by Kate Angell
“I’m feeling it,” Sidney said, her stomach clenching with every overemphasized word. “I promise.”
“Oh, I don’t think you really do,” the woman said, rising to every bit of her five-foot-four inches and managing to strike fear in spite of her petite size. “Not yet, anyway. Not until it comes out of your paycheck.”
“Orchid, please,” Sidney breathed, ignoring the usual need to smirk over the ridiculous name. She didn’t have the luxury of smirking. She didn’t have the leeway of any of the smart-ass comebacks she usually had. For once, she had to toe the hated line.
“Don’t Orchid me,” she said. “I trusted you with this. You swore you were ready. I believed in you.”
Oh, there it was. The cursed belief in her. The trust. Fuck all that, actually. It was the paycheck threat that made Sidney’s scalp sweat and added to the fine sheen of perspiration that was making her fake silk blouse stick to her back under her jacket.
Sidney had been an associate at the Boston law offices of Finley and Blossom for longer than any of the others. Every other associate in the building had fewer years in the company, and they looked up to her and her kick-ass work ethic. Everyone she’d started with, however, was now a junior partner. It was beginning to be a thing.
Not because she didn’t do good work. She did great work. She did phenomenal work. Sidney Jensen was a workaholic who put everything she had into every case. Lawyers wanted her on their cases. She was a research savant and a machine who didn’t believe in stopping until the job was done. Every case she worked on, however, had a partner being the one to sell/lead/hold hands with the client. Which worked out fabulously, since Sidney was not blessed with those particular skills. She didn’t go to college to learn how to babysit adults, she went to learn the law.
That being said, the partner she’d been paired with from the day she landed there, Orchid Blossom, now senior and name partner although only five years older than her, had decided it was time for Sidney to put on her big-girl babysitting panties and learn how to lead a case. If she ever wanted to move up and not be a career associate. Translation: if she wanted to keep her job.
So when Orchid handed her one of her long-term clients to set up a simple merger—on her own, from start to finish, Sidney took a deep breath and swallowed her pride at being handed such an entry-level case. That was okay. But she’d show her boss. Sidney worked double-time to prove that she was more than the researcher with an eye for detail and an unstoppable work ethic. And also to show that she didn’t have to be the awkward sometimes-too-abrupt-or-too-harsh rambling-at-the-mouth attorney who turned polished and refined Bostonians away. She had to step out of her comfort zone.
And she had. Straight into the crosshairs between two CEOs with control issues and the need to dominate the other side. They didn’t need pristine documents and extraordinary organization as negotiations fell apart; they needed body blocks and a referee. And before the meeting was done, they needed a new lawyer, because the firm of Finley and Blossom was no longer retained. And Sidney was left hyperventilating into her cold coffee.
“I know,” Sidney said, licking her lips as she tried to placate her boss. “And I know I let you down, but—”
“Let me down?” Orchid said. “Carson Foods was my biggest client. One of the first of my career—I’ve had them forever. I gave them to you because they were so well established you couldn’t screw it up!”
Sidney blanched at the words, feeling the air physically push her back. “You gave me a bullshit case?”
“I gave you something to cut your teeth on,” Orchid said, curling her tiny fists at her sides. “And you chewed it up and vomited it all over my goodwill.”
Sidney couldn’t breathe. She’d been given a no-brainer, and she’d lost it. No matter how hard she had worked on the case, she’d lost it. Over—people skills. She should be a career associate. Hell, she should just be a paralegal and work in the research library with a table and a bottle of water.
She would not cry. She wouldn’t show weakness. Not in front of the woman she most wanted to be like. A woman who was a force in the courtroom and a calculating businesswoman. A woman who had lived her life named after a flower and was badass enough not to change it when she became a lawyer. Not even when she had to put it on the letterhead.
“Am I—” Sidney stopped to clear her throat. “Am I fired?” she asked, sitting up straighter and willing the clamps around her heart to ease up.
“By God, you should be,” Orchid said.
Should. She said should, not yes. “So—”
“I don’t have the manpower to let you go right now,” Orchid said, and Sidney felt her chest relax the tiniest bit. “Especially now that I have to try to mend fences with Carson Foods.” She sat back down in a huff and smoothed hair that hadn’t dared to move from the severe bun. “I’ll have Monica cancel my trip to Maine this weekend.”
“Your vacation?” Sidney said.
“It was a work vacation,” Orchid said. “Heading upstate for a spa weekend with some old Harvard friends after stopping to help out my uncle with a legal issue.”
“What legal issue?”
Orchid shook her head as if the topic were a buzzing fly. “A lease agreement he wants out of,” she said.
“Let me do it,” Sidney blurted. “The lease agreement, not the spa thing,” she amended. “I can leave now. Since you have to stay and fix my crap, let me go deal with—”
“ ‘My crap’?” Orchid finished. She laughed sarcastically. “You expect me to unleash you on my family now?”
“Come on, it’s a lease agreement,” Sidney said. “That’s first-year finance, and I’ve done dozens of them.” She paused and averted her eyes. “And I doubt your uncle will stop being your uncle if I fail.”
“He already doesn’t like me, so I doubt it’ll matter much,” Orchid said, blowing out a breath. “Fine.” Then her eyes landed hard on Sidney’s. “Still. You screw this one up, you don’t deserve to even work in the mail room.”
Sidney swallowed hard as she nodded. “Got it.”
“Sidney,” Orchid said. “You’re good. You know the details, you know everything on paper, but you’ve got to get out of your own way and learn how to work with people.”
She could wipe the floor with this woman’s skinny ass, and she knew it. Orchid wouldn’t have half the successes she had without Sidney’s all-nighters digging up information for her cases—force or not. And here she was talking down to her like she was an errant child.
“I’ll get you the file. Talk to Monica about the reservations,” Orchid said. “It’s a little over an hour’s drive, so leave early in the morning.”
“On Saturday?” Sidney asked. “Wait, wouldn’t you be handling the business part today? Or Monday? Who’s doing business on the weekend?”
“The kind of people who have pumpkin festivals and bake sales today,” Orchid said. “It’s Halloween. And my uncle lives in Mayberry. They live for that shit. And if you want to catch them all happy with their pants down, you don’t wait till Monday.” She picked up a pen to write something, then looked back up and pointed it at her. “Didn’t you grow up in a small town?”
Sidney felt the jab to her gut, accompanied by the oh-so-familiar dread.
“Yes.”
“Then you know how it is,” Orchid said. “It’s not about formal appointments or faxing paperwork to some office building. You go ring their doorbell over front porch coffee. Use that ridiculous Carolina accent of yours to charm them.”
“Maine is farther north than we are now.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Orchid said, dismissing the comment with a flip of her hand. “You reek of small town. Smile. Pet the dog. Adore the baby.”
Sidney felt ill. You reek of small town.
“Then again, this might not be the best idea,” Orchid said.
“Yes, it is,” Sidney said before her tongue could rebel and agree with her boss. “I can do this. There’s actually a town named Mayber
ry?”
“Moonbright,” Orchid said, already flipping through a stack of papers, Sidney’s plight losing her interest. “Moonbright, Maine. Same thing if you ask me.”
Chapter 2
Sawyer stepped out of his truck and shut the door behind him, ignoring the squeak and grind that was getting louder every day. Some WD-40 would take care of that. Miss Amelia Rose would tell him a new truck would take care of it better, but he didn’t need a new truck. Old Betsy had gotten him around just fine for the last decade. She helped him make a living and never nagged, complained, or got jealous of other women. Well, she wasn’t particularly fond of that two-wheeled thing under the tarp in his garage—the thing he’d arrived in town on twelve years earlier. Betsy would probably be jealous if he still rode that, but that had gone by the wayside. Another lifetime ago. Another him.
He glanced back at the two white packages sitting neatly on the seat. Two beautiful steaks wrapped in butcher paper and just waiting to be lovingly caressed on the grill. Sawyer blew out a breath and pulled off his dirty cap, scrubbing fingers through his hair. After the grind he’d had today, getting everything ready at the cottage, he couldn’t wait to just collapse into his recliner with a good hunk of meat.
He walked into the post office with his orange slip. The bullshit one that said they’d tried to deliver something but he wasn’t there. Bullshit, because it was addressed to the Rose Cottage as it should be, and someone was always there.
Scrubbing a hand over the scruff that had covered his jaw since morning, he pasted on a smile. It was important to appear gracious as he approached the counter if he wanted his supplies to keep coming in. Even though it usually meant trying not to fall into the cleavage.
“Hey, Sawyer,” said the pretty blonde with the medieval bar-wench dress.
Okay. So, more cleavage than usual.
“Hey, Tina,” he said, his slower South Carolina drawl making her big blue eyes darken like he’d drooled honey. Shit, he needed to learn how to talk like a Northerner one day. “Interesting costume choice.”
“Like it?” she asked, striking a pose, as if her boobs needed help with that. “I’m wearing this to the Renaissance Festival in Bangor next week, so I thought it’d make a great Halloween costume, too.”
“And Chuck is okay with it?” Sawyer asked. The postmaster struck him as a bit more conservative, having gone through a major religious phase a few years back.
“He likes when we dress up for holidays,” she said, propping up her—bustier. “Says it’s more customer-oriented.”
Sawyer chuckled and raised an eyebrow. “There’s one perspective.”
She leaned forward on her elbows with an innocent look he didn’t buy, since her nipples were damn close to winking at him. “So, did you come in here to see what I’d be wearing?”
“Got one of these again,” he said, waving the slip before the conversation went in a direction he wouldn’t be able to angle out of.
Tina at least had the decency to shake her head and look amazed, even though he knew damn good and well she had orchestrated it.
“I don’t know what’s been going on with that route lately,” she said, standing back up. “I’m so sorry, Sawyer. Let me go look for your package.”
“Appreciate that,” he said.
Tina lifted her hair and fanned her neck with it as she sauntered slowly to the back.
“Whew, they are cranking the heat a little too high today,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
Sawyer shook his head and headed to the post office boxes, pulling out a key for box number 262.
Twelve years he’d lived in Moonbright, and most of those had been decent and upright. The first few—well, he’d arrived at eighteen years of age, on a motorcycle, with a chip on his shoulder and an attitude. Back then, he was servicing cars by day and any woman he could get his hands on by night.
Tina was one of them. Three years older and a hell of a lot more experienced, she taught him plenty, but he did his part, too. Enough that she’d been shoving her tits in his face ever since.
It was a hot time in his life for sure, but then he grew up. Met Amelia Rose, who put him on the straight and narrow. Got a permanent job as a groundskeeper at her B&B, bought a house, made a life. Maybe a boring one. Maybe kind of a secluded one, but that was okay. He was good with that. Relationships—they weren’t real. He learned early in life that forever was a lie. And Sawyer didn’t have time for lies.
He also didn’t have time for women like Tina anymore. Women who still dangled themselves before him but with an agenda and a timetable. At this time in their lives, they were either still single and desperate, or divorced and looking for Mister Number Two, and Sawyer wanted no part of either.
The little door of the box swung open, revealing the normal contents. Junk mail. Flyers. A couple of bills. Nothing personal. There wouldn’t be. Outside of Moonbright, Sawyer Finn didn’t exist. And no one in this town was going to send him mail unless it was a bill.
“You got a big one here,” Tina cooed as she came back in, caressing a long box in a way that would probably mortify any other woman. Tina wasn’t any other woman. She also wasn’t known for boundaries. “Heavy, too.”
Sawyer really needed to start using UPS.
She shoved the box onto the counter with a dramatic flair. “Here you go,” she said, letting her chest rest against the box as she blinked up at him through long eyelashes.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling. “Have fun.”
“What are you doing for Halloween?” she asked as he started his turn. “Going to the Rose Cottage party?”
“Me?” Sawyer shrugged and threw out another endearing grin. “Oh, you know me, Tina, I don’t get into all that. But I’ll say, it looks pretty good. Been working all day to get the place looking perfect for that.”
“I think you’d make an amazing Hercules. All that lugging things around making your muscles all—”
“Hercules?” Sawyer laughed.
“Or Tarzan,” she added, fingering the little threads holding her boobs in.
“I’m really more of a Batman kind of guy,” Sawyer said.
“Too many clothes,” she whispered dramatically.
“Exactly,” he said, chuckling as he made for the door.
“Maybe I’ll see you there, anyway?” she called after him as the door swung closed.
“Not in this lifetime,” he said under his breath as he set the box in the truck bed.
Halloween antics weren’t his thing. Any holiday antics, really, but this one always got under his skin more than the others. The dressing up. The pretending. It was all bullshit. How he landed in a town named Moonbright that celebrated all that business—with street names like Pumpkin Boulevard, Haystack Lane, and All Souls Avenue—was beyond him.
But it was just a day. Well—a month, really, with residents getting giddy early and his employer needing all the yard decorations out as soon as the calendar said October. This year, especially, since Amelia Rose had hired a party planner to do up the place even crazier.
“Sawyer,” said a gruff voice behind him.
He turned to see the jovial, lined face of old Mr. Madigan as he ambled down the sidewalk with his cane.
“Hey, Mr. Madigan,” Sawyer said, pulling his dirty cap off to scrub fingers through his hair. “How’s it going?”
The old man just smiled and nodded, focusing on his steps. Two other people smiled and nodded his way before he got in the truck, and it was a good feeling. He’d made a life here. Something real. Something much more real than the one he’d been born into.
“Mr. Finn!” said a little girl, running up to his door as he lowered the window.
“Madeline!” yelled a female voice from the sidewalk down the way. A voice that maybe wasn’t quite as happy to see him.
“Hey, Miss Madeline,” Sawyer said, grasping the little girl’s hand as she stepped up on the running board. “How many feet did you grow this week?”
“Five!�
� she exclaimed. “And a half!”
“Well, of course the half,” he responded, glancing toward her mom as she approached.
“Look!” Madeline said excitedly, pointing at a gap in her smile, front and center. “They finally came out! Both of them!”
“Good for you!” Sawyer said.
“Madeline,” said her mom, advancing on her daughter like he might give her poisoned candy. “Get in the salon, they’re waiting on you.”
“I’m gonna be Medusa,” Madeline said, her gappy grin going huge to match the sparkle in her big brown eyes. She was so damn adorable. As other people’s kids went.
“Medusa?”
“Yeah, they’re gonna make my hair look like snakes!” she said, stepping down.
“Cool!” Sawyer laughed as she ran into the salon.
Her mom hesitated on the curb, looking at the door her daughter just entered as if it had eaten her alive.
“I remember when princesses and ninja turtles were all the rage,” he said, making her turn.
She smiled, her eyes casting away quickly. “Yeah,” she said. “Well, good to see you, Sawyer.” She turned to follow her daughter’s path.
“Carol,” he said. “We’re okay, right? We’re still friends?”
The pretty brunette managed about four shades of embarrassed before nodding, and that made Sawyer wish he hadn’t said a word.
Carol Sims had been another one of his early conquests. She had been a wild-child college girl breaking out of a rich family legacy, wanting to break some rules. He’d been happy to help.
She grew up, too, got married, had a kid, had another one, and then found out her husband preferred different body parts. Carol got the house, a sprawling ranch-style creation on ten acres that required upkeep, and looked up Sawyer to do a little work on the side. Problem was, she was angling for another kind of side work, as well. And his stupid ass didn’t see it coming. After a month and a half of twice-a-week yard duty and Madeline following him around like a constantly chattering puppy, he arrived one afternoon to find that the kid had been sent to her dad’s for the day and Carol—Carol was dressed and ready. Posed in her bed. Crotchless panties, leather everything.
