Throwing the car in park directly in front of the house that doubled as the inn, Fiona stepped out, the chill in the air stealing her breath for a moment. “Welcome to paradise. Or Siberia. This is definitely the frozen tundra.”
“This is adorable,” Ang said, her head swiveling around to take it all in so fast that it was a wonder she registered anything. “I love it.”
“Sure, Vermont is beautiful,” Fiona allowed and flung a hand at the charming two story house with a generously wide wraparound porch. “This only cost me my childhood home.”
“Oh, you poor thing.” There came Ang’s sarcasm, which meant Fiona had blathered on about it too long, apparently.
Can’t have it both ways, Ang. If she wanted Fiona to express her feelings about things, then she was going to have to hear about it too, now wasn’t she?
A racket on the other side of the car cut her off before she could remind Ang that she’d been the one to insist Fiona get in touch with her inner crybaby. Turning simultaneously, both women got an eyeful of the best scenery in Vermont thus far—about a hundred yards away, a rugged, clean-cut guy loaded wood into a wheelbarrow.
Hello. He bent to pick up another log and Fiona couldn’t help but notice how he moved, as if comfortable in his own skin. Very nice. Hey, she might be nursing a broken heart, but there was absolutely nothing broken about her eyes.
“Who is that?” Fiona murmured. “A groundskeeper or something?”
“I don’t know.” Ang waggled her brows. “He’s cute, though.”
Yes, he was. Straight out of an LLBean catalogue, and apparently he lifted weights, too, because some of those logs were not small. This was the kind of scenery Fiona could really appreciate.
Angela’s cell phone rang. “Oh, I have service. What part of ‘I’m on vacation’ did you not understand?” she bit out to whoever had called as she paced away.
So not fair that Ang had reception and Fiona didn’t. It was one more cruel joke in a long line of disappointments this Spring. “Oh, this is definitely not Manhattan.”
Only the sky heard her because this place put new meaning in the term “remote.” Even the cute groundskeeper couldn’t hold her attention. A rooster crowed and as she glanced toward it, a huge pile of mushrooms near her feet caught her attention. They were growing right there on a pile of logs near the drive.
“Gross.” She kicked at them but there were a lot and they held on tenaciously. Some of the slimy roots stuck to her Fendi boots that she’d snagged at an end-of-season sale at Barney’s only two weeks ago. “Yuck.”
“Hey, whoa!” The cute groundskeeper rushed her suddenly, peeling off his gloves as he crossed to the pile of logs she’d been kicking, his expression incredulous. “What are you doing?”
“I’m just getting rid of these mushrooms.” Not that she had to explain herself to him. “Eyesores like that can really decrease a property’s value.”
Everyone knew that. And they were the first thing guests would see as they pulled up in the circular drive. Delia and her father clearly needed someone with her skills to walk the property line in search of these scenarios.
His gaze lit on the crushed mushrooms and his expression fell. There was no question that she’d rained on his parade somehow. As if she’d kicked a puppy instead of fungus, he bent down and gathered the bunch into his hands protectively.
“These are not just mushrooms.” He towered over her as he spread his hands open to show her. “They’re oyster mushrooms.”
“Ohhhh-kay. Oyster mushrooms,” Fiona repeated since the distinction clearly meant something to him. Wow, he was really tall. She had to crane her neck to look up at him. “Sorry.”
“They’re really delicious and extremely rare for this early in the season,” he informed her in a tender voice better reserved for when speaking of a dearly departed relative.
Wait, delicious? As in he’d planned to eat them? Food came wrapped in plastic at the grocery store, not clinging to a log outside. In the elements. Where bugs and stuff could crawl on it.
“Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt your harvest,” she shot back.
He might be cute but he had this way of smirking that put her back up, as if she were a bumbling idiot from the city who couldn’t possibly know the secrets of Vermont real estate, particularly when it came to property value.
“I still gotta take mushroom soup off the menu,” he informed her, his breath turning white in the chilly air as he turned his back on her.
“Menu.” The word did not compute. “Menu for what?”
But the not-so-cute-after-all groundskeeper had already walked away, clearly not interested in continuing a conversation with Fiona the Destroyer. The guy might have cheekbones to spare, but he’d left his personality in bed this morning. Until he found it, she’d be happy to stay indoors, well away from the surly groundskeeper.
“Fi!” a male voice behind her called out and she whirled.
The only male she cared about at this moment charged down the steps and rounded the car, his smile wide and welcoming.
“Brandon!”
Before she could blink, her brother engulfed her in a hug and everything bad that had happened thus far melted away. It had been far too long since she’d seen him, a by-product of the feud with her father since Brandon had been living here at the inn for two or three years now. The former tech-exec couldn’t seem to find his footing in the city, so he’d exited stage left for Vermont, which meant he and Fiona didn’t get to have dinner on a regular basis anymore.
Shame. She might have to bend a little more about visiting or she’d keep missing her brother. Delia too, for that matter.
“Hi, Brandon,” Angela called in a singsong voice she reserved for Fiona’s brother.
He stiffened slightly and pulled away from Fiona, turning to greet the redhead whom he’d long considered the bane of his existence. “Angela.”
His tone changed when he talked to Fiona’s childhood friend, as well. If the two of them couldn’t see that the reason they were always so weird with each other was because they belonged together, then she wasn’t going to tell them. They had to figure it out on their own.
“The trouble twins return,” he announced as he glanced back and forth between the two of them, though Fiona didn’t miss that his gaze lingered on Ang.
“Awww.” Angela punched him on the arm the way a woman does when she wants to touch a man without cluing him in that she liked him. “You still sore about those snow cones?”
“The snow cones that ended up on my head?”
They’d totally edged out Fiona, facing each other as if there was no one else in the world, which amused her. The air fairly crackled between them.
Ang slid a finger through her hair to tuck it behind her ear as she gave Brandon a saucy smile. “From how I recall it, I was ten and you pulled my hair first.”
Brandon scoffed and said something else that Fiona didn’t catch because Surly Groundskeeper had lifted the wheelbarrow and pushed it toward the back of the house. There was no denying that watching that man leave had definite appeal—she got the best view of him and she couldn’t see that annoying smirk on his face.
“Fiona,” Angela snapped in a way that indicated it wasn’t the first time she’d said her name. “Back me up on this.”
“Oh no.” Fiona shook her head and focused on her brother. “I’m not getting