She’d purposely not kept up on his life. Mari would occasionally drop a fact here and there, but not much more. She knew he was still single and that he’d gone into business with Jake.

  Bo glanced over her shoulder to where Dad was sitting. “I should probably let you go.”

  “Yeah.” Toni wanted to whack her forehead at the ridiculous small talk they could only seem to manage despite all their history. She shrugged and turned to go.

  “Hey,” he said as she took her first steps back across the street. She turned around to see that smile, just as disarming as it had always been. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.”

  “What?”

  “Seeing you again. A little rough, but we powered through.” He used to say that about football practice, or chemistry exams, or when he got his wisdom teeth out.

  “I suppose.”

  No, it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be.

  It was worse.

  Chapter Two

  “So that’s what I want to do with Redding’s.” Toni swallowed hard after she laid out her plans for the store to her father after dinner.

  Mom and Dad had always stood behind her. She’d been amazed how Dad had encouraged her decision to move to New York. Even when it left him alone in Wander Canyon, since her mother had died just over a year before. “It’s what your mother would have wanted,” he’d said. Would Mom have approved of the proposal she’d made just now?

  Dad didn’t answer right away, and it made Toni’s stomach tumble in doubt. What she’d just proposed to him couldn’t have come as anything but a shock. He had likely toyed with the idea of her taking over the store at some point. Only what she’d just outlined wasn’t just a takeover. It was a complete overhaul of Redding’s into something entirely new.

  “It’s different,” Dad said. His tone wasn’t quite enthusiastic.

  “It is,” Toni replied. This was the answer—she knew it in her bones. “And it’s a lot to take in, I know. But Dad, I really think this could be the future—my future here—with Redding’s.” She saw a flicker of curiosity fill his eyes, along with the startled disbelief that his daughter might actually be coming home to stay.

  She could also see what she’d hoped to find in his expression: relief. He might not be ready to admit out loud that the store was too much for him, but they both knew it.

  “You’ve been holding down the store for years without Mom.” The last two words caught thickly in her throat. “You deserve to take it easy,” Toni went on. “I want to do this. For you, and for me.” She felt her voice catch a bit. “I don’t belong in New York anymore. I belong here.”

  Dad’s eyes glistened. “I never liked you living so far away. But...” His words trailed off. Redding’s had been his life, the thing he’d built from the ground up with Mom. Asking to change the store felt like asking to change their legacy. Was that brave? Or disrespectful?

  Dad gave a shaky little sigh. “It sounds awfully newfangled.”

  Toni smiled at the old-fashioned word to describe the new Redding’s. She made the decision right then and there to use “newfangled” in her marketing. “That’s exactly what it is, Dad.” New, but rooted in the old. Unstuffy but not behind the times.

  “It’ll be a big job, won’t it? All by yourself?” It was the closest Dad had come to admitting just how far the physical state of the store had slipped in recent years.

  “Well, yes. But with the right people and all the work I plan to put into it, I don’t think it will take too long. I’ll start right away, and we might be able to manage a grand reopening for the third of July.” The Redding’s Third of July Sale was a Wander Canyon tradition, so linking the reopening to the sale helped Redding’s keep its roots while spreading new wings.

  Dad’s eyes widened. “You’ll close the store for renovations?” Redding’s had never closed, even during blizzards or any other number of disasters. It had been a point of family pride that anyone could get what they needed at Redding’s any day of the year—except, of course, Sundays and major holidays. Mom and Dad had never opened the store on the Lord’s day.

  Toni had anticipated this reaction from her father. “Not completely. I think we can keep about half of the store open while we work. We’d just have to section off the parts where construction would make it unsafe for customers.”

  “Gotta keep it safe.” He was coming around to the idea, she could see.

  “I want everyone to see the work happening, to watch the transformation take place.” The more she spoke about it, the more the dream anchored to her soul. Toni hadn’t even realized how much energy her life had lost until she felt it rekindle.

  She held her father’s gaze for a moment, then summoned up her courage to ask, “What do you think?”

  There was a nerve-racking pause as Dad looked at his hands. It was foolish to think he’d jump on the bandwagon right away—the store was his life’s work. He’d never done anything else, hardly ever taken a day off since Mom died. Handing Redding’s over to her represented a huge change in both their lives. Toni had the dizzying sense of Redding family history hinging on this moment.

  Two weeks ago, as she watched her evenings and weekends disappear behind a long list of tasks Faye had given her, she could have never predicted life would have brought her to this moment. Now, she was on the brink of stepping into the future God had waiting all along—or so she hoped.

  Dad’s smile was bittersweet as he squeezed Toni’s hand. “I guess newfangled sounds like it could be dandy.”

  Dandy. There wasn’t a word that captured Dad better than that. “Yeah, it could.”

  Toni watched a little sparkle of acceptance come to his blue eyes. She had her father’s chin and his height, but she’d gotten Mom’s bright green eyes and slightly unruly cascade of red hair. Growing up, Toni had been annoyed at how easily she was marked as Irene Redding’s daughter. Now she loved having a bit of her mother with her always.

  “I suppose,” he said slowly, “it might be fun to take up fishing again. Haven’t had much time for that.”

  “You deserve to do all the fishing you want.” The glimpses of fragility she’d seen in her father gave the words a tender weight. How much time for fishing does he have left? He shouldn’t spend his golden years minding the store.

  Toni got off the couch and sat next to him. “Please, Dad. Let me do this. For me, and for you.”

  The laughter and hugging—and perhaps a few tears—that followed his nod felt like the world shifting and laying itself open before her.

  She wasn’t just coming home—she was coming home to become who she was always meant to be.

  * * *

  Bo barely remembered any of the drive home. The ache in his chest seemed to swallow him whole, and he drove home on sheer muscle memory.

  There were a million things he should have done when he got back to his apartment. Ordinary tasks to yank him out of the fog Toni had plunged him into. He should have eaten. Fed and walked his dog, Dodger. Opened the mail. Answered the call from his sister, Peggy about having breakfast tomorrow. At least tossed a ball in the patient beagle’s direction.

  He hadn’t done any of those things. Instead, Bo stood in his backyard and stared off into the mountains, barely even noticing Dodger’s pleas for attention at his feet.

  The voice of his friend and business partner, Jake Sanders, came from behind him. “You did it, didn’t you?” He’d been so lost in the storm of his thoughts that he hadn’t even heard Jake’s truck come up the drive.

  “Did what?” The low angle of the sun made him wonder how long he’d been standing there. An hour? Ten minutes?

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Went and saw her.” He leaned down and scratched Dodger behind the ears.

  “Did you follow me or something?”

  “Didn’t have to. The way you looked at the end of the day gave you away easy. Plus, Redding’s is in the opposite direction of here, and I saw you leave.”

  “Okay, so, yes, I went to the store and saw her.” Bo held on to the slim hope that Jake would let it go at that.

  Of course, he didn’t. “I don’t like the look in your eyes, buddy. She left, Bo. She left you. You can’t really still have a thing for her, can you?”

  “No.” Who was he kidding? “Maybe.”

  Jake walked over to the bucket of tennis balls beside the back door and lobbed one halfway across the yard. Jake hadn’t been Wander High’s star pitcher for no reason. He eyed Bo as Dodger lumbered off after the ball, thrilled for someone to finally be playing with him. “That’s insane. You know that, right? You have plans you’re about to kick into gear. August. Florida. Your folks.” After years of working together, he and Jake were making plans to open two Car-San locations—Jake running a business up here in Colorado while Bo opened another down in Florida, ready to help his parents and the loads of other people who needed to rebuild during and after hurricane season.

  Toni Redding’s return to town shouldn’t affect those plans one bit. That would be the logical way to look at it. But since when was anything he thought or felt about Toni Redding logical?

  “Don’t, man.” Jake cautioned when Bo didn’t answer. “Don’t even think it. We’ve almost got the split all set up and ready to go.” While they were technically running two arms of the same business, Jake always referred to their next move as “the split.”

  “Besides, I’m in no mood to scrape you up off the sidewalk again. She’s here for a week, tops. A couple of days for the shower and a couple of days for the wedding. You can power through that, right?”

  If only that were true. She was here for good, back in Wander, if not back in his life, but he’d promised Toni not to say anything. Her return pummeled him with an excruciating blend of terror and optimism that spun his insides like a cement mixer.

  “Look, you got the hard part over with. You came, you saw, you did the awkward chat thing, you got the worst of it over.”

  Oh, it is so far from over. I don’t know what it is, but over isn’t it.

  Jake grabbed Bo’s shoulder. He got the sense Jake was tamping down the urge to shake him. He’d earned his friend’s annoyance—Jake’s remark about scraping Bo up off the sidewalk wasn’t much of an exaggeration. “If you can’t shake her, then make yourself scarce. Head down to your folks’ in Florida now instead of in August. I’ll hire a couple of guys and finish up our summer projects without you.”

  “You can’t do that...”

  “I can. And believe me, I’d rather do that than watch you go under again.”

  Bo had originally agreed to spend the slower winter season down in Florida helping his parents rebuild from the hurricane that had damaged their house. But he and Jake were turning it into more than that. They were going to leverage the advantages of both locations. And Bo knew that the minute he disclosed his plans to take up permanent residence in Florida, Mom and Dad and Peggy would jump on it as the solution to worrying about Mom and Dad. Because it was.

  “Rebuild your parents’ dock so fast you fall into bed exhausted at night,” Jake pressed. “Then rebuild their garage. And their porch. And the neighbor’s porch. Rebuild the entire subdivision if that’s what it takes to get Toni out of your system.”

  He could rebuild Mom and Dad’s house from the foundation up—and a dozen others beside—and it wouldn’t be enough. The truth was that despite thousands of miles and six years’ time, he’d never really let go of Toni. He’d measured every woman he’d ever dated—and there weren’t that many of them, as Jake often reminded him—against Toni. Even after how much she’d hurt him.

  “It won’t help.”

  “Sure it will,” Jake persisted. “Sunshine, Florida beaches...” Bo watched his friend’s eyes take on a worried look. “You can’t let a little visit from her take you under like this.”

  “She’s staying.” Bo justified the small betrayal by telling himself he’d only promised not to say anything to Toni’s father.

  Jake froze at that. “She’s what?”

  “Toni’s moving back to Wander.” It wasn’t fair what those words did to his insides. “No one knows yet.”

  “But you do.”

  “It slipped out while we were talking.”

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, Jake made a frustrated sound. “So Toni Redding is back in town. For good.”

  “That’s about the gist of it.”

  Jake fixed Bo with a somber glare. “Leave tomorrow morning. I’ll take you to the airport myself, man. ’Cause if you don’t, you’re toast.”

  * * *

  New cash register system.

  New floor plan.

  New shelving.

  New lighting.

  Refinished floors.

  That night Toni looked at her to-do list—her very long to-do list—and thought she’d have to win every lottery in Colorado to finance all the repairs to Redding’s that were needed. Either that, or invest a whopping load of elbow grease.

  Only it would take way more than elbow grease and determination to get Redding’s back up to speed. It would take skills and expertise way beyond what she had. She needed a contractor, and a great one at that.

  Her heart sank when an internet search brought up only one local company: Bo’s. She’d already decided every aspect of this overhaul would have to be done as locally as possible. The newfangled Redding’s had to be homegrown. But using Bo?

  On the upside, he seemed to have earned the respect of many people in Wander while she was gone. While it might be a mountain of awkward, she’d get an honest price and fair work out of Bo and his partner.

  But doing a big job fast and frugal meant she would be logging in long hours alongside Bo. That was a shaky prospect at best. Or an invitation to the world’s longest emotional baggage–laden argument at worst.

  If she chose Bo, this would either go very well...or very badly.

  She clicked over to the Car-San website from the listing, nearly laughing at the friendly photo of Bo and Jake grinning in front of their truck. Contractors You Can Trust, the caption said.

  “Can I trust you to be a grown-up about this?” she asked the image out loud. “Keep things on a professional level? You can be too charming.” She scowled at Bo’s image. “And I’m in a bit of a shaky place at the moment.”

  The new Redding’s needed to be locally sourced. Her vision included goods and crafts and art from people right here in the canyon or nearby. The plain truth was that if she gave the renovation job to someone outside the canyon, it would undercut that vision from the start.

  There was nothing for it. She had to at least give him a chance to bid on the project. Inhaling a deep breath of clear mountain air—something that still felt like a spectacular privilege after so much New York City grime—Toni typed an email to Car-San Construction asking Bo to meet her at the shop tomorrow.

  He could be too busy to take this on, right, Lord? she prayed, even though she knew Bo was the kind of person who would make time to help her out. I’ll take this step, but I’m going to leave the outcome up to You. Nobody else knows if this is a great opportunity or a giant mistake.

  The answer came in seven minutes. “For you, I’ll find the time.”

  Chapter Three

  Peggy gave Bo one of her sisterly looks over coffee and muffins at the Wander Canyon Bakery early the next morning. Peggy’s husband, Carl, was the high school track coach, so mornings were the best time for her to grab a moment away while her two young boys were in school.

  “So,” she began in a parental “let’s have a discussion” tone, “you know what weekend it is?”

  That was the trouble with older sisters. They never let you get away with anything. “Wow. You made it halfway through your muffin before you brought it up. I figured you would start in the moment we sat down.” He bit into the flaky egg-and-cheese sandwich that made for a heartier breakfast than his usual choice of a bear claw or a muffin. Today he was going to need fortification. Come to think of it, he was going to need fortification for this current conversation.

  “Have you seen her yet?”

  Seen her? I might be working with her. “We bumped into each other yesterday.”

  “And how was that?”

  “It wasn’t as awful as I thought it might be.” That was true. Sort of. To say he and Toni hadn’t left off on the best of terms was an understatement. Sure, they’d been head over heels for each other in high school and the summer after, but he should have known how it would end. Toni had always been heading in a different direction than him.

  College? New York City? That would never be him, and the strength of what he felt for her would never have been enough to make that work.

  Just like what she’d felt for him wasn’t enough to make her stay.

  Peggy cleared her throat, and he realized his thoughts had wandered. Again. His concentration had been shot since the moment he’d heard Toni was coming to town. Maybe Jake was right and the only thing for it was to get out of Wander pronto. And permanently, now that she was staying. Of course, that flew in the face of the meeting he was about to go to after breakfast.

  “Well, at least she’s only here for this weekend and then for the wedding.”

  “Actually...” Bo began, almost wincing at how he knew Peggy would respond to the news he was about to share. Toni had mentioned in her email that she’d gotten her father’s agreement to overhaul the store, which meant he wasn’t bound to his promise of silence anymore.

  His sister’s eyes narrowed. “Actually what?”

  “She’s taking over the store so that Don can retire.”