Falling in Love on Willow Creek by Debbie Mason

Chapter Two

The women in Blushing Bridal were still celebrating Abby’s wedding dress pick fifteen minutes later when Sadie’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen, and her heart thumped an excited beat. She shook her head at her reaction to seeing Chase’s incoming FaceTime call. Honestly, the way her heart raced you’d think she hadn’t spoken to him in a month instead of a mere fifteen hours.

“Hey,” she said, unable to keep her smile from spreading into an ear-to-ear grin when his gorgeous face appeared on the screen. Obviously, she had no shame when it came to the man. She was totally out there with her feelings for Chase, which was a new experience for her. And every once in a while, it gave her pause. Like now. Because the smile he offered in return was strained by comparison. “What’s wrong?”

“I can hardly hear you. Where are you?”

Okay, so maybe she was overreacting. “Just wrapping up at Blushing Bridal. Abby said yes to the dress. Give me a sec.”

“Is that Chase?” Zia Maria asked. Sadie barely got out a yes when her phone disappeared from her hand. Zia Maria—the owner of the best Italian restaurant in North Carolina—and her friends adored Chase almost as much as Sadie did. While he was passed among the older women, Sadie strapped Michaela into the stroller, placed the video camera and a Blushing Bridal bag with her earlier purchase in the storage basket, and then went to open the door.

“Everything okay?” her cousin asked, coming to hold the door for her.

“Yeah, just a little loud for a FaceTime call.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Would you mind rescuing Chase from Zia Maria and her friends and bringing me my phone?”

“Sure. No problem.”

When Ellie brought her phone outside a few minutes later with a worried expression on her face, Sadie thought her initial impression that something was wrong had been right. Which might have been why her first words to Chase were “Are you not coming home?”

“Hang on a minute, honey.” The screen went dark.

“I’ll take Michaela for a walk,” her cousin whispered.

Sadie nodded and sat down on the brick window ledge, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she watched Ellie push the stroller up the sidewalk. The orange, yellow, and red pattern in her cousin’s sweater matched the autumn leaves on the stately trees that lined Main Street. Sadie huddled deeper in her sage-green chunky knit sweater, feeling chilled despite the midafternoon sunshine warming her face.

“Sorry about that.” Chase rubbed the back of his head, an action that usually meant he was nervous or about to deliver bad news.

“So you’re not coming home?” She briefly closed her eyes at the plaintive note in her voice. She sounded like a clingy, whiny woman.

“Actually, I’m home now. I got in twenty minutes ago.” She noticed the yellow door behind him. He was standing outside the cottage on Willow Creek.

A relieved breath whooshed out of her, and then she realized why he was acting a little weird and winced. Chase was compulsively neat, and she was habitually messy. “Okay, I can explain the mess in the kitchen. Zia Maria gave me her recipe for tiramisu, and, surprise, I made it for your welcome-home dessert. But I had no idea it would take that long to make, and I had no time to clean up.” If she hadn’t used cottage cheese instead of ricotta in her first attempt, the dessert wouldn’t have taken her so long to make, but she wasn’t about to share that with Chase. “I had to be here at eleven. Plus, you weren’t supposed to be home until—”

“You made me tiramisu?” He gave her a smile that made her ovaries twitch. But then his smile went from downright sexy to strangely wistful, and her twitching ovaries froze.

“Chase, what’s going on? You’re making me nervous.”

He frowned. “Why are you nervous?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because your grandfather has been trying to break us up from the moment you told him we were engaged.” The judge, as Chase referred to his grandfather, blamed Sadie for his grandson refusing the high-profile position he’d been offered with the FBI in DC.

“Right. I see where you’re coming from.”

Just this once, she wished he’d lie to her. Tell her that she was overreacting or imagining things. It wasn’t easy knowing that one of the most important people in her fiancé’s life disapproved of her.

Chase leaned back and opened the door. “Give me a minute, and I’ll be right with you.”

“I bet Finn was happy to see you.” At Chase’s grimace, she laughed. “What did he steal this time?” Finn, the golden retriever they’d adopted in June, was a canine kleptomaniac.

“Um, I wasn’t talking to Finn. I was talking to the judge.”

Sadie slowly came to her feet. “Like on Zoom, right? Because you would not bring your grandfather—your grandfather who is even more obsessively neat than you are—home without warning me.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t have much of a choice. He—”

“Chase Roberts, you get in that cottage right now and shut the door to our bedroom.” Her mind raced, making it difficult to remember the state of the other rooms. “The laundry room and bathroom too.”

He pressed his lips together, his eyes dancing with amusement. At any other time, she would have taken pleasure in those dancing blue eyes, but not today. “Don’t you dare laugh at me. This is serious. He already hates me and thinks I’ve ruined your life.” She wrapped an arm around her waist, glancing at the traffic crawling along Main Street to hide how much it upset her.

“Hey, look at me.”

When she returned her gaze to that handsome face she’d never tire of looking at, he said, “I don’t care what he thinks. You and Michaela are the best things that ever happened to me. I love you.”

She sighed. She knew he did. He never gave her any reason to doubt his feelings for her and Michaela. “I love you too. I just wish you would have given me some warning.”

“I didn’t know he was coming. Honest, I didn’t. We had a…difference of opinion, and I decided to come home early. I didn’t realize he was on the plane until we were disembarking.”

“He wanted you to stay in DC, didn’t he?”

“He did. I know the timing isn’t great, but in the end, this might be for the best. He’s lonely, and he’s not getting any younger. Who knows? Maybe Highland Falls will win him over.”

“You’re thinking of moving him here?” Her voice went up an octave, garnering the attention of several women leaving Blushing Bridal. Sadie gave them a bright smile and friendly wave while moving farther along the sidewalk.

Elsa Mackenzie, the owner of Three Wise Women Bookstore, frowned at her. “Are you all right, Sadie?”

“I’m great. Really, really great.” She kept that bright smile plastered on her face. “Thanks for taking part in Say Yea or Nay to the Dress. I should have the episode online tomorrow morning so be sure to check it out.”

“We wouldn’t miss it. I hope you got my best side,” two of the women said at almost the same time, laughing as they went their separate ways.

With her smile still firmly in place, Sadie returned her attention to Chase. She wondered if she should apologize for the panic he’d undoubtedly heard in her voice. It was his grandfather they were talking about, after all.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Chase said. “I know the last thing you need right now is to deal with my grandfather on top of everything else. If you want, I can check and see if they have a room available at the Mirror Lake Inn.”

“For him or for me?”

He smiled. “The only place you’re staying is here with me.”

His feelings for her were evident in his words, in that slow, seductive smile he only ever shared with her. Ellie was right. Just like Abby’s, Sadie’s fears had no basis in reality. Nothing the judge could say or do would change how she and Chase felt about each other. “Your grandfather is staying with us too.”

“Are you sure? Because I—”

“Of course I am,” she said with as much enthusiasm as she could manage with her nerves doing a panicked dance in her stomach. The plan she had to welcome Chase home would have to go on the back burner. The cottage wasn’t all that big, and the walls were pretty thin. But the judge was Chase’s family. The man who’d raised him. “It’s the perfect opportunity for your grandfather to get to know me and Michaela better.” The perfect opportunity for Sadie to win him over. If she didn’t, then surely her adorable daughter would.

Except…the judge wasn’t exactly the grandfatherly type, as their one and only visit to his retirement home had proven. There’d been no oohing and aahing over Michaela. So maybe her daughter, who was as messy as her mother, wouldn’t win him over. But thanks to Chase, Sadie had inside information on the judge that at the very least might soften him up. He loved Italian food as much as his grandson did. “I’ll stop by Zia Maria’s and pick up something for dinner.”

“Okay, as long as you’re sure…” Chase broke off with a wince. “I’d better go. It sounds like the judge and Finn aren’t bonding as I’d hoped.”

So she wasn’t the only one with a plan to win over Jonathan Knight. If Chase’s plan wasn’t working out, she wondered what that said about the chances hers would.

“Everything okay?” her cousin asked.

Sadie startled. Lost in thought after Chase had disconnected, she hadn’t heard Ellie approach. She turned to smile at her cousin and Michaela. “Everything’s fine. Chase is home.”

“You know I can see through you, don’t you? And no, it’s not because I’ve inherited the MacLeod curse.”

She found it interesting that her cousin referred to their grandmother’s gift as a curse but let it go. Ellie had always known when Sadie was pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t. “This is me trying to channel my inner optimist. Chase’s grandfather is with him, and he’s not exactly on board with our relationship.”

Ellie laughed. “You don’t have an inner optimist. You’re the most pessimistic person I know.”

“And you’re the most optimistic person I’ve ever met so tell me everything is going to be all right, and I might believe you. At least I’ll try to.” Her cousin grimaced, and Sadie’s stomach dropped to her toes. “Tell me the face you just made has nothing to do with Chase and me.”

“Sorry. I’m usually better at keeping my feelings to myself. I tend to let my guard down around people I love. When I retrieved your phone, Chase’s grandfather was standing behind him. He was thinking of ways to—”

“I knew it! You did inherit Granny’s gift.”

“Shh,” Ellie hissed, shooting a panicked glance up and down the sidewalk. “The last thing I need is for anyone to know, especially my parents.”

“So it’s true.”

Ellie sighed. “Yes, and obviously it’s not only my feelings I can’t keep to myself when it comes to you. I’m sure everything will be fine but you need to watch out for Chase’s grandfather. He’s here to break you guys up.”

Even though her cousin wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know, Sadie’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “Is there any chance you might be wrong? He was on the phone, and it wasn’t like you could touch him.”

“Unlike Granny, I don’t need to have physical contact to read someone. I wish I did. At least it would be easier to control. It really is a curse, Sadie. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

She doubted her cousin had any enemies. Ellie was the kindest person Sadie had ever met. “Does Granny know?”

“No.” She tilted her head to the side. “Maybe. But I don’t think she’ll say anything. She knows how my parents would react.”

Sadie’s aunt and uncle weren’t the most open-minded or accepting people. When they’d first learned Agnes had the second sight, they’d been horrified. They’d dragged her to psychiatrist after psychiatrist, threatening to have her committed if she didn’t stop. So Sadie understood why Ellie wouldn’t want them to know.

She gave her cousin’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I promise, no one will hear about it from me. But I’m sorry it feels like a curse and that you’re the one who has to bear it, Ellie. If there’s anything I can do to make it easier for you, just tell me.”

“I will.” Ellie leaned in and gave her a quick hug. “I’ve missed you, Sadie.”

“I’ve missed you too. It’s nice to have you home.”

Her cousin glanced at her phone. “Speaking of home, I’d better get back to the inn.” Ellie kissed Michaela on the top of her head and then set off down the sidewalk. Turning as she reached the stoplight, she called out, “I’ll get a room ready for Chase’s grandfather. Just in case.”