Drew didn’t show up at seven-thirty like he had every other morning for the past several weeks. Gretchen didn’t have any special events that day, and she could stand to open the shop a bit later than normal.

But it was so unlike Drew to be late that she worried. When he still hadn’t arrived by eight o’clock, she called him.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked when he answered in a groggy voice.

“What time is it?”

“Eight.”

“Oh my—I completely forgot to set my alarm.” He sounded awake now. “I’m on my way out.”

“It’s fine,” she said quickly. “You don’t need to rush. Dixie doesn’t even have school today. Is everything okay?”

“I got called out on a job last night,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it when I get there.”

She hung up, and let her feet take her over to the farmhouse where she’d spent her summers. At first, she’d come to Hawthorn Harbor with her whole family. They usually came for three weeks, beginning at the end of June and going through the Lavender Festival.

Then her father didn’t come one year when she was eleven years old. She didn’t know why. Her mom had brought Gretchen and her brother for another year, maybe two, and then she stopped coming too. The next year, Grandma had died, and Gretchen had cried and cried and cried. She still missed her grandmother with a fierceness she didn’t quite understand.

When it came time to go to Hawthorn Harbor the following summer, no one made plans. Gretchen, thirteen, demanded to go, and Granddad had driven down to California to get her. He’d done that every year since, and Gretchen started staying all summer, not just for three weeks.

She’d wanted to ask her parents why they stopped coming, why they didn’t even speak of her mother’s parents anymore, but she never did. She felt like a stranger in her own house, and when she left after high school, she’d never gone back.

This farm had been the only place where she’d ever felt like she belonged. Though Aaron hadn’t liked it as much as she had, Gretchen had adored everything about the farm. Granddad had labored in the lavender fields, and he’d won the Creation Contest that last summer she’d lived on the farm, before Aaron got his job in Seattle and they moved.

Granddad had developed a new variety of lavender and spent hours arranging it into gorgeous wreaths, earning him the coveted title of Lavender King. Her ideas of cross-pollinating daisies had come from him, as had the belief that she could purchase The Painted Daisy and weave roses into wedding wreaths after taking only one class at a community center on floral arranging. He was the one who’d told her why her parents had stopped coming to Washington too.

She climbed the steps of the old farmhouse where she used to live and tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked, and she entered the house. The air was hot and stale, scented with dust and old wood. There was no furniture in the living room, dining room, or kitchen as she scanned from the front of the house to the back.

Morning light poured in through the wall of windows in the back, and shadows stretched long on the dirty floors. She stepped, leaving evidence of her presence, her fingers trailing along the chair rail she’d installed with Granddad the first summer she’d come alone. She’d almost nailed her fingers to the wall, and a sad chuckle came from her throat.

With two fingers, she pushed in the door to the bathroom and found it exactly as she remembered it. Sink, toilet, bathtub. Granddad used to have purple bath mats and a shower curtain with lavender plants on it. Now everything was just white upon white.

The door next to it led down a hall to three bedrooms, but she didn’t go that way. She wasn’t sure she was ready to see where she’d stayed when she came, nor the master bedroom where Granddad and Grandma had lived for so long.

Instead, she trekked to the back door and turned to go upstairs. With two bedrooms and a bathroom up here, she and Aaron had enjoyed relative privacy in the first few years of their marriage. Gretchen had cooked dinner for her husband and her granddad every evening, and the memories flowed over her, around her, and through her until she couldn’t contain them anymore.

Drew found her in the bedroom where she’d nursed Dixie for those first few months of her life, tears streaming down her face.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, his voice soft yet urgent at the same time. “What’s wrong? What are you doing in here?” He knelt beside her and gathered her close, the scent of him masculine and comforting. She clung to his strong bicep, sure as the sun would rise the following day that she needed to be out here on this farm. Permanently.

He wiped her tears and looked into her face. “Talk to me, love. What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong. I…just miss my granddad. And there are powerful memories here.” She pointed to the corner where her rocking chair had sat. “There used to be a chair there, where I’d sit and rock Dixie to sleep.”

Drew stroked her hair, his jaw tightening. “You’re not hurt?”

She quieted her emotions and swiped at her face. “No, I’m not hurt.” She’d never felt so safe as she did within the circle of his arms. “I don’t feel like going into the shop today.”

“Really? It’s Saturday. One your busiest days.”

Her reality set in, and she knew he was right. “Yeah, I should go.”

“I’ll come with you until this afternoon. I don’t have to be to work until two.”

“That would be nice.”

He helped her stand, and she took him over to the window where she’d stood so many times, overlooking the farm and wondering how she could follow Aaron to Seattle. She told Drew about it, and he kept her close to his side, his arm strong and secure on her shoulder.

“But I did,” Gretchen said. “We left Hawthorn Harbor, and though I only lived a couple of hours away, I only came back to visit a few times.” She looked at him, fresh tears pricking her eyes. “Granddad must’ve been so lonely.”

“I’m sure he was okay,” Drew said.

But there was no way for him to know that. Gretchen sniffled and watched the lavender wave in the perpetual breeze on the cape of Washington. “My parents stopped coming up here because Granddad and my father got in a fight. It was too hard for my mother to come alone, so she stopped coming too. My brother stayed away. Only I kept coming, year after year. And then I stopped too.” She shook her head, the regret she’d harbored for so long finally surfacing.

“What was the fight about?”

“Money. Granddad had a lot of money, and my parents didn’t. They never did, and it became a real source of contention between them.” An inkling of an idea started in her head. Maybe her granddad would loan her the money to buy back the farm. Maybe she could get him to come live with her this time.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured close to her ear.

She drew in a deep breath to infuse strength into her soul. “Tell me about the job last night.”

“Big pileup on the highway leading out of Bell Hill. I had to use the hydraulic spreader to get the door off to get this woman out of her truck.”

Gretchen peered up at him. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was.” Drew gave her half a smile and resumed gazing out the window. “You know, I’ve always felt a little unsettled here in Hawthorn Harbor. Don’t get me wrong, I love this town, and I’ve learned I don’t belong anywhere but here. But I’ve often wished there were a few more emergencies.” He chuckled, but the sound was dark. “Ridiculous, right? I’m wishing for bad luck for the people of this town.”

Gretchen wasn’t quite sure what to say to soothe him. It simply seemed like a morning of reflection. “Was everyone okay in the end?” she asked.

“Yes, no casualties.”

“Well, that’s something. And you saved another woman.” She nudged him with her hip. “You seem to be good at that.”

That elicited a chuckle from him, and he kneaded her closer. “I learned something last night too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

But he didn’t continue. She twisted to look at him, the handsome lines of his face, his eyes a bit brighter for some reason. “Are you going to tell me what you learned?”

He finally tore his eyes from the lavender fields and looked at her. “The woman, she was with her boyfriend in the truck. She told me she wished she would’ve expressed her feelings for him earlier. And right there, while she was strapped to the stretcher and his leg was bleeding, she told him she loved him.”

Gretchen’s heart skipped a beat, and then another, then rushed forward at triple speed. “Oh,” she managed. “Wow.”

Drew leaned down, his lips touching her cheek. “And it made me realize I haven’t been very forthcoming with how I feel about you.”

Gretchen’s eyes drifted closed, and she couldn’t form any coherent words. She gripped his upper arm and was extremely glad she did when his lips finally touched hers. A sigh waved through her whole body, and the next touch of his mouth to hers became a real kiss. Gretchen had forgotten what it felt like to be kissed so completely, by someone who could convey how much he cherished her with such a simple gesture.

When the kiss ended, she pressed her cheek to his chest and listened to the strong, steady beat of his heart, hoping with every cell in her body that they could be together for a long, long time.

They spent an hour in the flower garden, where he kissed her one more time before driving her into town so she could open the shop.

“How will you get home from work?” she asked.

“I’ll call my brother or something.” He didn’t seem too concerned about it as he took the extra barstool at her workbench.

“So.” She set several yellow roses on the bench. “Should we talk about Dixie?”

“What about Dixie?”

She busied her hands with clipping stems and stretching floral tape. “She’s the main reason I haven’t dated since Aaron’s death.”

“Ah, I see. And now you’re worried about how she’ll take…us.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not really.”

She glanced up at him, surprised. “No?”

“She’s a great kid, and I think she already likes me, so no. I’m not too worried about her.” He abandoned the box of floral pins he’d been spinning. “Are you?”

“Yeah, a little.” Her voice squeaked a bit too much to be casual. “I’ve never dated anyone, and I don’t want her to think I’m replacing her dad.”

“Do you want to talk to her together?”

Relief washed through her. “Yes, I think we should.”

“When?”

“Are you working tomorrow?”

“Sunday is usually super slow or complete chaos, depending on who decides to roast or fry something they haven’t before. I’m on the morning shift.”

Gretchen giggled at his assessment of how people came to need emergency help. “How about tomorrow night then, before your mom’s Sunday dinner with everyone from town?”

Drew laughed, the sound so wonderful it bathed Gretchen in happiness. “She does invite a lot of people to Sunday dinner, doesn’t she?”

“I kinda like it,” Gretchen admitted. “As long as I can escape to the porch swing when I get overwhelmed.”

The bell on the front door sounded, and Gretchen left her yellow rose bouquet to go see who it was. Linnie Robbins, sporting a brand new—huge—diamond. Another wedding she needed to pay the bills, so she hitched her smile in place and gave Linnie the information paper she needed to make sure she got what she wanted and knew what payments were due when.

But all she could think was Another wedding that isn’t mine.

She returned to the workroom and found Drew concentrating on his phone, his eyebrows drawn into a frown. It seemed they both needed a day to get through some personal things, so she settled back to work silently, her thoughts rotating around Drew’s kiss and what it might mean for her in the future.

“Hey, I need to run out for a few minutes.” Drew stood and headed for the door without looking at her.

“Oh, okay. Where are you going?” Gretchen focused on pinning the bouquet together, but she still saw Drew turn back and flash her a fast smile.

“I’ll bring back lunch.” With that, he headed into the alley, and she realized that his statement wasn’t really an explanation at all.