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Prologue
“This is dumb.”
And pediatrician Sarah Maye didn’t do dumb.
Except when I do.
“Bless my own stupid heart.”
Sarah pulled into a visitor parking spot at the local college, turned off the engine and slid out of her Acura RDX before she could change her mind.
She could still call it off. It wasn’t as if he was expecting her. No one was expecting her. Even her sister Jessica hadn’t been expecting her to show up at the Cramer family farmhouse that Jess and Meghan had moved into, updated and turned into the beginnings of a thriving business.
But this soon-to-be fiasco was vintage Meghan. Calling her up to the house to help her with a project. Baking currant and apricot scones and making a large supply of fig jam. Meghan had started her side hustle—as if an attorney needed a side hustle over the summer. Sarah enjoyed helping out, but then Meghan had asked her to make a few deliveries to friends.
Or one friend in particular.
“Sucker.”
Sarah frowned. She and Meghan had used the book—yes that one. Southern Love Spells that she and her three sisters assumed had been in Grandma Millie’s family for what looked like several generations, though it was too late to ask now. Their youngest sister, Chloe, had found the book last November, and while Sarah had avoided using it, the book did seem to have a touch of magic—at least for her sisters. And now Meghan probably had some crazy idea to set her up.
Ridiculous.
Was it?
Harry had passed away over a decade ago. And even though she hadn’t grieved him as much as everyone assumed she had, the pretense had made her feel more stuck. Moving away from Harry’s parents and Charleston back to her family in Belmont, North Carolina, was supposed to unstick her.
But she’d been home nearly a year, and she felt like she was still pretending. Going through the motions. Easy to ignore her stalled life when she was settling Grandma Millie’s estate, helping her sisters with their new businesses and co-hosting Chloe’s bridal shower and wedding, and—she suspected though Chloe hadn’t mentioned it yet—a baby shower in the near future.
It had been too easy to put her personal plans on hold. She’d been doing it her entire life—and the one time she hadn’t, her husband had died in a horrific skiing accident, and in a postmortem middle finger to her, he hadn’t been skiing or staying at the high-end Montana resort alone, but with a woman registered as his wife.
Hard to hide that though she’d tried. And now she was forced to face the question that kept her up at night, especially now that she was surrounded by family, friends and her loved-up sisters. Did she want to be alone forever? She feared that answer was no.
So she agreed that she’d drop off the scones and jam to the professor with the little girl who Meghan had attempted to befriend a few months ago, though the thought of dating speared her with as much doubt as intrigue.
“I can still go home,” she stated, looking around the college visitor parking lot, but no one was near to hear her talk to herself, a habit that developed after Harry had died.
It was her day off. She’d gone to a barre class this morning and was heading to a CrossFit this afternoon. And then more gardening in Grandma Millie’s garden—harvest herbs to dry, deadhead, and planting some autumn color along with bulbs now that summer was finally taking a back seat. The need to stay occupied was visceral.
If she was really determined to reboot her life, she should also stop talking to herself.
Sarah huffed out a breath, pulled her hair out of its low, sleek bun and nervously rolled the large, ivory crocheted scrunchy over her wrist. She was acting like an indecisive idiot. Meghan had asked for help. She probably didn’t need it, but South Point Abbey College was on Sarah’s way home. Her sisters wanted her to be happy. Not alone. She didn’t want to worry them so she had to take a first step. Waffling and talking to herself in a parking lot was not a plan.
They’d worry.
Want her to return to the grief counselor—who’d only made her feel more guilty for not ‘fully allowing herself to grieve’ when she’d primarily felt relief. Then grief.
And she was oh so tired of talking about death and lost dreams and feeling trapped and suffocated.
“Get on with it, Maye.”
And so she did. Sarah picked up the basket of scones with the Cramer-Maye Farms fig jam, adjusted the bow keeping the cellophane with the gift tag in place and marched into the humanities building.
It was early October. Mid-afternoon. College had been back in session for nearly a month now. She would find Forster Luke Raimy’s office and leave the offering. Hopefully he’d be teaching or with a student so she could drop off the basket and scurry away.
What are you, a mouse?
Sarah took the stairs. She was being ridiculous. She’d once had confidence in abundance. She’d graduated early both from high school and college. She’d been an academic scholar. Leader of her cohort in medical school. Had papers published and presented. A residency director for pediatrics. A wife. A pillar of the Charleston community.
And now she was a quiet, shy, awkward widow skittish of her own shadow.
“Oh.” She skidded to a halt at the entrance to his office as the handsome man she’d thought about far too much walked out of his office, reading something on his tablet, and nearly crashed into her.
“You’re here.” She jumped nimbly aside, but she sounded like she was a breathless college freshman twit.
“As I should be, and now I’m headed to class.”
“Ummmm,” Sarah contributed.
He was tall like she was. His eyes were a beautiful gray hazel, heavily lashed beneath his tortoiseshell-colored Wayfarer-style glasses. He was slim but gave the impression of an athlete like a runner or swimmer—long, lanky, and subtly muscled. And he had one of those defined jaws and sharp cheekbones with hollows that always made her feel empty of everything but longing.
He looked like money, though Sarah knew associate professors didn’t make much. Good genes Harry’s mother would have said. But she would have highly disapproved of Sarah’s taking note of another man’s physical traits.
Sarah didn’t want to think about what Meredith would say about anything anymore. She’d escaped. After handing them her wedding choices and all the choices that followed during the next ten years—her home, her career, her friends, her activities—practically her thoughts.
Sarah still woke up at night, heart pounding and body shaking, feeling like she was still being chased and imprisoned, even though her mother and father-in-law had always seemed so kind and generous and yet…a gilded cage was still a cage.
“Welcome committee?” Forster asked. “Or a student’s parent homecoming planner?”
Even the way he spoke—such a low voice, so refined, sounded like an ancient tome being cracked open. He smelled amazing, like the woods on a summer day. He wore dark denim jeans, a white T-shirt and a brown, green and navy plaid blazer. If she’d been a college student, she would have changed her major and probably slid off her chair in a hormonal burst of desire during one of his lectures.
And then his words percolated. Parent. He thought she was the parent of one of his students? Did she look old enough to have an eighteen-to-twenty-two-year-old kid? Sarah cringed thinking of her sister Jessica’s lectures about sunscreen, moisturizer and facials.
“Thanks for stopping by. I have class, but you can make an appointment with the department admin.” He looked at the basket of scones she clutched to her chest.
Oh. Mortified. She shoved them at him.
“Belmont Welcome Committee,” she lied, making up an organization on the spot. “For all the new professors. Welcome.”
Her voice squeaked like the mouse.
“Welcome,” she said again, wondering how to get out of this awkwardness, before it was clear he wanted to get by, and she was blocking him.
“Ummmm.”
“Thank you.”
She took a step back. And then another. One more step, and she could maybe turn around and get down the stairs without face-planting, but something held her immobile.
“Well, I missed lunch again,” he said, and plucked at the bow, and Sarah watched half in fear and the other half in fascination as he pulled out one of the herb and cheese scones she’d made along with the apricot and currant scones, while Meghan had spooned jam into sterilized jars to cool and had then sealed and tied them up with the custom ribbon to add to the homemade vintage farm vibe that was her growing brand.
He took a bite. Chewed and stared at her. Heat flushed through her.
Oh. Dear baby Jesus.
She wasn’t sure if she was praying or not. Church was something else she’d given up when she’d come home.
“Thanks. Hits the spot. Mind putting the basket on my desk? I don’t want to be late to class.”
And then he was gone, his long-legged stride taking him down the hall and stairs while Sarah clung to the basket and sagged against the doorframe trying to remember how to make her legs work.
And find her ego in the rubble.
“So much for Maye Southern Magic.”
End of Excerpt
