Page 2 of Meet Me at Sunset Cove (Jonathon Island #5)

A grin split Daisy’s face as she pushed away from the railing. “That sounds perfect! Thank you so much!”

“No problem. I’ll drop the kids with a friend for a while and meet you at the corner of Jonathon Boulevard and Main in twenty.”

“See you then!” Daisy agreed and ended the call, slipped her phone back into her pocket, and practically skipped down the remaining steps.

“Morning,” a gruff voice called from the cobblestone walkway leading from the street.

Augo, the man who’d been working the front desk the evening before, stood outside the white picket fence, a bundle of flowers in one arm and a paper sack in the other.

The man only looked to be in his late sixties, with a flat cap, thick white mustache, and flannel.

A small, red-haired Dachshund padded along at his heels, her tongue contentedly lolling from the side of her mouth.

If Daisy remembered from the night before, the dog’s name was Lucy.

“Working again this morning?” Daisy asked, hurrying down the path toward the gate, swinging it open for him. Lucy ran through first, her little tail wagging as she looked up at Daisy, expecting pets. Daisy happily obliged, giving the dog a scratch behind the ears.

“Thank you miss…” The man paused, shifting the paper bag in his arm. “Remind me?”

“It’s Daisy.” She smiled.

He returned the smile, his own buried under his bushy mustache.

“Thank you, Daisy.” He turned back toward the inn.

“And, to answer your question—Sarah’s our regular day shift.

But Caleb said she’s not feeling too great, so it looks like you’re stuck with me again.

” He grinned, pausing at the first step of the landing.

“You up for some breakfast? I just stopped at Doug’s Market on my way in, got some eggs, some smoked salmon. You like salmon?”

Daisy cracked a genuine smile at the man’s candid invitation. “Sounds amazing, but I’ve got somewhere I need to be—Actually, you wouldn’t mind telling me how to get to Jonathon Boulevard, would you?”

“Big plans, eh?” Augo raised an eyebrow, grinning mischievously.

Daisy shrugged. “Something like that.” Everything like that, actually.

He tilted his head. “You know what they say about plans.”

“No, what?”

“If you want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans.” The old man let out a hearty hoot, giving her a warm wink before finishing his ascent up the stairs, Lucy once again at his heels.

“Head down Blueberry Boulevard, when you find a turn, take it and keep walking. You can’t miss it!

” he called back over his shoulder as the front door shut behind him.

* * *

“Can’t miss it, indeed,” Daisy grumbled as she spun on the heel of her Dr. Martens once again.

The wind swept her ponytail across her shoulders, and Daisy adjusted the neckline of her turtleneck sweater, wishing once again that she’d brought something a little warmer than a cardigan and high-rise, ripped jeans.

If this thing panned out, she’d have to stock up on a few choice clothing items, starting with a warm jacket.

Admittedly, Daisy had never been great at directions, but she shouldn’t have needed a GPS to take a single-turn walk through a zero-stoplight town. She huffed again, tucking her chin into her collar.

Per Augo’s directions, she’d gone “up” Blueberry (whatever that meant) and taken the first turn she could find, which had brought her down to the marina and right up to the water until she couldn’t “keep walking,” so she’d hopped onto the boardwalk and followed it toward town.

On her first pass up the boardwalk, Daisy had stopped to admire the stunning views.

The golds and reds of the trees poking around the Victorian houses up the hill.

The picturesque sight of wooden boats bobbing in the bay.

The pops of blue and yellow winking from the main stretch of buildings in town.

It was all much less charming on her third pass through.

Finally, after popping into a cute little coffee shop and being given three simultaneous sets of directions by three different well-meaning townsfolk, none of which were the same, proceeded by a handful of probing—also well-meaning—questions about who she was and what she was doing, she arrived on the corner of Jonathon and Main.

A woman rose from a bench under a nearby awning, her warm plaid jacket of gold and blues complimenting the fall decor peppered throughout Main Street. Daisy stepped toward her, assuming she must be the realtor.

“I was starting to wonder if you’d changed your mind,” the woman said with a smile.

She held two coffees, one extended toward Daisy as she stopped at the curb.

“Got you some coffee. It’s a chilly day and we’ll have some walking to do, so I thought you might need something warm.

” This with a glance at Daisy’s ripped jeans, the skin beneath already turning a rosy pink.

“Thank you,” Daisy said, taking the cup in her chilled hands. “I’ll admit, I did get lost. But it’s not my fault—I think the front desk guy gave me bad directions.”

The woman frowned. “Caleb?”

Daisy winced as she took a sip of her coffee. “Augo.”

“Ah, well that explains it,” she chuckled. “Augo can’t be trusted with directions.”

Daisy raised her brows.

“He likes to make them intentionally vague. Says it helps people ‘find the town.’”

Oh, Daisy had found it all right.

“We should get going,” the woman said, nodding toward the street hidden between two false-front buildings. “I’m Mia, by the way.”

“Daisy.” She held out a hand and Mia shook it.

“I’m excited to show you around, Daisy,” Mia said, leading the way up the cobblestone street. Daisy took a hesitant sip of the still-scalding coffee as the fall breeze nipped at her neck. “What brings you to Jonathon Island? Other than your house search, of course.”

Daisy’s coffee caught in her throat.

That was a big question.

She went with the simple answer. “I’m a designer. I’m on the hunt for a renovation project.”

The cobblestone street soon gave way to a residential neighborhood.

A row of cozy houses sat nestled between a mixture of maple and pine trees.

Many of the yards here were overgrown, the picket fences wrapped with invasive vines, boxwoods stretching toward the sky in front of empty bay windows.

But Daisy could see it. The potential was there in every property they passed.

The potential for these houses to become homes again with the right kind of love and care they’d obviously once had.

“That sounds like a really fun job,” Mia said, stopped in front of a faded-blue craftsman-style house, the covered porch overtaken by foliage that climbed toward the second story.

It looked the way a perfectly rainy day felt.

It reminded Daisy of the first house she had ever remodeled. Warmth grew in her chest at the memory.

“Well, we have a few cute little options to take a look at. Do you have a budget in mind?” Mia asked.

Daisy shot her a tentative look. “Um…well, I heard about the dollar house program…”

“Oh.” Mia blinked, her eyes widening. “I’m so sorry for the confusion. The dollar house program is over. There aren’t any more storefronts left.”

Daisy tilted her head, her brows drawing together. “Storefronts?”

Mia matched her confused expression. “Yeah, you know. To open your business…That’s the dollar house program.

It was for business owners who wanted to open shops on the island.

They all had to apply and get approval by the town council.

But all the spots have been filled. I’m so sorry.

We do still have houses for sale though.

” She gestured toward the craftsman hopefully.

Daisy’s heart sank, the plan slipping. “I don’t have a very big budget…”

The wind picked up, shaking the trees. Through a gap in the tree line, Daisy spotted the same Victorian-style turret she’d seen from the ferry the day before.

Mia followed her gaze. “Let me make a call, I might just have something.”

* * *

The fifteenth time’s the charm—or so Hunter Barrett kept telling himself as he stared at his father’s red ink massacre of yet another perfectly good blueprint.

The red marks on his latest blueprint were becoming almost comical at this point.

Three weeks, fifteen revisions, and his father had rejected each one for increasingly microscopic issues—a quarter-inch variation in the support beam placement, a slightly too-wide window trim, and yesterday’s complaint about the “aesthetically concerning” spacing between floor joists that literally no one would ever see.

But version fifteen? Hunter had spent half the night adjusting measurements that were already well within code, knowing his father would scrutinize every detail like he was renovating the White House instead of a midwestern suburb, ranch-style house.

He carefully rolled up the document and slid it into his backpack. The old man couldn’t possibly reject this one.

Hunter Barrett groaned as he stepped over his brother’s gym bag in the hallway of their small, two-bedroom apartment. “Come on, Waylen,” he grumbled as he slid the bag out of the traffic zone.

“Talking to yourself again?” Waylen asked from the kitchen table, where he sat with his dirty-socked feet kicked up on the handcrafted oak, one arm slung over the back of his chair, eating an Eggo waffle with his bare hands.

Hunter slapped his brother’s feet to the floor as he crossed to the fridge. “I’d talk to you if I thought you’d listen.” He grumbled into the dark refrigerator. “And I thought you were going to fix the light in here?”

Waylen balked. “Why me?”

Over his shoulder, Hunter cast him a look of disbelief. “How about because you’re the one with time on your hands?”

Waylen scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you could afford to take a minute to fix a lightbulb between shifts of donut eating down at the police station. Or is there a recent crime streak I haven’t heard about?”