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Chapter One
“What’s on your mind, Bug?” Ava asked, eyes trained on the highway, her daughter right beside her, staring out the window at the long stretch of road glowing in the late morning sun. Sam had only recently cleared the height and weight requirement to move out of the back seat, and it was nice having some company in the front of the car.
“Mr. Johnstone told us in science class yesterday that penguins mate for life. Is that true?”
Ava resisted the urge to ask what exactly Sam understood ‘mate’ to mean. Her endlessly curious nine-year-old would likely have fifteen follow-up questions, and the birds and the bees talk was something Ava was hoping to hold off on for another year or two at least. Or was forever too much to ask?
“Huh,” she said instead. “Are you learning about penguins in class?”
“We were learning about the Arctic Circle and about midnight sun and polar night,” Sam said. “Then Prescott asked if penguins hibernate. And then we got off topic.”
Ava smiled to herself. When she was Sam’s age, she did whatever she could to derail class. But Sam was a rule follower and was often annoyed by classmates who stepped out of line.
“You should tell Grandpa about that when we get there,” Ava said. “I bet there’s a whole lot more he can tell you about the night sky.”
She allowed herself to glance away from the road for a brief second at Sam. Before they’d left their condo in the city to drive to the vacation lodge Ava’s parents owned in the mountains, Ava had pulled Sam’s hair into a neat French braid. She loved how it looked on her daughter, even though it made her appear more grown up than Ava was ready for, especially now that she was dropping terms like ‘mate’, and not the ‘mate’ that referenced a platonic buddy.
With her smooth skin, wide brown eyes, and dark hair, Ava knew that Sam was totally her mini me—in looks at least. In every other way, her beloved apple couldn’t have fallen farther from the tree. Sam was easygoing, sweet, and moved through the world with quiet merriment.
She still tucked her stuffies in every night before bed under the miniature quilt her grandmother had made for her doll crib, welled up with tears if anything happened to an animal on one of her favourite television shows, and charmed anyone she met with her curiosity and precociousness.
Ava, on the other hand, had a quick temper. The whispers around the offices of NovaBridge Capital were no secret to her. Snappy. Unpredictable. Not to be crossed.
But, as Sam’s only parent, Ava knew that this quality of hers would help her protect Sam against the kinds of people who tried to take advantage of innocents. Ava was naturally assertive and unafraid of getting in someone’s face and knew that part of parenting her daughter would be teaching her how to stand up for herself.
“Anyway, then Mr. Johnstone told us about the penguins, and I was thinking about how it’s nice that they stay together forever,” Sam said. “Like we will.”
Ava gripped the steering wheel. She could have wept. How she ended up with the most perfect of children was beyond her. She was used to her family’s good-natured ribbing that one day Sam would turn a corner, enter the hormone-filled trenches of adolescence, and give Ava a taste of her own medicine—she’d been a holy terror as a teenager—but with every year Sam grew, none of her sweet nature eroded, and if they didn’t look so much alike, Ava would have wondered, like everyone else, if Sam had been switched at birth.
Sam’s even-keeled tendencies more than likely came from her father. But they didn’t talk about him.
“Don’t forget that Grandma’s party tomorrow night is a big surprise,” Ava said.
“I know. Grandpa put me in charge of creating a diversion tonight so he can work on the final arrangements.”
“Did he?” said Ava. “And what did you come up with?”
Sam reached down between her legs and pulled her backpack onto her lap, then started rummaging around inside. “I brought my sticker books, and the glitter bomb craft you got me.”
“Perfect,” said Ava. “Grandma can’t resist glitter.”
They were about thirty minutes away from Keystone Ridge, where they were travelling to celebrate Jeannie’s seventy-fifth birthday, which was meant to be a ‘surprise’, in the sense that Jeannie knew perfectly well something was being planned for her birthday, but would pretend to be in shock in the moment, for the sake of everyone involved in planning, which, as usual, hadn’t been Ava. Ava sometimes felt guilty that her work kept her from being involved in her family’s lives as much as she’d like to be, but her demanding job as an investment banker, coupled with being a single mother, made getting involved in some of the mundane aspects of family life challenging.
Luckily, two of her three sisters, Celeste and Quinn, lived on the property of the lodge her family owned and operated, and had largely taken over the party organization with their father, much to the relief of Ava and the fourth McCarthy sister, Elodie, who was a biology professor at the University of Calgary and very much preoccupied with her new girlfriend, Kendra Green, a crime novelist.
When Ava pulled her car into the driveway that led to the Butterfly Lake Lodge, she experienced an unexpected moment of nostalgia that caused her breath to catch in her throat. Her parents, Everett and Jeannie, were in the process of putting the lodge on the market, and her childhood home would soon be in the hands of a stranger.
The lodge, which was perched on the most picturesque spot on Butterfly Lake, was a four-seasons vacation destination, one of the most treasured spots in the Rocky Mountains of Canada, and a place that was routinely featured in travel guides and influencer social media accounts as a ‘must visit’. Not only was it beautiful, but Jeannie and Everett, and eventually with the help of Celeste, who’d been managing the front desk for over ten years, had made it a place synonymous with quiet luxury and refinement.
“There’s Grandpa,” Sam said, sitting forward in her seat. She rolled down her window to wave as Everett McCarthy looked up from the path he was sweeping off, while their groundskeeper, Bradley Moore, raked up a pile of leaves behind him. At this time of year in early October, they were equally likely to be bagging leaves as they were to be shovelling cars out of a snowbank.
Everett’s face lit up at the sight of his beloved granddaughter. Every last member of the family turned to a gooey pile of mush at the sight of Sam, and Ava couldn’t blame them. She was the centre of the McCarthys’ collective world, to the point where Ava sometimes wondered if someone, at some point, should give Sam the cold shoulder, or even just say no to her. But truthfully, even the idea of it was laughable.
Sam giggled at her grandfather, who pretended to be ballroom dancing with his rake as Ava continued navigating up the path towards the lodge’s parking lot. Raking at this time of year was potentially a fool’s errand: the trees were still shedding leaves in deep crimson, marigold, and ochre, and the lawn of the lodge was coated in a colourful tapestry. The sky was bright and clear, and Jeannie had put out some pumpkins in different colours, as well as some decorative corn stalks, potted mums, and willows.
In a few weeks, trick-or-treaters from town would be lined up on the front porch of the lodge: Jeannie always insisted on giving out full chocolate bars instead of the treat-sized versions, so the Butterfly Lake Lodge was a must-visit destination for the local ghosts, witches, and superheroes.
“There’s Grandma,” Sam exclaimed. Ava shook her head but couldn’t help but smile as her mother, who’d clearly been watching from the window, appeared on the lodge’s front porch holding a tray of some kind of treat specifically made for Sam. It was always something: cupcakes with her favourite colour icing (blue); cookies with chocolate chips arranged in Sam’s favourite constellation (Cassiopeia); or some kind of pastry or treat that appeared in the Little House on the Prairie series that was reserved for Jeannie and Sam to read together when they visited.
Ava pulled her car in, and it only took a second before her parents were practically climbing through the passenger-side window to get to their granddaughter.
“Hi, Grandma; hi, Grandpa,” said Sam, shimmying out of her seatbelt and freeing herself from the car, right into the arms of Jeannie and Everett.
Ava exited the vehicle and stretched. “Nothing to see here, folks. Just your most accomplished and beautiful daughter. No biggie.”
“Hi, sweetheart,” said Jeannie. She handed the plate of plump oatmeal raisin cookies to Everett then came around to the other side of the car to wrap Ava in a big hug. “You’re okay to take your things to the house? I’m actually just inside with our new Realtor. Everett,” she said, looking at Ava’s father, who was tipping the plate of cookies towards Sam. “We’re done with the tour. Can you come in and join us?”
“Aren’t we supposed to be celebrating your birthday weekend?” Ava said. “What’s the Realtor doing here?”
Jeannie waved her hand in the air. “He’s just—” She stopped and looked at Sam, who was hopping up and down in place. “Honey, do you need the bathroom?”
Sam nodded quickly.
“You should have told me,” Ava said. “We could have stopped.”
“No worries,” Everett said. “You can use the guest bathroom.”
Ava’s eyes widened and she looked at her mother with a smile on her face. Ava did her best to keep Sam out of the public spaces of the lodge. She wanted to do her part to keep the lodge as serene as possible for the guests, and while there wasn’t a disruptive or annoying bone in Sam’s body, Ava knew full well that some people just didn’t equate children with a calm and relaxing environment, so when she and Sam visited, they spent most of their time in the kitchen with Jeannie, or in the family home, which was set back in the woods about a hundred metres from the lodge.
“Go on,” said Ava. “I’ll be right in.”
Sam ran up the stairs with Everett in tow, and Jeannie hung back with Ava. “Can I help you with anything?” she asked.
“I’m all set,” Ava said. She pulled her travel duffel and Sam’s backpack from the trunk, then looked at her mother. It was hard to believe she was turning seventy-five. With her stylish silver bob, her freshly pressed white button-up over a pair of fashionable jeans that Celeste had no doubt picked out for her, it was hard to believe Jeannie was in her sixties, never mind seventies. “I’ll get Sam and bring her to the house. What time’s dinner?”
“Right after Celeste finishes with happy hour,” said Jeannie. “We’ve got a full house tonight.”
Ava followed Jeannie up the steps to the lodge and into the welcoming foyer, which always smelled of a mix of fresh verbena and whatever pastry Jeannie had most recently slid out of the oven. A bouquet of colourful flowers, which her father snipped every few days from the greenhouse behind the lodge, sat on the reception desk, where Celeste was standing with a young couple, pointing something out on a map.
“And Ronnie’s is a good option, if you’re looking for something on the casual side,” she said.
The couple thanked her and headed towards the door. Celeste looked at Ava, and the expression on her face shifted to panic. “Did you get my text?”
“I’ve been driving,” Ava said.
“Don’t you have your phone hooked up to Bluetooth?”
“I don’t need to be that accessible. My bosses already—”
Ava stopped speaking when Celeste pulled her arm, leading her into the small office behind the front desk. “Ouch,” said Ava. “What the hell?”
Celeste shut the door and took a deep breath in, and hesitated.
“Just spit it out,” said Ava. “God, why is everyone always so afraid to tell me things?”
“Because your reactions are, let’s face it, raging and unpredictable.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“Fine.” Celeste pursed her lips. “The Realtor is here.”
“I know. Mom said.”
“Did she tell you his name?”
“No.”
Celeste’s expression turned from panicked to tepid. “It’s… They hired Hunter Beckett.”
Ava blinked, and her pulse quickened. Had she heard Celeste correctly? “What?” she demanded. It had to be another Hunter Beckett. But how many real estate agents named Hunter Beckett were there in this small corner of the province?
“I didn’t find out until today,” Celeste said. “And I tried to text you and warn you.”
“You didn’t say anything to Mom and Dad, did you?” Because if she did, raging and unpredictable would be a generous reaction. The way her blood was starting to boil, adrenaline racing though her core, it would be a miracle if the expletives about to pour about of her mouth weren’t audible from downtown Keystone Ridge.
Celeste was the only person who knew about Ava’s history with Hunter, although they’d never spoken about the full scope of Hunter’s presence in Ava’s life. Celeste may have wanted to, but Ava had never allowed it. The rest of the family all silently accepted the façade of the ‘one-night stand’ Ava had implied when she’d announced her pregnancy.
Celeste held up her hands. “Not a word.”
“Good,” said Ava. “Keep it that way. Dammit.” Her mind raced. How was she going to make it out of the office, collect Sam, and get the hell out of there before running into the person she’d successfully avoided for almost a decade?
Instinct fully took over, and Ava pushed by Celeste, head down, directly to the washroom at the end of the hallway, turning to ensure her face wasn’t visible from the great room, where her parents were likely meeting with Hunter. She rapped on the door. “Let’s go, Sam,” she said. She heard the sink turn off, and then the lock of the door switch. “Come on,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder into the empty foyer. The bathroom door opened, and Ava readied herself to take Sam’s hand right in hers and flee.
But instead, emerging from the washroom, was Hunter Beckett, six foot three with close-cropped dark hair that caught the light, deep brown eyes that seemed to see right through her, and lips that undid her, bringing her back to the moment he’d first kissed her the night they’d met at an end-of-summer party hosted by Ava’s former roommate. The same lips that, four months later, told her things were over, the day after she’d shared life-changing news.
“Ava,” he said, his voice vibrating deep in her core.
She almost couldn’t speak. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d hurt her deeply. That he’d been the first man she’d ever allowed herself to be vulnerable with. Who challenged her and made her want to be better.
No. This man represented more than a threat to just her. As she took in the way his eyes sloped just slightly at the edges, at the lightest dusting of freckles on his nose, and the way his brow furrowed while waiting for an answer, she was overcome with the decision he’d made so many years ago.
And she needed to get out. She’d never let Sam’s father break her small, innocent heart too.
End of Excerpt
