Chapter One
PATTY
This timeof day is one Patty Sullivan usually lives for. Just as Maplewood Grove starts revving to life, she opens up her beloved Whispering Willow for the day. Her bookstore doubled as a café, but Patty knew it was much more than just those two things. Immersed in the cocoon she’s built piece by piece from her life wildly lived, the proof is everywhere: filled with postcards from countless countries, globes in sizes big and small, accurate and not, and more than enough souvenirs to satisfy a magpie.
The Whispering Willow isn’t what one would expect to find in a small town in upstate New York, so rooted in its traditions that time couldn’t modernize its charm. She loves it all the more for it. It is her pride and joy. It’s a big part of why she carries a smile with her wherever she is in the store; it’s her favorite accessory for any ensemble.
That day, when that accessory is nowhere to be found, it’s bound to be unmissable.
She wipes down the counter with deliberate care, her bangles clanging together in sharp contrast to the quiet. Patty avoids looking up, not wanting to meet the red and pink hearts hanging from the ceiling. They were Jasmine’s idea, of course, but Patty can’t deny they fit right in with the town’s Valentine’s craze. It isn’t that she hated the holiday. Well, not completely. But every time she sees those decorations, it stirs something deeper—a memory of promises once made and broken, of a time when love seemed like something she could hold onto.
Patty’s distaste for Valentine’s Day ran deeper than the commercialism or the overused symbols. Every red heart and pink petal reminded her of the love she’d once believed in—until it slipped through her fingers like cold coffee forgotten on the counter. It wasn’t just the bitterness of past heartbreak, it was the fear that love, like that latté, would always cool, leaving nothing but an empty cup. She’s the only one who seems to care.
The windchimes she had stuck to the door last fall, adorned with a delightful bouquet of peacock feathers, jangle merrily when it’s pushed open. In bursts the pretty but fickle town gossip Betty Lou Hopkins. She enters arm-in-arm with the wife of the town mechanic, Liv Parker, the other town mechanic. “You’reso lucky,Olivia,” Betty Lou is gushing, her red hair bouncing. “He issucha good man!”
The dark-haired beauty doesn’t gush back with the same girlish, giddy enthusiasm—but Patty only needs to look at Liv’s face to see how smitten she is. Patty doubts the helpless grin tugging at the corners of her full mouth is attributed to her, though the mechanic greets congenially, “G’morning, Patty. Love the décor. Using that height to your advantage, are we?” Liv points a blunt-nailed forefinger ceiling-ward.
Patty has no choice but to look at the very decorations she’d been avoiding now. She isn’t positive a smile couldtastestrained—but hers does. Fortunately, the girls don’t pay much attentionpast Patty’s strained return of, “Yeah. Good morning!” With her complicated sentiments taking up the room they do, there isn’t any left to stow guilt over inadvertently stealing credit for Jasmine’s labors. “What’ll you have?”
At the inquiry, Betty Lou leans heavily into the display case. Her forearms stack, bracing her weight, as she looks down through the glass. “Mmm-mm-mmm,” she harrumphs, bottom lip protruding in a pout that Patty can tell is meant to be cute. It is, until Betty Lou whines, “Patty, nothingValentiney?”
Liv snickers, the arm that had been linked through her friend’s slinging comfortably over Betty Lou’s shoulders, tutting, “Not sure that’s a word, Betts. And besides, there’s still a week to go, right?” Patty isn’t sure which one of them Olivia aims the question at. It doesn’t matter.
Betty Lou bemoans, “Oh, as if you don’t know it’s six days till February fourteenth, Olivia Parker! You’ve got a Valentine for life.Some of us—” The words are pointed, in a way that unnerves Patty, “—are still looking for a Prince Charming.” Her hopes that she’d dwindled to an insignificant spectator are extremely short-lived. Betty Lou looks to her for confirmation. “Patty.Patty, you get it, right? Us gals can’t afford not to take the Love Quest seriously. It justkillsme, thinking of dying alone. And it must be—gosh, it must be so muchworsefor y—Ouch!” Betty Lou looks down at a leg Patty can only imagine Liv has kicked to dislodge the foot she’d been jamming in her mouth. She doesn’t know what makes her feel more pathetic: Betty Lou’s earnest, albeit saccharine, compassion, or the sheepish pity in the other woman’s face.
“Love Quest?” Patty echoes dubiously.
“TheValentine’sLove Quest?” Betty Lou enunciates slowly. Patty’s mouth purses into a hard line. She isn’t a woman with much of a temper. Its fuse was beginning to feel shorter now, though. Betty Lou doesn’t notice. “You should get involved,you know. The pairings will be random. And there’s some fun surprises packed in this year!”
“It’s a scavenger hunt in randomly assigned pairs,” the mechanic clarifies. Patty finds it harder to be irate with her, given that Olivia had only moved to town a couple of years ago. She was still catching up on everybody’s life stories; a task that wasn’t as easy as it sounded, especially when one was both a newly-wed and a recent mother.
As Betty Lou prattles on, clearly oblivious to Patty’s discomfort, the door chimes again, and in walks Jonah—Patty’s ex, striding in like he owns the place. Her heart drops. Of all days. She hasn’t seen him in months, but there he is, all charming smiles.
“Hey, Patty,” Jonah drawls, his voice carrying easily through the noise of the crowd.
Betty Lou’s elbow nudges Liv, missing the sudden tension that sucks the air out of the room. “Didn’t expect to see you around,” Jonah adds, his voice far too casual, eyes flicking toward the window.
Patty forces a polite smile, but her pulse quickens. Her gaze instinctively drifts to the glass, her heart skipping a beat. There, standing outside in the cold, is Colton, watching. His brown eyes—why hadn’t she ever noticed how piercing they were?—meet hers, sending a wave of unease and something else entirely through her.
He doesn’t come in. He just watches.
Betty Lou, clearly unaware of the rising tension, jabs Liv again. “I heard he’s back in town for her,” she whispers, just loud enough for Patty to overhear. Patty’s heart drops further at the implication.
“Poor Colton,” Liv replies, her eyes darting between Jonah and the window, where the Sheriff still stands, watching but silent. “He doesn’t stand a chance if Jonah’s in the picture.”
Patty’s breath catches. She wonders why, for the first time in so long, she cares about what happens next.
Belatedly, she identifies the sheriff. Colton Rhodes, his name is – but everyone just calls him Sheriff.Sheriff Rhodes,if one wanted to get more intimate about it. Nevertheless, it is impossible to divorce the man’s occupation from his personality. She doesn’t know him, not really. He isn’t a very knowable creature, Sheriff Rhodes. He ensures it. Patty is certain it’s on purpose, too. Not that she judges; that would make her a hypocrite, wouldn’t it? Patty herself enjoys the occasional bout of beguiling with an enigmatic nature.
Yet, as his gaze latches to Patty’s, she could swear she sees his soul echo the lament hers has been for years now.Oh,she thinks. Justoh.
COLTON
He is used to being a bystander. The spectator. The watchful eyes, keeping the halcyon innocence of this town safe. It doesn't really bother him the way the townsfolk sometimes watch him, effusing amusement over his staid determination. He’s grown desensitized to it. Truthfully, Colton finds he is desensitized to most things.
When he’d been a young boy growing up in Brooklyn, he’d had bad teeth. He’d spent a lot of his adolescence in the dentist’s chair—which was, in fact, his father’s chair, though Colton didn’t ever talk about that. He thinks, though. He thinks too much. The pinch before numbness spread was a familiar and seminal experience in his life. It wasn’t a remarkable or original one.
But pain, Colton Rhodes was all too aware, did not have to be either of those things for it to still be painful.
