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Grace Day: You should add cinnamon this time.
Kerry Winsor: NO. The square STILL smells like a mix of coffee and jasmine sometimes.
Dale Garrett: I liked it, actually. Wanted to buy a few for the store.
Atticus Thompson: That’s physically impossible, Kerry.
Kerry Winsor: Don’t lecture me about physically impossible when your mother said her bones could predict the weather@Atticus Thompson
Jade Clark: Oooh, harsh.
SherriffMike Finch: I smell it too sometimes ...
There wasa woman in my house. One with wavy, golden-brown hair and hazel eyes with dark lashes. Her plush mouth hung open when she saw me, but then she screamed.
She was gorgeous. And I probably would have spent more time on that fact if she hadn’tbroken into my fucking house.
She grabbed the closest thing to her, a Jade’s Goodies candle that I was saving for special occasions.
My favorite one too.
“Put that down,” I snapped. My first words should have beenwhat the hell are you doing here?orget the hell out,but dammit, the vanilla lavender scent was always sold out. And I wasn’t going to let a woman who was obviously breaking and entering take that from me.
“No!” she snapped back. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I think the better question is who areyou?And what are you doing in my house?”
She slowly lowered the candle. “Your house? This isn’t your house!”
“I’ve lived here for a decade.”
“No.No.This place is abandoned. Nicely decorated. But abandoned.”
“Does this look abandoned to you?” I asked. I mean, seriously. I’d put a lot of money into making my house feel like a home. “I’m the manager of Bennie Grove Farm, princess. Ilivehere.”
Now her eyes went wide. “You’re the ... You live here?”
“It’s a perk of the job.”
“But I’m ... I own the farm. I’m Bennie’s granddaughter.”
I took another look at her. Bennie’s granddaughter was nothing more than a ghost to me. He’d always said she would come back, but she never had.
And then he’d died, and she’d stayed gone.
I was sure he’d placed his trust in the wrong person, and looking at her now, I knew I had been right.
Her jeans were tailored to fit her perfectly. Her nails were done in a brown color that looked like a pumpkin spice fucking latte. She screamed class and money. Not a single flaw about her.
She wasn’t from here—that much was for sure.
“The last I checked, the house was in a trust and none of his family cared about it.”
She tilted her head. “It was, but it was supposed to go to me, and now it has.”
It had been a decade of radio silence from Bennie’s family. They’d abandoned the place. And now one of them washere?
Fuck.