Chapter 1

So, there was going to be a June wedding after all. Only it wouldn’t be Hannah McCrae in a gorgeous white dress, walking down the aisle.

No, she’d be swathed in wildflower blue. Or spring leaf green. Or dandelion yellow. Or some other color found only in nature and bridesmaid’s dresses.

Hannah didn’t slow down as she passed the cheery, hand-painted sign welcoming her to Blueberry Cove, Maine. Chartered in 1715. Population 303. “Make that three hundred and four,” she murmured, still undecided on when she was going to share that little tidbit with the rest of her family.

She should be happy for her big brother and his impending nuptials. And she was happy. Truly. Logan deserved all the love and fulfillment in the world and she was thrilled he’d finally found them. Alex MacFarland had gotten herself a good guy. Probably the last remaining good guy on the planet.

Not that Hannah was biased or anything. Or cynical, for that matter. Okay, so maybe she was a little cynical. All right, more than a little. Who could blame her after the year she’d had?

Hannah wove through the narrow streets of her hometown on autopilot, too distracted by her thoughts to soak up the sense of belonging, the unconditional love she always felt simply entering the Cove. Unable to sleep, she’d left her Old Town Alexandria row house at four that morning, then driven north for thirteen straight hours, fueled solely by the promise of that much-needed hometown group hug. Well, that and the king-sized bag of chocolate-covered pretzels presently tucked in her lap.

She dug in for another fix. They’d been an impulse buy when she’d filled her tank after passing through New York City. She couldn’t even say why. She hated salty and sweet together. Of course, she’d also hated finding out the guy she’d been giddily anticipating a marriage proposal from at any second had already proposed to someone else. In fact, he’d not only proposed to someone else, he’d married her. Four years ago. Which meant Hannah had spent eighteen months dating a married man. Eighteen monumentally stupid, blind-as-a-bat, how-could-I-be-such-an-idiot months!

She was a trial attorney, for God’s sake. A damn good one. She earned her living by knowing when people were lying to her. How could she not have known? How could she not have had at least some inkling of a suspicion long before Tim’s very petite, very blond, and exceedingly pregnant, sweet-faced wife stalked into Hannah’s office, in front of God and everyone—and by God, she meant Findley Holcombe, the senior partner of Holcombe and Daggett, and by everyone, she meant, well, everyone—and announced, quite loudly, using language that could only be described as salty, just what Hannah could do to herself, and stop doing to her husband?

Yeah, Hannah thought, and shoved the pretzel back in the bag. She hated salty and sweet.

As the Rusty Puffin pub came into view, she felt a tug in her chest, and a knot form in her throat. She wanted nothing more than to pull over, run inside, and be immediately folded into one of her uncle Fergus’s big bear hugs, but she couldn’t trust herself not to fall apart all over him. No way would she get out of there without telling him why she was a wreck, which would be as good as telling the entire town. Instead, she whispered a silent I love you, knowing she’d see him soon enough at the wedding rehearsal the following afternoon, and continued toward the coast road that would take her out to Pelican Point . . . and home.

She didn’t see the pickup truck until it was too late.

One second, she was glancing over at the tall shoots of summer lupines, in all their purple, pink, and white stalks of glory, and—dammit—digging out another chocolate-covered pretzel. The next, she was slamming her brakes and swerving to miss the tail end of the big dark green dually that was suddenly somehow passing right in front of her.

She missed the truck’s rear bumper by a hairbreadth, but the hand-painted sign on the far side of the intersection advertising BEANIE’S FAT QUARTERS, THE BEST LITTLE QUILT SHOP IN BLUEBERRY* COVE! wasn’t so lucky.

It all happened so fast, and yet each second seemed to be somehow elastic, as if she could live a lifetime inside of every single heartbeat of the accident as she was swerving through it. So many thoughts went through her mind as she careened toward the sign she knew Beanie’s husband Carl had so proudly painted for his wife when she’d opened up her little shop, what, fifteen years ago now? Sixteen? Hannah had just graduated high school. Carl had done the town sign, too, right in his adorable little potting shed-turned-art studio, touching the signs up like new every spring after the winter season did its number on them. And yes, okay, that made two good men, but Carl had gone to his great reward just last year, so that left Logan as the only one still breathing.

So many thoughts raced around inside Hannah’s brain in those weirdly elastic, terrifying, life-threatening seconds. The things she should have said to Tim during their final confrontation—on Christmas Eve, no less; that she should have told Logan and her sisters what had happened; that she should have come home for Christmas or the New Year, or both, and leaned on them instead of shouldering the holidays and the six months that had elapsed since then alone. That maybe she should have tried harder to make her newfound notoriety in the Capitol Hill legal community work for her, that she still felt terribly guilty for being involved with someone who was married to someone else, even if she hadn’t known, and hating—hating—that she’d ultimately caved, quit, and come running back home to the Cove with her humiliation tucked between her legs like the tail of failure and shame that it was.

Then Carl’s once-beautiful sign raced right up to the hood of her car and no amount of further wheel yanking and swerving was going to save her from smashing right into it. There was a small explosion as her air bag deployed, punching her in the face and chest, just as her shoulder harness jerked her tightly against her seat back. Her thoughts were yanked instantly back to the present as she plowed straight into the stack of brightly colored plaid quilting squares painted on the bottom corner of the sign. Sorry, Beanie, she thought inanely, along with Shit, shit, shit! as she finally slid to a stop a mere speck of an inch before hitting the cluster of tall ash trees that stood just behind the sign.

She instinctively batted at the white, puffy bag, trying to keep it from smothering her, as she struggled to regain clarity of thought. Her head was buzzing from the adrenaline rush, her pulse was pounding in her ears, and her face hurt. A lot. So did her shoulder. Then the driver’s-side door was being pulled open and there was a man crouching next to her. At least, given the deep voice, she assumed it was a man; she was still wrestling with the air bag.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice all deep and dark and smoky in that bass vibrato kind of way that sent shivers down a woman’s spine. Though, in all fairness, her ears were ringing from the impact and she was pretty sure shock was setting in, so it could have just been an aftereffect of the collision.

He effortlessly collapsed the air bag with one broad palm. “Whoa, whoa,” he added quickly, putting those broad, warm palms gently but firmly on her wrist and shoulder when she tried to wrestle off her seat belt. “Let’s make sure you’re okay before you move too much, all right?”

She wanted to be the cool, competent, in-control—always in-control—attorney she was. Not the exhausted, injured, bordering-on-hysterical idiot who stupidly and blindly dated married men yet still got the shivers over a smoky, hot, sexy voice. Sadly, the latter was the best she had to offer at the moment. “What . . . happened?” she managed, her voice sounding oddly tight, bordering on shrill. “Where did you come from?”

“I came from your left, through the intersection. You ran the stop sign. Not sure how you didn’t see me.”

She leaned her head gingerly back against the headrest, eyes still closed, willing her brain to get straight and her face to stop throbbing. “What stop sign? There’s no stop sign going that way.”

She felt his broad hands grow even gentler on her arm. “Well, then I took those big, red octagonal things with the word STOP on them the wrong way, but let’s not worry about that. You didn’t hit me.”

“Yeah,” she said, her breath coming out in small pants, her heart still feeling a little out of control as the shakes started to set in. “Good. I’m sorry. For scaring you. I—I’ll be okay. You don’t need to stay. I just need a few minutes, that’s all.” And a few painkillers. Possibly a few stitches. And a very long nap. “It’s not . . . your problem,” she gritted out, bolstering herself for another attempt to undo her seat belt. Though she might want to shoot for opening her eyes first. Yeah. Maybe a few more minutes. “Thank you, though. For stopping.”