Carriage Hill barn.
Felicity didn’t hesitate before she typed her response: On my way. We need to talk.
I’ll be here.
* * *
Felicity didn’t charge off to find Gabe. She needed to get her bearings first. It wasn’t just Nadia Ainsworth and whatever was going on with her—and between her and Gabe—but being around him, his energy and drive. She didn’t want to get sucked in and lose herself, or at least her focus. She had a high-profile event coming up in her hometown. She was working. She had a job to do.
She looked up the street to Smith’s, with its hanging baskets and pots of summer flowers on its front porch. A turkey club and peach pie could defuse a determined troublemaker, if that was what Nadia was. Let her take some time to calm down. Maybe their chat had helped her stop herself from spooling up further, whatever her true agenda for being in Knights Bridge.
Go back and join her for pie, after all?
Felicity shook her head. As tempting as Smith’s peach pie was, she wasn’t going back there. She spotted Christopher Sloan walking toward the popular restaurant from Main Street. He was the youngest of the five Sloan brothers, a firefighter in town. Heather, the only sister and the youngest of all six siblings, was in London for a year with her husband, a Diplomatic Security Service agent. Felicity remembered Brody Hancock from high school. He’d had a run-in with the Sloan boys back then. All in the past now. She’d never known what the fight was about. She hadn’t been part of that crowd. She’d always stood a bit apart, the banker’s daughter with good grades and a natural aversion to trouble.
Mark and Gabe had always been tight with the Sloans. Really, why couldn’t Gabe have stayed with one of them? Christopher was on his own and lived in the village. Surely he had space.
Of course, a Sloan hadn’t bought the old Flanagan place.
Gabe would be gone in a few days, and if his stay helped him get over any emotions about the property being out of Flanagan hands, that wasn’t a bad thing.
Felicity noticed her Rover was getting warm. She turned on the engine and rolled down the windows just as Evelyn Sloan walked up the street from her house. She was in her eighties, using a cane these days but otherwise in good shape. She was the widowed grandmother of the six Sloan siblings, still living on her own. She paused at Felicity’s old Land Rover. “I thought that was you. How are you, Felicity?”
“Doing well, Mrs. Sloan, thanks.”
“You can call me Evelyn. I don’t mind. I understand your parents are traveling a lot these days. Good for them. Go while you can.”
Felicity smiled. “They’re enjoying retirement.”
“They’ve earned it.” She leaned in closer, as if she had a secret to share. “I heard Gabe Flanagan is staying at your house on the river. Are you two back together?”
“We’ve always just been friends.” And for a while, not even that.
Evelyn frowned. “Just friends? Okay.” She straightened, adjusting her cane. “Have a nice afternoon. I don’t care for this hot weather, but it does feel nice on my old bones today. Back in the day I’d be tempted to take a dip in the river myself. Gabe stopped at the farm for a rope. I understand he plans to go out to your swimming hole on the river. You kids used to have a blast out there. It’s a lovely spot. Still, it’s never a good idea to swim alone.”
The “farm” wasn’t a working farm these days, its old barn instead the offices for Sloan & Sons, a respected, busy construction company in town owned and run by Evelyn’s son and his wife and grandchildren. Gabe had worked for them through high school and until he dropped out of college.
Felicity started to say something about swimming holes, but Evelyn was already on her way up the street. “A rope,” she said, rolling up her window. “Leave it to Gabe.”
Eight
On Wednesday, Gabe sat on the stone steps outside the spacious, airy, contemporary “barn” where he’d be speaking tomorrow. It was an impressive place, but he was more impressed with how happy, content and comfortable in her own skin Olivia Frost—now McCaffrey—was. She sat on the steps next to him. He hadn’t seen her since Mark and Jess’s wedding almost a year ago. Olivia had left Knights Bridge for Boston and a career in graphic design, but she’d always wanted to return home. From what Gabe had heard from Mark, she’d had a few knocks and kicks along the way, but she was here now, married, expecting a baby, enjoying her and Dylan’s new home and business ventures. Olivia and Jess’s parents owned a small sawmill on the other side of town that specialized in custom woodwork. Need a twelve-by-twelve late-eighteenth-century window replaced, the Frosts could do it. Mark often used or recommended them. Jess still worked with her parents. Gabe hadn’t stepped foot at the Frosts’ sawmill since he’d gone swimming in its small, frigid millpond as a kid, never expecting Jess would marry his big brother.
Olivia stirred next to him. “I should get back to Carriage Hill. That’s what I call my inn down the road.”
“I drove past it to have a look. I like the chives on the sign.”
She smiled. “You might be the first person to recognize they’re chives.”
“Felicity snipped a few chives into my eggs at breakfast. She has a pot in the kitchen window.”
“What a great idea—I love chives.” Olivia stood, placing a hand on her lower back with a wince, then smiling down at him. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to pass out. I did that yesterday.”
“Not funny, Olivia.”
She waved a hand, clearly unrepentant. “Now you sound
