Josh Cantor had been the star football player in high school, and people in town still looked at him as some sort of hero. Madeline had been dating him for years.
“That’s true. I guess we all get pigeonholed one way or another.” Ria sighed and shook off her annoyance as she straightened to her feet. “Did you need something when you came back here?”
“Yeah. I wanted to know if you’d gotten a start on the Nashville order. I’m blocked and need some inspiration.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’ve pretty much got it done. I’ll show you.”
Three years ago, Ria’s parents had died in a car accident and left her the family business, a struggling, small-town floral shop. She had an older sister, but Belinda had never shown any interest in flowers. It was Ria who’d been hanging out at the shop after school every afternoon since third grade. So Ria got what had then been called Phillips Flowers.
For the first year, she’d tried to keep it going the way her parents had, but small-town businesses of all kinds were struggling, and the local weddings and funerals weren’t enough to sustain a profitable business. She’d been afraid she’d have to close up shop, but then she and her two best friends had miraculously turned it around.
One of their high school classmates had come into the store one Saturday afternoon and asked for a custom arrangement as a way to apologize to his wife after getting into a big fight. When Ria had asked for the message on the card, he’d told her to just think of something good.
Ria was good with flowers. She was naturally creative and artistic, and she loved designing unique arrangements. She’d put together something really special for the guy’s wife. As she did, Madeline (who’d been hanging out with her that afternoon) kept making up funny possible messages for the card. She worked at the public library, but she’d been writing all her life, and she’d ended up composing a little poem that was funny and touching both. Skye, their other best friend, had been so thrilled with the arrangement that she’d taken pictures. After getting permission from the recipient, she’d started posting the photos on social media.
Skye had been unemployed and spent a lot of time online. One of her posts on the arrangement got the attention of an influencer with a large platform and went viral.
Suddenly Ria had orders coming in for custom arrangements from all over the world, asking for personalized poems to go with them. At first, she could only handle the orders within a couple of hours of Azalea—in Hampton Roads or the accessible parts of northern Virginia. But Ria had gotten busy and connected with florists around the country, so eventually she could serve orders all over. Skye took over the marketing and social media and was genuinely brilliant at it.
Since they specialized in apologies, they’d rebranded the business as Second Chance Flower Shop, and it had been thriving for the past two years. It was a huge amount of work. They still had to be selective about the orders they accepted since they didn’t have the staff to handle massive numbers. But they were able to raise their prices every six months with no loss of orders, so the money was really coming in now. Pretty soon they’d be able to buy the building the shop had leased from old Mr. Worth since Ria’s parents opened it thirty years ago.
It was one of those flukes. As much luck and timing as skill and talent—as all success was. Ria was still astounded every time a major platform shared one of their arrangements online and they got a new flurry of orders.
She and Madeline were talking about the design for an order they’d accepted yesterday when Skye Devereaux came bounding into the back room.
Skye was barely five feet tall. A tiny, freckled redhead with big eyes and a big smile. Despite her small size, she always seemed to fill a room. Right now her eyes were even huger than normal, and she was gasping loudly. “Big... big news. You’ll never... never... guess.”
“What’s going on?” Ria asked, only mildly interested. Skye was dramatic about everything, so there was no reason to assume something genuinely earth-shattering had occurred.
She was wrong.
It was earth-shattering.
It left her (literally) shaking.
Skye was still trying to catch her breath. She must have run all the way over there from wherever she’d gotten the news. “He’s... he’s... coming back... to town.”
“He?” Madeline asked with a frown. “He who?”
Ria had already frozen. She knew—she knew—what was coming.
Skye turned huge blue eyes onto Ria’s face. “Jacob... Worth. He’s finally coming home.”
JACOB WORTH HAD SPENT the past eight years trying to remake his life away from Azalea, Virginia, and he thought he’d done a pretty good job overall.
He’d left town at eighteen after his grandfather kicked him out, finding odd jobs and gradually moving north until he finally reached Alaska. For several years now, he’d worked as a commercial fisherman, taking on seasonal work as it was available. Salmon. Tuna. King crab. Anything that was high risk, good money, and physically demanding enough to let him sleep at night.
He had friends. He was popular with women who might be looking for a good time with no strings. He’d saved enough money that he could take time off between fishing seasons without worrying about how he would eat and pay rent. He’d done okay for himself, starting with no money, no contacts, and no education beyond high school.
And he’d gotten as far away from Azalea as he possibly could.
He’d never gone back home for a visit. His grandfather—his only living relative—had made it clear he wasn’t welcome. He would have come six months ago after his grandfather’s heart attack, but he’d been out on a job when it
