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“Here you go,” she said to Scott now. “I made it this morning, so it’s fresh.”
“You always made the best pies, Emily Porter.” He grinned, and his eyes shone bright on hers until he caught the heat in her expression and looked down at his plate.
She sucked in a breath. “So,” she said briskly. “What brings you back to town?” It certainly wasn’t her. He’d made a promise—dozens of beautiful, hope-filled promises—and broken each one right along with her heart.
“My dad asked me to help oversee the construction of the library.” His jaw twitched and he scratched at a day’s worth of stubble. “Well, Lucy asked, actually.”
“Lucy mentioned once that you were in construction, just like you’d always planned.” She frowned at the thought. Why couldn’t he have stayed in Maple Woods and taken over Collins Construction, the family business? It was a fine company, well respected by the town. Her own father had proudly worked there.
Scott paused. “My father isn’t up to the job at the moment.”
Emily nodded. Scott and Lucy’s parents had never been warm to her, but she’d decided a long time ago not to take it personally. Her father had worked for Mr. Collins for more than fifteen years before the accident on the job took his life when she was eight years old. It had been human error, the police had said, his own negligence in failing to put the emergency brakes on the excavator that rolled down the slope and killed him. Mr. Collins had been there that day. He’d dealt with the police, and as a courtesy to the family he had helped cover the funeral expenses, but he had been tense around her family in passing ever since.
“Sticking around for long?” She held her breath, waiting for an answer she knew deep down wouldn’t make a lick of difference.
“Only as long as I have to.”
Emily held his sharp gaze and then lowered her eyes with a slow nod of her head as her heart began to tug. He was still the same old Scott. The same charming guy with dreams beyond Maple Woods. And she was still the same old Emily, still living in the same small town, still waiting for life to really start.
Well, it was time to do something about that.
* * *
Of all the people he had hoped to avoid in this town, Emily was at the top of his list. So he supposed it made sense that she was the first person he ran into. The one girl who had crawled under his skin and remained there. No matter how much he wanted to resist her, to turn his back and leave, he just couldn’t.
He rested an elbow on the counter, grateful for its barrier. If it wasn’t there, keeping them apart, he wasn’t quite sure he would have been able to refrain himself from greeting her with a hug, to feel the warmth of her body pressed against his, to hold her close and know that she was real and that she was okay. That no matter what had happened, what he had done, that she was all right.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way with them. They’d had plans—plans he’d intended to stick to—until that horrible summer night, his last night in this town, when his entire world came crashing down around him and Emily was lost to him forever.
Swallowing hard, he allowed his gaze to roam over her as she repositioned the pie plate on its stand and swept some crumbs off the counter, her glossy chestnut waves cascading over her shoulders. He couldn’t peel his eyes from her. His high school sweetheart—the girl who interrupted his dreams and haunted his waking hours was standing right in front of him, looking more beautiful than ever.
But time hadn’t changed one thing. Emily was still off-limits.
“So what have you been up to all this time?” he asked, even though he didn’t want to hear it confirmed. Emily had always had dreams. Dreams beyond this small town. Dreams that hadn’t come true.
“Oh, not much,” she said. “I worked at the diner before this, but you might have known that.”
His stomach twisted at her words. Emily was the smartest girl he’d known back in school. She should be running a restaurant of her own, not waiting tables. She should have gone to college, pursued her passions—opportunities she would have had if her father had lived. If his father hadn’t deprived their family of insurance money that was rightfully owed to them as a result of the tragic accident. If Scott hadn’t been on that construction site at all the day that Mr. Porter...
“No,” he managed. “No, Lucy hadn’t mentioned it.”
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, before she pulled back and leaned against the far counter, crossing her arms over her chest. “Ah, well, I suppose you and Lucy have better things to talk about than some girl you used to know.”
The hurt in her tone sliced through him, but the pain in her eyes was his true punishment. He’d earned it. He’d deserved it. He’d take it.
“You were more than some girl, Em.”
She lifted her eyes to his, holding his stare for a beat, and then shrugged.
“Well.” He sighed, “I should probably brace myself for the gossip mill.” He gave a tight smile and set his fork on the edge of the empty plate. “If Lucy knew I was already in town and hadn’t come to see her yet, she’d probably never forgive me.”
“Probably for the best,” Emily said softly. “It looks busy over there today. I won’t be surprised if she’s kept longer than she wants to be.”
Scott stood and reached into his pocket for his wallet but Emily frowned and held up her hand. “No, please. It’s on the house.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, frowning. Take the money, Emily. Take what is owed you, what you should have had a long time ago. Take what my family stole from you. “It’s your opening day. I want to help.”
But Emily was adamant, shaking her head. “Lucy would never forgive me,” she insisted, falling back on his own words, and he knew she had him there.
“I guess I’ll get going then,” he said, but he didn’t move toward the door. For twelve years he had done nothing but imagine this moment, the things he would say to her if he ever saw her again. But he couldn’t say them. And that was why he had never come back.
“Bye, Scott,” she said coolly.
He gave a tight smile. “Bye, Em.” He turned and walked to the door, pushed through it out into the warm glow of the morning sun and crossed the street, focused on the diner in front of him growing nearer with each step, his heart thudding in his chest.
He knew this feeling. It was the same one he’d had when he’d packed up his bags and gotten into his car that late-summer night twelve years ago after he’d overheard his parents talking about Richard Porter’s death—after he’d found out what he had done, what they had covered up for nine years, only revealing the details once it was too late, once he was already in love with Emily, once he was eighteen and old enough to feel the toll of his actions, however unintentional. He’d sped out of town before he had a chance to look back, to think of what he was leaving behind, his heart breaking as he swore he would never love again.
He didn’t deserve love.
And he certainly didn’t deserve Emily.
There was no amount of time or distance that could put Emily Porter behind him. Oh, he’d tried all right. He’d gone to the far end of the country, putting as many miles between him and Maple Woods as possible, only his dark, dirty secret to keep him company and serve as an aching memory of everyone he’d left behind. Of why he could never return.
He was the reason Emily had grown up without a father. He was the reason she’d been stuck in the mercy of this town and all its limitations, and that wasn’t something he could ever forget. But it was something he would have to set right. Once and for all.
Chapter Two
The steady trill of the alarm clock pulled Emily from a deep slumber. She blindly slapped at it and rolled over in bed. The grand opening of Sweetie Pie had kept her at work longer than she’d expected, plus she’d stayed late to prep for today. Poor Lucy had been so busy bouncing from the diner to the bakery that she had barely stopped to take a breath. They hadn’t even had a moment to discuss Scott’s return.
Scott. At the memory of his startling arrival the day before, Emily’s eyes popped open, and she sprang out of bed. She showered and dressed quickly, quietly, so as not to wake her sister Julia, who rarely emerged from her bed before eight. Tiptoeing through the living room, she paused at the stack of yesterday’s mail piled neatly on the small table just beside the front door. She had been so preoccupied with seeing Scott again that she had failed to check the mailbox on her way home last night. It wasn’t like her, and with a frown she realized the hold he still had over her nearly a dozen years later.
Recalling his words yesterday, she shook her head and silently scolded herself. She’d been a fool to pin any hopes on that man. There was nothing in Maple Woods for Scott—there never had been, it seemed—and he made it very clear that he wasn’t planning on staying in town for long.
Well, neither am I.
Her heart began to thump as she picked up the stack of crisp envelopes and began thumbing through them. When she reached the end, she sighed—possibly in relief, possibly in disappointment. She wasn’t sure which anymore. It had been three months since she’d sent her application to the cooking school in Boston, and as the weeks passed without a response, her anxiety grew stronger. So many hopes were hitched to this opportunity that a part of her was happy her fate wasn’t yet sealed. It was good to have a dream, and this had been hers for as long as she could remember. She wasn’t ready for it to be over just yet.
The bakery still wouldn’t be open for another two hours, but the day was still young and there was plenty of work to do. Lucy was a pie-making expert—there was no denying her skill—but when she’d tasted a few of Emily’s creations, she had decided to feature those each day, as well. Emily had free rein on what she could create.
Emily gave a sad smile whenever she thought of the irony of the situation—who would have known she’d get such an opportunity just when she might be able to finally break free of this town once and for all?
Determined to think about nothing but the second day at Sweetie Pie, she rolled up her sleeves and went into the kitchen. A couple hours of straight-up baking, fortified by strong coffee, were sure to banish the blues that had set in when Scott walked through that door yesterday.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re up!” Julia gushed, bursting into the kitchen half an hour later, already dressed for her job at the yarn shop. Her cheeks were flushed and her green eyes flashed with excitement as she quickly pulled her hair into a ponytail.
“Good morning to you, too,” Emily said mildly as she finished slicing pears into a bowl and showered them with sugar.
Julia’s eyes danced. “You will never believe who is back in town!”
Emily smiled as she measured out a cup of flour, then diced a stick of cold butter and pulsed the mixture in the food processor with a teaspoon each of sugar and salt. This was a little game of theirs, and even at their age, it was endlessly amusing, adding a bit of suspense to an otherwise routine life. Julia would come home with a juicy bit of gossip, usually about who was dating whom, and question by question, Emily would narrow it down until the titillating conclusion was reached. Sadly, on this occasion, there was no buildup of clues; Emily already knew the answer.
“Scott Collins,” she said and immediately wished she had just played along when she saw Julia’s face fall with disappointment.
“You knew?” she cried. “And here I nearly shook you awake last night to tell you!”
“He came into the bakery yesterday,” Emily said.
“Did you speak to him?” Julia’s eyes were wide with interest. “What was he like?”
Emily heaved a sigh. “Not much different than I remembered,” she admitted, catching the wistful edge to her tone.
“Still a hunk then, huh?” Julia dipped her finger into the sugar canister, and Emily rolled her eyes.
“Still a hunk, as you so delicately put it.”
Julia regarded her for a long moment, a dreamy look creeping over her face, as if she were lost in time, clinging to a memory. “Sorry,” she said, straightening herself. “I know it’s a touchy subject.”
“I was seventeen,” Emily reminded her. “It didn’t mean anything.” Clearly.
“Well, it meant something to me.” Julia lifted her chin, her eyes suddenly darkening at the memory. ”I still haven’t forgotten the way he took off without so much as a goodbye.”
“Really?” Emily narrowed her gaze in mock confusion. “Because you seemed to have completely forgotten about that episode when you came bounding in here two minutes ago.” She flashed her sister a rueful grin as she formed the dough into a disk and wrapped it in cellophane. She set it in the fridge to chill, swapping it for one that had cooled, and plucked her rolling pin from the drawer beneath the stove.
“Well, I admit, I did get a little swept up in the memory of how handsome he was,” Julia explained, and Emily bit her lip to keep from laughing. “But the truth is that he treated you like a first-rate jerk, leaving you like that, without any explanation.”
They were supposed to have gone to a movie the next night. Emily could still remember sitting on the steps of her front porch, waiting. She’d called his house, worried he might be sick or worse—that he’d had an accident. It was a fear of hers ever since she was little, since her father had died. Instead she was told in clipped tones by Scott’s father that he was gone. He’d left town the night before, and they didn’t know when he’d be back. If he’d be back. And he never did come back. Until now.
Emily shrugged off the twinge of hurt with a smile. “Please, Julia. That was ancient history. We were kids.”
Julia watched her carefully. “If you say so.”
“Are you accusing me of still pining after Scott Collins?”
Julia tipped her head. “I just thought that you would be interested to know he was back in town. That’s all.” She paused. “So...is he married?”
“No,” Emily said, stirring more forcefully.
“And you know this—”
“Because he told me,” Emily huffed, whipping around to face her sister. “Because I asked, okay. I...asked.” It was a normal question, she told herself, but probably not when it was posed to the man whom she had once imagined an entire future with. His answer had filled her with a surge of hope that had no business being there.
A spark passed through Julia’s bright green eyes. “Huh. Interesting.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” Julia shrugged. “Nothing at all.” She smiled conspiratorially and then breezed out the door, as if there was nothing left of the subject to discuss.
Emily shook her head and chuckled softly. Leave it to her sister to get carried away with Scott’s reemergence and the impact it might have on her. Of course she was interested to know that Scott was back. More interested than she should be. And that was just the problem.
* * *
Before she left the house, Emily took extra care in brushing her hair and selecting just the right shade of lipstick. It was silly, she knew, and she was probably jinxing herself with the effort, but if there was a chance of seeing Scott again today, she wanted to be ready.
Let him see what he’s been missing.
“Well, don’t you look pretty today!” Lucy proclaimed as Emily pushed through the back door of the bakery into the kitchen.
Emily shrugged off the compliment with a wry grin and tied an apron around her waist. “What’s the plan for day two?”
Lucy regarded her suspiciously for a lingering moment and then, with a lift of her brow, changed the subject. Emily made a mental note to swipe off her lipstick the first chance she had. She felt suddenly self-conscious and foolish and overly aware of herself. She had never liked being the center of attention, and here she was, trying to be front and center in Scott’s mind.
“Mayor Pearson agreed to the pie toss,” Lucy said, and Emily smiled. Flyers and word of mouth went far in a small town such as this, but a little promotion helped with a new business, too. “I’m hoping it will pull in more customers today.”
“I’m sure it will help get the word out.” Emily thought of how the mayor prided himself on Maple Woods’s sense of community. “People might love him, but I doubt few would resist the chance to see him covered in whipped cream.”
“I’m hoping so.” Lucy studied her inventory list. “A fresh shipment of apricots arrived this morning, so let’s use those up where we can.”
Emily carefully removed the three pies she had baked that morning from their boxes. “I made a pear-and-cherry tart this morning.” She began plating it for display. “I’ll start prepping a few apricot pies next. A lattice crust would be nice for those, don’t you think?”
“What would I do without you?” Lucy said on a sigh of content.
Emily lowered her head, unable to answer the question knowing the information she was withholding, and pulled a canister of flour off the shelf, waiting for the wave of guilt to subside. She was getting ahead of herself, she finally reasoned. There was nothing to feel bad about yet. She might not even get into that school in Boston. There was no use getting worked up over something that might never even happen.
Feeling slightly better, she went about her task as Lucy brewed coffee, the pair working in companionable silence for a while until Emily finally dared to observe, “So...Scott’s back in town.”
Lucy whipped around. “Can you believe it?”
Emily opened her eyes wide. “Not really.” She forced back the image of his handsome face by gathering ingredients from the refrigerator. “You must be really happy,” she managed, hoping Lucy didn’t detect the note of hurt that laced her words. She couldn’t help it. She still wasn’t over it. Twelve years later and that man still hadn’t explained himself! Was he so beyond reproach?
She winced. He probably didn’t think she cared anymore. After all, he obviously didn’t.
Lucy huffed out a breath. “Yesterday was quite a day. The opening of this place, then seeing Scott again...” She paused. “I had to really work on him to come back here at all and a part of me still didn’t think he really would—I guess I didn’t dare to believe it until I finally saw him.”
“It’s been a long time.” Emily nodded in understanding.
“Too long. When he first left town, I kept hoping he would be back one day. Then I guess I just learned to give up on that hope.”
Emily looked down. That made two of us.
Her heart began to ache in that all too familiar way as she washed the apricots and set them to dry. It was the same feeling she got every time she thought of Scott over the years. Why did he have to come back? Why couldn’t he have just stayed away forever? Surely at some point she would have forgotten the way his grin could make her heart skip a beat, or the way her hair rustled when he whispered in her ear. A dozen years might not have done the trick, but a dozen more might have...
She watched Lucy silently, wondering if she would say more, but Lucy just tied her apron strings, grabbed two pies, and tapped her hip against the swinging kitchen door. Emily sighed and got to work herself. She had always wondered why Scott had stayed away, but it wasn’t her place to ask Lucy. Anyone who avoided Maple Woods for a dozen years had a reason. A big one.
Her heart dropped as she pulled out the cutting board. If Scott was that determined to put Maple Woods behind him, and get out of town no sooner than he had returned, it seemed like wishful thinking that he might ever be back again.
She began to measure out the sugar thoughtfully, reminding herself that she might not be in town much longer, either. Some things just weren’t meant to be.
* * *
Scott locked the door to the apartment above the diner where Lucy was letting him stay and jogged down the stairs to Main Street. He eyed the bakery across the street and wavered slightly, wondering if he should give in to the temptation of what was tucked inside, his mind on anything but the pie.
Quickly, he looked away, assessing his options. He’d slept late, and by the time he’d dragged himself out of the comfortable solitude of his room, it was already nearing lunchtime. He was prolonging the inevitable trek to his father’s office, but eventually he would have to head over—there was no getting around it.
Once he thought he would continue the legacy of Collins Construction, follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Back then his plan was simple: he would marry Emily Porter, settle down in Maple Woods and earn an honest living at his family’s company. But that was before he knew what his family had done to Emily’s. Before he knew the part he had played in her father’s death when he was just a kid, playing on the machinery, hanging out on his dad’s job site, too oblivious to know the truth. Before he knew there was nothing honest about that company. Or his father. Or himself.
“Scott!” Lucy’s familiar voice jarred him. He hated to think what her opinion must be of him now—she probably assumed he had gotten too successful for a small town like this, that he was better than it somehow, that he couldn’t be bothered to make time for people who had meant so much to him in the past, including her. She couldn’t be more wrong.
It was easier this way, he told himself, better that she wasn’t in on the family secret. It was easier for everyone he cared about to be left out of his mess. Let them think he went off to college and never looked back, that he didn’t think of Maple Woods every damn day of his life, that he didn’t wonder how different things might have been. Let them think he was happy in Seattle, that city life fit him in a way Maple Woods never could. Let them all think what they wanted, so long as they didn’t know the real reason he had left.
A man was dead because of him, and the surviving family had suffered as a result.
He forced a smile and crossed the street to stand next to his sister. “I was thinking about grabbing something to eat at the diner,” he said as he approached the sidewalk.
“You’re not sick of my cooking after dinner last night?”
Scott smiled at the recollection of sitting around Lucy’s old farm table with her husband and son, talking and laughing long into the night like any other family would. A few times he’d caught himself thinking that maybe he could have a life like this, but that must have been the wine talking. There was no room for him in this place.
“I haven’t had a meal like that in years.” He grinned.
“Well, you can have another tonight, then. I’m going over to Mom and Dad’s for dinner after work.”
Scott’s gut twisted as he held her eyes, carefully selecting his excuse. Lucy stood before him unwavering, her mouth a thin line. She knew what she was doing. And he didn’t like it one bit.
“Lucy, don’t do this to me.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair in agitation. He broke her gaze and glanced down the street, desperate for an escape.
Her eyes were sharp when he turned his attention back to her. “Dad’s dying, Scott,” she said firmly, her gaze narrowing in disappointment. “The treatments aren’t working. The cancer has spread.”
“You know we don’t get along,” Scott insisted, but Lucy was shaking her head, clearly not buying it.
“Scott, I’ve put up with this nonsense for long enough,” she said, her voice steely. “Whatever happened between you and our parents is old news. You were a teenager then, now you’re a thirty-year-old man. Start acting like one,” she snapped.
Scott took a step back, his eyes flashing with indignation. He forced himself to remember that Lucy didn’t know the part his father had played in the events of the past. He’d kept in touch with her over the years, but he made sure to keep their conversations light, and mostly about her, George and Bobby. “You know I came back for you. You asked for my help in the rebuilding of the library, and I’m here. I’ll see it through, but please don’t ask anything more.”