?”
“The Snoqualmie people,” Reese said. He’d learned that during his environmental impact research.
“Nope,” Ella said.
Reese frowned. “What?”
“It’s the Snoqualmie,” she repeated, slow and deliberate. “You said Snoqual-MAY.”
He straightened a little. “I said Snoqual-MIE.”
Ella shook her head, grinning like she’d caught him red-handed. “Nope. You Snoqual-MAY’d it.”
That flicker of competitiveness sparked in his chest. “I didn’t say that, I—”
Ella tapped her clipboard with authority. “Like I said, pronunciation counts. It’s in the rules. Though honestly, most people get it wrong, so you’re in good company. I did a whole podcast episode about commonly mispronounced local indigenous names and—”
Abe stepped forward, interrupting her. “Well, I’ll be damned. A draw after all that.”
Reese thought about pushing the point. But as he looked around him, he realized he didn’t have a chance against these people who’d known and clearly loved his competitor all her life.
“Both of you showed you can handle yourselves,” Abe said, “which is more than I can say for most folks who come through here making big promises.” He gestured toward the island. “One last challenge. I want to know about your plans for the place, so come to the inn tomorrow at two PM sharp.”
With that, he turned and marched away, Margaret following him with the satisfied look of someone who’d just watched good entertainment.
Reese shook his head. These people weren’t making it easy for him. “Hell of a match,” he said to Grace, putting his hand out to her.
She ignored his hand, crossing her arms in that defiant pose that seemed to be her default setting. “Look, let’s be honest, shall we?” she said. “You don’t need this inn like I do. You just want it. I need it.”
Here it comes, Reese thought. The heartfelt pitch.
“This is my home,” Grace continued, her voice gaining intensity.
“My son’s home. I grew up going to that island with friends.
I’ve been looking at that inn my whole life thinking, Someday, someday it’ll be mine.
You must have dozens of properties, hundreds of options.
Surely there’s somewhere else you can set your greedy eyes on? ”
Reese looked at her—really looked. Hair still damp from the lake, eyes bright with desperation and determination. Part of him wanted to give in and walk away. She clearly loved this place in a way he couldn’t claim to understand.
But the other part of him, the competitive part that had driven him from Thunder Bay to boardrooms around the world, wouldn’t let go.
This wasn’t just another property acquisition for him.
There was something on that island he needed.
And he wouldn’t let anyone get in the way of him finding it, even if she did have legs that went on forever.
“Sorry, Grace. It’s mine. You’re just going to have to get used to it.”
Their eyes locked, defiant, neither willing to give an inch. Heat curled low in his gut, spreading with every second she held his gaze. Damn. Competition had always thrilled him, but with the woman standing before him, it felt like foreplay.
“Grace Elizabeth Sullivan! A word, please!”
They both turned to see Mabel marching toward them.
Reese had seen enough family disputes to recognize this particular storm brewing. Whatever was about to happen between Grace and her mother, it was going to be intense and he intended to stay around to watch.
After all, the more he knew about his competition, the more fuel he’d have to win.