Mrs. Radley?”
The bride, a forty-something woman with deep chestnut hair and a slender figure, turned to me and smiled at the use of her married name. “I guess that’s me, isn’t it? That will take some getting used to.”
I returned her smile. “Congratulations. Um, I just wanted to let you know you’ve got some toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”
She looked down at her feet, clearly visible beneath the knee-length hem of her ivory bias-cut dress. “Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much—that would have been very embarrassing.”
“No problem.”
She reached down to grab it, and right as she did, one of the dress’s tiny satin spaghetti straps popped. Gasping, she tugged it up and held it in place. “Oh my God, I’m a mess!” she whispered. “And we’re about to do our first dance. Help!”
“Don’t worry,” I said, taking her by the arm. “Come with me. We’ll fix it.”
Pushing open the door behind the reception desk, I led her down a hallway lined with the inn’s administrative offices. First, I tried my mother’s, but the door was locked. Next I tried my sister April’s—she was the inn’s event planner and always prepared in case of an emergency. Right now she was in the restaurant overseeing the dessert service, but her office door was open.
However, a quick search of April’s desk didn’t turn up anything I could mend a dress with, not even a safety pin. “Shoot,” I said, glancing up at the fretful bride. “You didn’t happen to pack a sewing kit in your purse, did you?”
Mrs. Radley shook her head, her expression guilty. “No. I didn’t even think of it.”
I closed April’s top desk drawer. “Okay, I have one more place to look, and if that doesn’t work, I’m going to run up to my apartment and grab a pin.”
“Oh, do you live here?”
“Yes,” I said, pulling April’s office door shut. “I’m Frannie Sawyer. My family owns Cloverleigh Farms.”
“Oh my goodness, of course,” she said, following me down the hall. “My husband James is one of your father’s golf buddies. And I met your mother yesterday. Such wonderful people. Now there are five of you girls, right? Which one are you?”
“I’m the youngest. Okay, let’s try this one,” I said, pushing open the last door on the left and switching on the light.
As I entered Mack’s office, I couldn’t help feeling a little swoosh in my belly. It smelled like him—a manly combination of wood, leather, and charcoal. It sounds weird, but I’d always loved the smell of a hardware store, and that’s what Mack’s office smelled like to me. Maybe it was because I had fun memories of tagging along with my dad to the hardware store as a kid, and he always bought me an ice cream cone afterward.
Or maybe it was because Mack was hot as fuck, and I fantasized about him endlessly. There was that.
“Is this your dad’s office?” Mrs. Radley asked, glancing around as I went over to the desk.
“No, it belongs to Mack, the CFO. But I think he might have a little sewing kit in here. I gave him one for Christmas as a joke, because twice last year I had to sew a button on his shirt after he popped it off at work.”
Feeling slightly guilty to be rummaging around in his desk while he wasn’t here, I pulled open his top drawer and shuffled things around: pens, pencils, a yellow highlighter, a torn-out page from a Disney coloring book one of his daughters must have done for him, Post-It notes, Life Savers mints, his Cloverleigh Farms business cards. Momentarily distracted, I picked one up.
Declan MacAllister, Chief Financial Officer and Business Manager
I always forgot that his real name was Declan, since everyone called him Mack, but I liked it. Sometimes I whispered it to my pillow in the dark.
“Are these his girls?” She gestured to a photograph of his daughters on his desk. There were more pictures of them on the shelves behind me too. He was such a devoted dad. I knew firsthand because after his wife left last year—she had to be crazy—I became a part-time nanny to the kids. They were adorable, smart, and sweet.
And Mack was just … everything.
“Yes,” I said. “Aren’t they cute? Aha!” At the back of the drawer I found the tiny sewing kit I’d given him. I held it up triumphantly, remembering the way he’d laughed and thanked me with a hug that I still hadn’t recovered from. His chest