The three main shopping blocks of Main Street were gussied up with old-fashioned gas lights. Before Christmas, the lampposts had been decorated with wreaths and lights, but every season there seemed some excuse to string a banner across the road. It was a challenging job for one man to do alone, particularly when he had to stop traffic now and then to accomplish it. But, hell. If a guy had to risk breaking his neck for a woman, the woman should at least be worth it, right?

And Daisy, his heart had indelibly told him, was totally worth it.

He knew she had feelings for him…maybe not love yet? So he hadn’t won her heart. So they had some problems. But he knew some of her built-in walls now. She had a fear of being ordinary-so obviously he had to find ways to show her that he was never going to treat her as ordinary in a million zillion years. And she had a fear that living in White Hills would doom her to boredom…so he had to find ways to show her that a small town didn’t have to be staid.

Suddenly cars started honking. Two pickups stopped. One burly old-timer in a fur cap came barreling out of his truck, looking ready for a fight and furious as all get-out. “What the hell are you trying to do, Teague? Kill yourself?”

“Hey, Shaunessy. No, I’m just having a little trouble-”

“You’re having more than a little trouble. You’re stopping traffic. You’re working on a ladder in a high wind. Now, whatever the hell you’re trying to do, let’s just get it done so we can all go home.”

“Exactly,” the bearded man behind him echoed, “what I was thinking.”

A couple more townspeople followed up behind him. He’d done work for a lot of them, of course. And although Vermonters could be stubborn and independent, they tended to pitch in when they saw someone in big trouble. It’s not as if he would have given up if he’d had to do this totally on his own.

He wasn’t giving up. Not on Daisy. Not until he’d tried every last thing he could conceivably think of first.

But it was possible-even probable-that trying to string three sets of banners across Main Street without some help would have taken him all night and then some.

When the townspeople saw what he was doing, he saw a lot of rolled eyes and private grins. But they helped.

Two hours later the job was done.

Then it was just an issue of waiting for Daisy to wake up in the morning and see what he’d done.


The next morning, Daisy rushed over to open the top oven. The smell of char scented the air. An entire tray of croissants was more black-topped than the highway. She pulled out the tray, smacked it on the counter and waved off the smoke in exasperation.

It wasn’t as if she’d never had a baking snafu, but it was one thing to have a bad-hair day, another to have two nonstop mean days in a row. And that wasn’t even counting bad hair.

Teague was the problem, of course. She tossed down the oven pads. What was going on? From the night they’d connected after the blizzard, no day had passed without their talking or being together. But he hadn’t called. And she hadn’t been able to reach him.

Last night, of course, she’d left town before dinner, driven the back roads to investigate the present she wanted to give him on Valentine’s Day. Her heart lifted, just thinking about it-except that worry almost instantly replaced elation. Nothing exactly had to be wrong.

But she knew it was. Inside, outside, and every-other-way wrong.

“Daisy!” Harry hollered. “There’s another one.”

She charged out from the kitchen and found another beaming face at the counter, waiting for her with a little wrapped package, blue and white, with a red bow. “I just brought you a little something, dear!” It was the grandmother with the plaid jacket.

“That’s very kind,” Daisy said with total bewilderment. In the last hour-since seven that morning-three other people had brought her gifts. She knew all of them, in the way everybody knew each other’s faces in White Hills, even if they weren’t personal friends. But the first present had been a bar of honeysuckle soap, and the next had been some vanilla sugar scrub.

The grandma in the plaid jacket had wrapped up an oversize loofah. Overall, Daisy was starting to wonder if she was suffering from deodorant fade-out, since all these people suddenly seemed to feel she needed grooming and cleaning products.

“That’s so kind of you,” she said again. “But you didn’t have to give me anything.”

“Of course I didn’t, dear. But we’re all enjoying having you back home in White Hills so much. And your mom and dad and family aren’t here right now, so it just seemed like you might need a gift today.”

“Today?” Daisy repeated.

The older lady patted her hand. “We all know,” she whispered, and then turned around.

Daisy wanted to question her-what exactly did we all know?-but the buzzer went off for the bottom oven in the kitchen. She sprinted in, grabbed her hot pads and yanked open the oven door. Her poached apples with vanilla and wine and cardamom and lavender buds simply couldn’t fail-yet the pot had bubbled over and made a sizzling mess on the oven floor.

Harry showed up in the doorway. “Phone call for you in the office. And if this keeps up, I swear I’m dragging my brother in from his vacation. I don’t like working this hard. It’s against all my principles.”

“I’ll help, I’ll help, and I promise, I’ll get off the phone lickety-split.” But her heart was soaring higher than an eagle taking flight. The call was surely Teague. Okay, she was anxious and wary and thorny because he’d been so unreachable for the last two days. But as long as he was calling now…well, she wasn’t totally appeased yet. But she was sure willing to be.

As she charged into the office, she realized her palms were wet. Realized her thought train: that she was willing to forgive him about anything. Realized that she’d only been separated from him for two days and yet she was wallowing in a palms-wet, can’t-sleep, can’t-think, constantly anxious state of mind.

She’d never suffered the symptoms before. She’d been wild before, but that seemed her nature. There wasn’t much risk in doing something that came naturally to a body. Skydiving and taking off with an artist to another country and that sort of thing had never felt like a risk.

This felt like a risk.

This-God protect her-felt like love.

She grabbed the phone in Harry’s office with her heart suddenly galloping at breakneck speed. “Teague?” she said breathlessly.

“It’s Dad, Daisy. Not Teague. Who’s Teague?”

“Dad.” She closed her eyes, took a breath, pinched back the fierce disappointment-and realized all over again that she was in love.

Love was ghastly and terrifying. Who knew? How come her sisters were so happy being in love and loving? This wasn’t fun. This was so damn scary she couldn’t breathe.

“Daisy, are you there?”

“Yes, Dad. And it’s so wonderful to hear your voice. I’ve really missed you!” That wasn’t strictly true at the moment, but Daisy still meant it. She adored her dad. Her two sisters had cleaved more with their mom, but somehow she and Colin always had a special compatibility. When she got in trouble, he’d ream her out-but behind closed doors, he’d laugh with her, as well. He affirmed her spirit, her independence, even when he did the proper-dad-thing and yelled at her when she broke the rules. “Are you and Mom doing okay?”

“Your mom is fine. I’m fine. But I need to get something off my chest.”

“Shoot.” Daisy saw Harry motioning her to get off the phone, but she sank on the corner of the desk. A woman had priorities. If her dad needed her, that was that.

“Daisy, you told your mother about the divorce. You told your sisters. But you never said one direct word to me.”

Guilt bit with sharp teeth. “I never meant to hurt your feelings-”

“If you were having trouble with Jean-Luc, why didn’t you say? I know you can handle yourself. I know you wouldn’t have gotten a divorce unless the situation had become hell for you. But I thought we could always talk. I never met anyone who got so old they couldn’t use support from family. Why haven’t you called?”

“I’m sorry.” She took a breath, knowing she’d been avoiding her dad. “I know we’re overdue a heart-to-heart.” She thought she’d conquered a lot of her pride, partly because of finding Teague. Talking with him. Somehow telling him things she’d never have told anyone else. But there was a level of pride she still had trouble dipping beneath. That asking-for-help thing. That admitting when she was wrong. That admitting when she was scared.

“You’re doing all right now?”

“Fine,” she told him, and then grappled for more honesty. “Well…not fine. Because a man entered the picture who I really care about. I wasn’t looking. And I hadn’t planned on looking until I had money, a job, my whole life back together. But now is when I found him.”

“You love this guy?” her dad asked gruffly.

So easily, so strongly she said, “Yes.” But she closed her eyes and added, “Dad, there was a reason I didn’t tell you anything before. Everyone in the family’s done so well with their lives-in spite of some terrible things happening, like with Camille losing her first husband, and Violet believing for so long she couldn’t have a baby. I seemed to be the only one who really bungled things.”

“You didn’t bung-”

“Yeah, I did. And I didn’t want to be a disappointment to you.”

“You couldn’t disappoint me, you goose.” Her dad talked a few more minutes about family business. How her mom had managed to plant a garden in spite of the heat. How Camille was loving being a stepmom to her hellion teenage twins and talking about starting up an animal shelter. How Violet couldn’t talk about anything else but how wonderful the pregnancy was.