“I should have kissed him.”

“Who?”

“The man from the wedding,” Summer said wistfully. She was having breakfast with her friend Poppy on her back porch the next morning, looking out across the gorgeous golden sands and blue ocean of Sweetbriar Bay. But for some reason, memories of the not-bartender wouldn’t shift from her mind. Like how that scruffy winter beard hugged his chiseled jaw . . . or when his stern expression had melted into a heart-stopping smile.

It was probably the reason he walked around with that remote stare all the time; to stop women like her falling at his feet the moment he flashed those pearly whites.

“I should have yanked him over the bar and kissed him right there,” Summer declared. “Or booked the two of us a room upstairs. I would have, too, a few years ago, before the life got drained out of me. Young Summer was so much more fun.”

Poppy laughed. “You’re not old yet,” she said, tossing a muffin at her. Summer caught it and took a bite.

“I’m not young, either,” she said. “What happened to us? We used to have all kinds of wild adventures.”

“Speak for yourself.” Poppy grinned. “I was always in bed with a good book by ten.”

“You were the worst wing-woman,” Summer agreed. “And now look at you: all settled into domestic bliss with your real-life romantic hero.”

“I’m not married yet!”

“I don’t know about that,” Summer corrected her. “Give him six months. He’s got that whole ‘for better or worse’ look about him.”

Poppy smiled, content. “He does, doesn’t he?”

Summer was teasing, but she was glad her best friend had finally found happiness. Poppy was a successful romance author who had come narrowly close to marrying the wrong man. Thankfully, she’d seen the light and taken a trip to Sweetbriar Cove to find inspiration—which had come in the form of the handsome contractor, Cooper.

“So when is this love shack of yours going to be ready?” Summer asked, looking to the gorgeous restored house Cooper had been working on. It was just next door to Poppy’s aunt’s place, and the reason they’d met in the first place.

“It’s almost finished. Cooper’s being a perfectionist, but we’ve already picked out a bunch of furniture. Which means I’ll need to pack up and move all my stuff down from the city.” Poppy grimaced.

“And by ‘stuff,’ you mean books,” Summer teased.

“You can talk!” Poppy protested. “You have more Tupperware and baking stuff than I do books.”

“OK, OK, we’re equal hoarders.” Summer smiled across at her, glad to be back with her bestie again. They’d spent hours last night just talking and laughing, catching up for lost time. “It’s so good to see you! It’s been months since we got to hang out properly.”

“It’s not all my fault,” Poppy said. “Your hours at the restaurant are impossible.”

“I know,” Summer sighed, thinking of the stress that awaited her back in the city. Even if she’d been doing him a favor by coming out here, Chef Andre would not appreciate being left without his star pastry chef, even for a couple of days. The thought of his tantrum was like a dark cloud looming over the day, but she refused to let it bring her down. “Which is why we have to make the most of today. I want maximum relaxation and girl time.”

“Deal,” Poppy agreed, as Cooper stepped out onto the porch. He was every inch the rustic man, complete with a plaid shirt and work boots that reminded Summer of the guy from the wedding . . .

Nope. No more of that.

“I brought coffee,” Cooper said, setting two cups on the table, immediately pulling her attention back to the matter at hand.

Summer whistled. “If this is your way of buttering me up, it’s working.”

Cooper laughed. “You saw through my plan.” He rested a hand on Poppy’s shoulder affectionately, and Summer watched Poppy tilt her head up to him and smile, her whole face lighting up.

She really was in love.

Summer felt a pang. She hadn’t looked at anyone like that in years—unless you counted her KitchenAid mixer. After the relationship with her ex, Danny, had ended, she’d been too gun-shy to try dating anyone in the culinary world again. And since she met precisely zero other men with her breakneck schedule, that left no time for dating at all.

“So what’s the plan for you two today?” Cooper asked, snagging a pancake from Poppy’s plate.

“I don’t care,” Summer answered. “As long as it has maximum relaxation. And the beach. Ooh, and lobster rolls.”

Poppy laughed. “How about all of the above? We could head up into Sweetbriar, I’ll show you around, pick up some snacks, and then we hit the beach.”

“I’m in,” Summer declared. “Let me go get my suit!”

They drove up the winding lane and parked by the town square. Poppy eagerly showed her around the quaint streets, pointing out the coffee shop, gift stores, and galleries. It was clear that she loved her new home, and Summer could see why.

“We could stop in at the pub and see if Riley’s around,” Poppy suggested, as they strolled in the sunshine. “I think you two would hit it off. He’s blonde and hot and very charming.”

“Thanks, but I’m more for the dark, mysterious type these days,” Summer said. Tall, dark, and British. “Besides, I’m only here for the weekend.”

“For now,” Poppy said with a sideways glance. “But I’ll work on that. Cooper’s not the only one with a secret plan. If I’m moving here, I’m going to need to see you more than once in a blue moon.”

“Well, now your plan’s not so secret anymore!” Summer looked around, taking in the lush green of the square, with its white gazebo and the spires of the church rising up into the leafy green backdrop. “Although, I see why you like it here. It’s so peaceful.”

“No traffic, no smog, no rude pedestrians shoving you out of the way on the sidewalk . . .” Poppy agreed. “Tempted yet?”

“Not unless there’s a Michelin-starred restaurant in need of a chef.”

“Hmm, I’ll have to work on that.”

They strolled over to the gift shop, and Summer was just picking out some cute napkins embroidered with tiny whales when her cellphone rang.

She checked the screen and grimaced. “It’s Chef Andre.”

“Don’t answer!” Poppy cried. “You’re off the clock!”

“I know.” Summer paused, guilty. “But what if there’s an emergency?”

She wavered, torn between freedom and duty. Duty won. She ducked out of the store and answered. “Hello?”

“Where are you?” Chef demanded. “Louis messed up the soufflés, that man is an imbecile. I need you back here, now!”

“It’s my weekend off—” she tried to protest, but Chef yelled right over her.

“There is no time off in my kitchen! You either get back here in time for service tonight, or you can find another place to work, do you understand?”

Summer’s heart dropped. “But I’m hours away!”

“Then you better come tout suite! Rapide!” Andre unleashed a torrent of French that she couldn’t keep up with, then there was silence. He’d hung up.

Summer slowly lowered the phone. Her glimpse of golden sands and lobster rolls disappeared on the salty breeze.

So much for a vacation.

“Let me guess, you have to go?”

She turned and found Poppy in the doorway with her shopping bags.

“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “That man is a toddler, he’ll fire me for sure if he doesn’t get his way—and blacklist me to all his chef friends. I can’t risk disobeying him.”

Poppy was disappointed, Summer could tell, but she gave a smile. “I understand. Another time, maybe. Fourth of July,” she suggested. “You could come for the long weekend. We’ll make s’mores on the beach.”

“Count me in,” Summer said, hugging her, even as she knew the odds were slim to none. Chef Andre always hosted a private party on the Fourth, full of big-shot diners, and she would be spending the night the way she always did: sweating over a hot stove, making two hundred individual mille-feuilles frosted in red, white, and blue.

“Come on, I’ll drive us back,” Poppy said, linking her arm through Summer’s. “And I’ll find the address of this great lobster shack on the highway. You can get one for the road!”

Summer packed up her things and said goodbye, then hit the road again in the delivery van. She looked out of the window longingly as the ocean sparkled along the shore, but there was no time to even stop to dip her toes in the water; she’d be lucky if she made it back to New York in time for dinner service even if she floored it the whole way.

Lobster rolls, on the other hand, were a must.

She turned off the highway, and tried to follow Poppy’s scribbled instructions, but she must have gotten turned around, because before she knew it, she reached a very familiar-looking crossroads. Summer paused, looking around. She could have sworn she’d driven this way before, on her way into Sweetbriar Cove. She reached for her phone to check the GPS, but the battery was dead—she must have forgotten to charge it overnight.

So, which way should she go?

They always did say you should take the road less traveled, so Summer turned right, driving along the road that dipped and wove past open fields and cute old cottages. She was supposed to be keeping the ocean to her right, so she made another turn, down a street marked Blackberry Lane, only to catch a glimpse of a ginger and white ball of fluff, sunning himself on some steps.

It was the kamikaze cat!

Summer pulled the van to a stop. OK, she was definitely lost now. She got out and looked around, trying to get her bearings.

The cat strolled over and rubbed against her ankles. “Oh, so now you’re playing nice.” Summer leaned down and scratched his ears, and was rewarded with a purr. “I should be glad you didn’t try to kill me this time.”

The cat stalked away, jumping up onto the low stone wall and sashaying around the back of the house.

Summer looked up and took the building in for the first time. It was a squat, two-story cottage with a stone facade and two large windows in front, papered over and dusty with age. The letters were faded and peeling, but when she came closer, she could make out the faint script, Fredricks & Sons, Pasties written on the glass.

It had been a shop, once upon-a-time. Summer put her nose to the glass and peered inside, but it was hard to make anything out, just a gloomy front room filled with boxes and old furniture piled in one corner. Summer felt a tug of curiosity. It looked like the place had been deserted for years, if the date on the yellowed newspaper was any indication, but it still looked like something out of a storybook: surrounded with overgrown blackberry bushes, roses growing wild over the low stone wall.

Summer looked around. The lane was empty: nothing but green hedges and the sound of gulls swooping lazily overhead. There was nobody to see her climb onto the low wall and follow the cat’s path around the back of the house.

Wasn’t she just thinking she should be more adventurous? And besides, it wasn’t trespassing if nobody was there to be trespassed against . . .

Summer hopped up onto the wall and followed it around the side of the house. The yard was so overgrown, it was hard to fight her way through the tangle of bushes, but soon she cleared the border, and found herself standing in the middle of a quiet wilderness, barely contained by a crumbling stone wall.

Summer looked around, delighted. She could see rosemary and thyme, apple trees, even the straggly vines of a tomato plant creeping up a broken-down trellis. Someone must have planted the garden carefully once, but years and nature had sent it sprawling into a riot of flowers and weeds.

And lavender. God, there were bushes of it, spilling over from the flower beds, clustered by the walls, growing wild and conquering everything in its path. Summer inhaled the floral scent, and closed her eyes, and was instantly transported back to a little village in the south of France. The place where she’d learned everything she knew—and loved—about baking.

Every pastry chef worth their soufflé had trained in France. So when Summer decided to defy her mother and go to culinary school, she knew there was only one place to be. She packed up her fraying tote bag and took off for Paris, ready to learn from the best. She slept in youth hostel dorms, picking up shifts at restaurants around the city to pay for night classes at Le Cordon Bleu, and used her vacations to backpack all over the place. With a cheap EuroRail pass and an appetite, she was determined to taste it all: churros in Barcelona, linzertorte in Berlin. If a passing traveler told her about an amazing meal they’d had, she’d pull out a map, hop on a train, and be there within days, crammed at a sidewalk table and digging into a slice of gateau, or sitting on the harbor-front enjoying a bowl of mussels from the morning’s catch. It was how she found herself climbing off the bus in a tiny village in Provence one day, armed only with a scribbled address, and the breathless recommendation of a chef who swore the fresh pain au chocolat were the best he’d ever known.

He was right. One mouthful, and Summer knew she’d found her calling—and her new mentor, in the shape of Madame Celine, a short, round, brisk woman who’d been baking the pastries almost all her life, just like her mother and grandmother before her. She’d taken some convincing, but thanks to Summer’s stubborn enthusiasm (and a well-timed rainstorm that cut all transport going out of the valley), she finally relented and gave Summer a job as her apprentice for the summer.

It couldn’t have been more different from her classical training. At Le Cordon Bleu, they were clear: baking was science. Summer learned to precisely follow every recipe to the letter, but with Madame Celine, there were no recipes. She knew every dish by heart, would improvise on a whim, and any time Summer asked why she was adding marjoram to the apricots, or throwing extra egg yolks into the cake batter, she’d just shrug and say, “Écoute le pain.”

Listen to the bread.

In other words, trust your instincts.

After spending all her life struggling against the rules, it was a revelation for Summer to realize she could simply throw them out. Sure, it led to some disasters (curried chocolate, anyone?) but she soon found that beneath all the noise and distractions, her instincts were good. Somehow, she knew what a dish needed, and how the smallest tweaks could make the flavors sing.

Sugar and butter, eggs and flour: from humble beginnings, a great adventure could begin.

Now, Summer breathed in the lavender and remembered that summer all over again, all the adventure and possibilities that had lain ahead. She wished she could have stayed and explored the garden longer, but Chef Andre was waiting, and if she showed her face a moment after dinner service started, there would be trouble. Still, she couldn’t resist picking an armful of the vivid purple stalks to take with her, to use in a frosting, maybe, or a batch of Madame Celine’s famous butter biscuits, light as air. Then Summer fought her way back through the bramble, said goodbye to the cat, and climbed into the van with a sigh.

Her vacation was over. The real world was waiting again.