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Haider didn’t take long to go through my messy accounting system and put everything in order. Then he held out his hand for my phone, and checked all the receipts and invoices against the figures I’d put into the bookkeeping app he’d helped me install.

“You got a couple of these figures the wrong way around,” he said.

There was no judgement in his tone, or impatience, but from the way he had to check back through my paper copies, I knew it was more than just a couple of mistakes and probably more than just transposing the numbers incorrectly too.

I was mostly fine with reading my emails and corresponding with clients—I’d found a combination of screen color and font that worked best for me—but the app didn’t have the dyslexic-friendly font I used, so Haider double-checked everything for me and made sure it all reconciled.

It didn’t take more than half an hour once a week; it wasn’t as though I was pulling in hundreds of orders.

I couldn’t. I only had one pair of hands.

But I appreciated Haider’s help more than I could say.

Without his support, and the support of Sam and Conor, I wouldn’t be where I was today.

“Do you boys want dessert?” the server asked us when she came to clear our plates away.

“No thanks,” I said. “Haider?”

He glanced up from my phone. “No, I’m good. Just the check would be great, thanks.”

“Do you wanna get a pint of ice cream from the gas station and go eat it by the lake?” I asked.

Haider laughed. “I spent the afternoon taste testing chocolates, Ryan.”

“That’s not a no.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Fine. But I get to pick the flavor.”

I grinned, looking forward to spending some more with Haider that had nothing to do with figures. “Deal.”

WE’D JUST PULLED up at my place by the lake when I got a call from my sister Rebecca.

“Ryan?” She sounded upset.

“What’s wrong?”

Haider threw me a worried glance from the driver’s seat.

“The cottage,” she said. “The basement’s flooded!”

“What? What happened?”

“I don’t know , Ryan! Can you come over here, please? Chris is at work.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be there in twenty, okay?” I ended the call and gave Haider a rueful smile as I reached for the door handle. “Sorry, bro. Looks like the ice cream’s all yours.”

“I can’t eat a whole pint of ice cream, Ryan,” he said, which was a lie and we both knew it. He sighed. “Fine, I’ll give it a shot. Do you need a ride back into town?”

“Nah,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be, so I’ll take my truck.”

I climbed out of the truck, waved him off, then went inside my cabin to grab the keys to my pickup.

The truck was older than me, but it ran in all kinds of weather and on all kinds of roads.

At a steady speed of no higher than thirty miles an hour, but still.

It was reliable. Well, the heating wasn’t great, but that was only an issue in winter.

When I pulled up outside Maple Cottage, the lights were on and the front door was open. A police cruiser was parked in the driveway—something that would have looked ominous with the insecure house except the deputy the car belonged to was Chris, Rebecca’s boyfriend.

I followed his voice inside the house.

“I know!” he was saying into the basement as I found him in the kitchen. “I know, babe, but I’m working !”

Rebecca responded with swearing and splashing. Neither of those were good.

“Ryan!” Chris sagged with relief when he saw me. “I’ve turned the water off, but I can’t stick around, bro. I’m supposed to be patrolling downtown, and the sheriff will kick my ass if he finds out I’m not.”

“You could tell him it’s an emergency!” Rebecca yelled up from the basement.

“Becca, me being here isn’t going to unfuck anything!” And then, because he was smarter than that comment implied, he retreated. Fast. “I’ll come back the second my shift is done, I swear!”

I moved into the doorway of the basement and stared down the steep steps. “ Shit .”

Rebecca, standing in ankle-deep water, stared back at me.

She was holding a mop, which honestly seemed way too optimistic for this situation.

It’d take a hell of a lot more than a mop to fix this.

I was just wondering how I was going to tell her that when her glare softened, her lower lip wobbled, and she burst into tears.

I hurried down the steps, halting when I came to the last one. “Bec, come on. Chris is right—”

“Don’t you take his side!” She dropped the mop with a splash and scrubbed her cheeks with the long sleeves of her flannel shirt.

“I’m not,” I said. “Okay, so what happened? Has a pipe burst?”

She nodded miserably.

“Come on, get out of there.” I held my hand out for her, and she waded over to me and let me pull her onto the steps. “Lucky it’s only partly finished, right? Remember how you wanted to put a media room down here?”

She sniffed. “And you said that was a waste of money for a vacation rental.”

“Aren’t you glad you listened?”

She took another look at the basement, her lip wobbling again.

“Come on,” I said, and drew her upstairs.

“Chris said he’s turned the water off, and there’s not a lot else we can do tonight.

I mean, we’ll probably have to get a pump to drain the water out and run a dehumidifier and some fans for a while until it’s dried out.

Then see about replacing the carpet and drywall, probably. ”

Rebecca slumped down in a chair at the little kitchen table. “How long is a while?”

“A week, maybe a little longer.”

“Ryan!” She looked distraught again. “Our first guest is arriving tomorrow ! I can’t have the place full of plumbers and builders and—and humidifiers! He’s sent three emails checking that it’s quiet and he won’t be disturbed! I only came by tonight to leave the welcome basket!”

She waved her hand at the kitchen counter.

“Wow,” I said, taking in the basket with the fancy bow on it. “Chocolates, wine, and are those your homemade white chocolate and macadamia cookies? I love those. Why don’t you make them for me anymore? You’re going all-out for this guy.”

“I wanted it to be perfect!”

I sighed and sat down across the table from her. “I mean, you might have to cancel and refund him.”

“He’s already on his way,” Rebecca said. Her tears had stopped, but she scrubbed her cheeks anyway. “And if we refund him, money is going to be really tight this month. Fuck .”

“Becca, I can help.”

She brightened. “Shit, Ryan, really? Because your cabin would be perfect !”

“What? No! I can help you out with money .”

“Ry!” She reached across the table and caught my hand. “Please. If we cancel, it’ll tank our host reviews before we’ve even started! I’ll take care of everything, I promise. It’s only for six weeks, and—”

“Six weeks !”

“You can move in here!”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “My workshop is at my place.” The main reason I’d bought the cabin at the lake hadn’t been just for the cabin itself.

It had been for the large shed at the back of the half acre block that I’d since converted into my workshop.

“I can’t just stay here and drive out there every day. ”

Rebecca wrinkled her nose. “It’s Caldwell Crossing to the lake.

It’s hardly a long commute.” She let out a long breath.

“Oh, are you still doing that thing where you go and work on stuff in the middle of the night whenever you get stressed out about being single and alone and tell yourself that’s a totally normal thing to do instead of taking some melatonin like the rest of us? ”

Yes.

“No. That’s not the reason.”

That was totally the reason.

I wilted a little under her stare. “I like working in the middle of the night. It’s relaxing.”

“You’re such a weirdo,” she said, and wiped her nose on the end of her sleeve. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Didn’t you sleep in the workshop back when you were renovating the cabin when you first moved in?”

“Yes, but—”

“So it still has a camp bed and a mini fridge and everything?”

“Becca…” But I was going to cave, and she knew it.

“Please,” she said again, her eyes bright with hope. “I’ll take care of everything, and I’ll owe you literally forever, and…” She drew a triumphant breath. “And I’ll make you white chocolate and macadamia cookies every week for an entire year!”

Ugh.

How the hell was I supposed to say no to that?