by Noelle Adams
The Reunion
Second Chance Flower Shop, Book Three
Noelle Adams
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About The Reunion
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Epilogue
Excerpt from The Remake
About Noelle Adams
About The Reunion
AS THE YOUNGEST OF her large family, Skye Devereaux has tried to be taken seriously all her life. Despite her age and her successful career, her family and half her small town still treat her like a little girl.
She's been in love with Matthew Jenkins, her brother's best friend, since she was twelve years old, and he still thinks about her like a little girl too.
She's tired of it. She's had enough. She's going to prove to Matthew and to the rest of the world—and maybe also to herself—that she deserves more than being patted on the head. A high school reunion that brings Matthew back to town is the perfect opportunity to show him she's all grown up.
She just needs to figure out how.
One
AS FAR AS SKYE DEVEREAUX was concerned, eight o’clock in the morning was the ideal time to rise.
It wasn’t so late that she slept through her whole morning, but it also wasn’t painfully early. She didn’t keep regular office hours and got a lot of her work done in the late evening, so she rarely went to bed before midnight. If left to her own devices, she nearly always woke up around eight with enough sleep to feel ready for the day.
Unfortunately, for the past month, she’d been having to get up at six forty-five.
She didn’t like it. She had to set an alarm, which blared at her every morning with a rude insistence that made her grumpy before she’d set her feet on the floor. She wanted her extra hour and fifteen minutes of sleep. It was such a small thing to expect, and the world was brutally unfair for taking it away from her. She’d been getting up early for way too long now, and she was over it.
Over it.
Unfortunately, being mentally ready for her new schedule to be finished didn’t actually alter reality, so on a cloudy Friday morning in September, she slammed her hand down in the general vicinity of her phone and somehow managed to turn off the grating noise that had just broken through a very pleasant dream.
For a moment she was torn between closing her eyes again or doing what she knew she needed to do.
Duty or love or guilt or responsibility won the battle. She heaved herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, pushing back the covers so they wouldn’t tempt her.
She sat there for a minute. She was so short her feet didn’t even reach the old hardwood floor. She sat breathing and clearing her mind until she pictured her grandmother sitting by herself downstairs.
Skye got up. Stuck her feet into her soft red slippers. Grabbed a fuzzy purple bathrobe from the chair where she’d thrown it the day before and tied it on over her tank and cotton pajama pants. Suitably girded for the morning, she left her room and stopped in the hall bathroom before she went downstairs.
At seventeen, Skye had gone to college like the rest of her friends, but she’d never actually landed on a plan for her future. She’d consecutively majored in education, psychology, business, social work, philosophy, and history until she’d finally ended up with a women’s studies degree that allowed her to cobble together a lot of the courses she’d already taken. Since she wasn’t interested in graduate school and she didn’t have any specific skills, she’d had a hard time finding a job after college, finally taking a receptionist job near Azalea, the small town in Virginia where she’d been raised. It had been an uninspiring position, but she’d been fine with it. She’d earned enough to support herself, although not enough to cover her spending habits.
So two years later, when the local business she worked for folded, she’d been left with way too much credit card debt and no job. She’d had to move back home with her parents, which was where she was still living even though the business she’d started with her two best friends a few years ago had become quite profitable.
“Mornin’, Gran!” she said cheerfully as she came downstairs. Her grandmother, as always, was sitting in a rocking chair by a window that looked out into the yard with a good view of the bird feeder.
“Good morning, hon. How’d you sleep?”
“Just fine. I’m getting your tea right now.”
“Thank you. No hurry at all.”
Gran never asked for anything, but Skye knew she’d been waiting for at least a half hour now for her second cup of tea, which she wouldn’t get until Skye got up to make it for her.
Last month, Gran had had knee surgery, and the recovery was slow. She still used a walker to get around, and she had trouble maneuvering a mug of hot tea back to her chair in the mornings. Skye’s mom would get her the first cup before she and Skye’s dad left in the mornings, and Skye would always get Gran her second cup, which was why she’d been getting up at six forty-five for the past month instead of eight.
As she reheated the water in the electric kettle and pulled an English breakfast tea bag out of a box, Skye called, “How are the birds this morning?”
“Well, those feisty male finches got into a knock-down, drag-out fight, but then a red-bellied woodpecker swooped in and scared them away.”
Skye chuckled. “Sounds like the finches deserved it, fighting like that.” She finished the cup of tea with milk and sugar before bringing it into the living room for Gran.
“Thank you, Skye. You know you don’t have to wake up early just to make me another cup of tea.”
“It’s no problem.” Not for the world would Skye let her grandmother know it was a struggle to get up early. “It’s good for me to get up at this time. Gives me an extra hour of the day.”
“If you say so.” Gran’s voice had a knowing edge—a long-tried, dryly amused wisdom that was always underlying her kindness.
“I do say so.” Skye was smiling as she turned back to the kitchen to get herself a cup of coffee. Before she’d taken more than two steps, however, she jerked to a stop at the sight of neatly folded clothes in a laundry basket.
Her laundry basket. Her clothes.
She went over and picked up the little white T-shirt on top of the stack. She raised it to her face and inhaled, breathing in a familiar floral scent.
With a rush of outrage that momentarily blurred her vision, she very slowly placed the T-shirt back on the top of the pile.
“Your mom did your laundry this morning.”
“I see that.” It took effort, but Skye managed to keep the frustration out of her voice.
“Did she use fabric softener?”
“Yes.” Skye’s mouth tightened. She breathed deeply for a minute.
“She was trying to be nice,” Gran murmured.
“I know that.” She couldn’t turn around, not without letting her grandmother see how she was feeling.
“She isn’t thinking in the morning. She’s always in a flurry.”
“I know that too.”
“I didn’t realize it was your laundry she was doing. Not until she was folding
it. I would have reminded her not to use the fabric softener.”
Skye turned around and saw her grandmother’s blue eyes were both sharp and understanding. “I know, Gran. Please don’t worry about it. It’s fine. I’ll just do it again.” With a sigh, she lifted the basket and carried it down into the basement to where the washer and dryer were located.
Opening the lid to the washer, she turned on the water and stared as it started to fill the basin. The heavily scented fabric softener that her mother used always bothered Skye. It gave her a little headache and made her skin itch. She’d asked her mother over and over again not to use it on her clothes. She’d told her mother over and over again that she’d rather do her own laundry.
But Skye was the youngest of her parents’ eight children. She might be twenty-six right now, but they still treated her like a child. Her mother didn’t listen to her. Didn’t take her seriously. Didn’t believe she was capable of taking care of herself.
Maybe she’d made mistakes when she was younger. Of course she had. She’d spent too much money on designer shoes and purses and expensive coffee drinks. She’d been unemployed for more than a year, unable to find a job in a mostly rural area with her dubious credentials. She’d had to move back in with her parents.
But everyone made mistakes sometimes. She’d done well for herself since then, helping her friends launch Second Chance Flower Shop into a huge success. She wasn’t a little girl. One day it would be nice if her parents would recognize it.
And maybe not do her laundry with the fabric softener she hated.
Her eyes burned with emotion for a few seconds, but it was from an exhausted frustration more than deep pain. She knew her family loved her. She was blessed in a lot of ways. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself because her mom wanted to do her laundry.
Some people would do anything for a mother who wanted to help that way.
When she’d put the clean clothes back into the washer, she returned upstairs to finally get her cup of coffee and sit in a cozy chair near her grandmother to check her phone.
She pulled up her bank account first and comforted herself with the sight of her savings. She wasn’t a penniless waif anymore. Her friend Ria had inherited a local flower shop, which she, Skye, and their other friend Madeline had transformed into a thriving business in the past two years. A lot of it was because of Skye’s social media savvy. She wasn’t just along for a ride with her two talented friends. They couldn’t have done what they’d done without Skye.
She reminded herself of that fact as she closed out her banking app and pulled up Instagram instead.
As if she’d read Skye’s mind, Gran said just then, “You know, you’ve done so well with the flower shop that I’m sure you could afford to buy a little house of your own.”
Skye nodded as she looked up from her phone. “Yeah. I think so. I’ve been trying to save up enough to buy something outright. I don’t want to take on any more debt after what happened before.”
“I understand completely. Do you think you’ll be able to buy something soon?”
“I think so. Housing isn’t very expensive around here. One of the perks of living in a small town.”
“So why don’t you?”
“I will.”
“You’re not staying here because of me, are you?”
Gran had always been way too sharp. It was impossible to hide anything from her. Skye had been just on the verge of moving out—wanting to feel like an independent adult again—when her grandmother had fallen and torn up her knee.
Skye’s parents both worked in the public school system—her mother as principal of the local high school and her father as football coach/shop teacher/driver’s ed instructor. They already paid someone to sit with Gran in the afternoons. If Skye wasn’t around to help in the mornings, they’d have to pay someone full time.
“Of course not,” Skye lied with a wide smile. “I’m just not quite ready to move yet.”
“Uh-huh.” It didn’t sound like Gran believed her. “I can see how hard it is to live with your folks when you’re a grown-up. I just don’t want you to prolong it for me.”
“I’m not. I’m already looking around at houses. When I find something I like, I’ll move.”
“Okay. Good. Not that I don’t love having you around. I just want you to be happy.”
“I want to be happy too.”
In general, Skye thought she was happy. She just didn’t always feel like the world took her seriously. Part of it was looking like a doll—short and slim with reddish hair and too-big blue eyes. But part of it was because it had been a long time since she’d felt like she’d lived her own life instead of just being the youngest in the Devereaux family.
That was how her family saw her. As the baby. And that was how the whole town identified her—the youngest of the Devereaux clan.
Sometimes she daydreamed about moving to a new city where no one knew anything about her. She could start over. Be exactly who she wanted to be. But her career was here. Her family was here. All her friends were here. She just couldn’t see herself moving right now.
All she really wanted was for people to see her as a competent, adult person and not a cute little girl.
When she focused again on her phone, the first thing she saw on Instagram was a photo of Madeline Jenkins with her brother, Matthew. The sight of Matthew’s square, handsome face, light brown hair, and serious gray eyes made Skye feel even more like a silly little girl.
She’d had a crush on Matthew ever since he and Madeline had moved to Azalea when Skye was in middle school. So many years of staring at him, swooning over him, saying embarrassing things and occasionally writing him ridiculous love letters.
He’d never done anything mean to her, despite the fact that she must have pestered him with her obvious adoration. He usually just patted Skye on the head like she was a cute child who had done something funny.
Her heart still pounded at nothing more than the sight of his face, but Skye wasn’t going to be stupid and immature anymore. Not in anything. Not in her life decisions and not even around Matthew.
He lived in Richmond now. He was doing well as an architect. She didn’t see him very often anymore, but he was coming to town tomorrow to help Skye’s brother Tyler work on an old barn on the Devereaux property they were converting to an apartment.
Skye’s cheeks flushed as she thought about seeing Matthew again, but it was finally time for her to grow up.
She was going to put away all childish things at last. Everything that made her feel silly and small.
Including her crush on Matthew.
MATTHEW JENKINS HAD moved to Azalea when he was in eighth grade, and his parents had stayed there until he and his sister were in college. His father worked as a manufacturing executive and got transferred every few years, so Matthew had never had a real hometown.
Azalea was as close as he got.
For the past few years, Matthew had lived in Richmond, focusing on his career and trying to shape a comfortable, controlled life for himself, but he was still hit with a heavy sense of familiarity, discomfort, and homecoming whenever he returned to Azalea.
He didn’t like it. That weird weight in his gut. The low-level buzzing in his chest. He wasn’t even sure what it was. Had he been left to his own devices, he probably wouldn’t visit Azalea very often—if only to avoid that feeling—but he still had friends and his only sister there. He might not be the nicest guy around, but he didn’t want to be a jerk.
So when they asked him to come, he came. Always.
That was why he was spending his Saturday helping his friend Tyler Devereaux convert an old outbuilding on his family’s property to an apartment.
Matthew was an architect and was also good with power tools, so his friends often asked for his help with their various construction projects. He didn’t mind. He liked to have substantive things to do. It was a lot easier than being expected to hang around idly and socialize—something he’d alw
ays been bad at.
So he’d come to Azalea several times over the past few months to help Tyler get the work done. They were almost finished. Today they’d install the kitchen and hopefully have time to get started on the painting.
As he and Tyler carried a small refrigerator into the building, Matthew wondered for the fifth or sixth time where Skye was. She lived in the main house with her parents, but her car wasn’t parked in its normal place. She was usually lurking around when Matthew came to visit, so it was strange that she wasn’t there.
Not that it mattered. He was just curious.
Tyler’s younger sister, Skye, had had an obvious crush on Matthew for as long as he’d known her. When he was in high school, he’d found it funny but vaguely annoying since she’d often follow him around. Now he was just used to it. She wasn’t tongue-tied (very often) around him anymore, and she didn’t do anything too awkward or obnoxious. But one of the foundational realities of his world was that Skye Devereaux was into him. It had always been that way, and he’d secretly assumed it always would.
So where the hell was she today?
When they’d fit the refrigerator into place, Matthew looked around the space with a nod of satisfaction. “This is looking good.”
“Yeah. It is.” Tyler was twenty-eight like Matthew was. He was a few inches shorter than Matthew’s five eleven and not quite as broad in the shoulders. He had blue eyes, a wide grin, and a slight dusting of freckles on his face—just like his little sister. “All we need now is the paint. Skye said she’d help with that.”
Matthew’s heart gave a little jump of interest. Since her name had been mentioned, he was now allowed to ask casually, “That’s good. Where is she today anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Tyler said with a shrug that made clear his lack of interest in his sister’s daily whereabouts. “Work or something, I guess. She said to text her when we were ready to paint and she’d come to help. You can take off if you want. It’s still pretty early, and Skye and I can whip through the painting quick.”
