Chapter Two

      “I’m not saying you should marry the guy.” Carmen dipped her chin and sent Gianna an exasperated look over her reading glasses. “But you haven’t found anyone to do the wall braces, and you’ll end up running out of time for a pre-Easter opening.”

      “Then we’ll open for May instead,” Gianna retorted.

      Carmen lifted a silent, knowing brow.

      Gianna huffed, tossed her work onto the table and picked up her phone. When she got Seth’s voice mail, she left a terse message and hung up, then went to make tea, an annoying replacement because what she wanted was a tall, hot mug of coffee, but coffee didn’t make the list of desirable beverages for the moment.

      She missed coffee, but the rich scent of a robust blend turned her stomach, so tea had become the drink of the hour, a sorry replacement for an espresso lover. That thought darkened her already feisty mood.

      Four separate remodelers had been unable to do the job she needed done. Calling Seth after dismissing his offer? That rankled. While the town of Kirkwood was small, she’d thought someone in the little city of Clearwater might have been looking for a quick job, but no. Her job wasn’t big enough for anyone to make repeated drives to the north tip of the long, tapering lake midwinter, and none of the more local renovators were available.

      Which made her grandmother correct again and pushed her to call her landlord after rudely dismissing him the week before.

      The apartment’s doorbell rang while the tea steeped. She spotted Seth’s profile and wished her heart didn’t jump.

      But it did.

      She reached for the doorknob with damp palms.

      Ridiculous.

      And when he turned and met her gaze as she swung the storm door his way, a tiny sigh got trapped somewhere between her heart and lungs. She choked it back, motioned him in, then noted the tape measure he hauled out of his jacket pocket. “You came prepared.”

      He didn’t smile like he had last week.

      Why would he? You cut him down like sharp scissors to cotton. Quick and precise.

      Because she’d had to. She knew that. But knowing didn’t make it any easier, not now, in his presence. A waft of something deliciously spicy came her way as she followed him into the shop.

      “Carmen, how are you?” He gave her grandmother a long-lost-friend greeting, and Gram had the nerve to pop up from her chair and hug him.

      “Good! I love this place, Seth, it is perfetto for our shop, for the work Gianna and I do. Even the snow I do not mind. Its beauty is of nature and God, and everything is so close to walk to. And the view.” She clapped a theatrical hand to her heart, and Gianna couldn’t help but smile. Her grandmother was never afraid to let emotion rule the day. “I could look upon this beautiful lake forever.”

      Gianna had learned the hard way to shield her emotions. How many family and friends had advised her to grab hold of her life and move on? To go back to New York City and immerse herself in the hectic lifestyle she’d embraced for years before she’d met Michael and fallen in love?

      She’d kept hold of her life. What she’d lost was her husband, gunned down on his day off. The irony of that bit deep. A New York State trooper on a convenience store run for his pregnant wife, stumbling onto a robbery in progress.

      Gone, just like that, and then the miscarriage a few weeks later.

      Emptiness had consumed her. Some said for too long, but what did they know? Had they suffered her loss?

      No. So they could—

      “Do you have a sketch?”

      She stuffed the backward trail of thoughts aside and picked up a sheet of paper from the counter. “Right here.”

      “Thanks.” Seth didn’t say any more. He simply took the sketch, crossed to the east-facing wall, then measured repeatedly between the red cedar beams.

      “I was thinking four-foot sections here, here and here.” Gianna pointed out the separated wall areas for him. “If we leave every third or fourth area free, I can strategically place mannequins to display complete outfits.”

      “Those headless things give me the willies,” he muttered as he penciled numbers. “Although the ones with heads aren’t much better.”

      “Dress forms,” Gianna told him.

      He paused and frowned. “I don’t get it.”

      “Like that.” She pointed out the dress form in her sewing corner. “I’m working on a circa-1940s gown for a customer, and the form is adjustable. When I’m sewing, I use the form to see if I’m nipping and tucking in all the right spots as I create the dress. Out here—” she waved a hand to the stack of boxes and rolling racks clogging the middle of the room “—I can display things in their natural size so that customers have the advantage. What looks great on a size six doesn’t always work for a size sixteen.”

      “You’re making this?” Seth stepped closer to the form. He touched the soft, tucked fabric of the sleeve and turned her way. “I thought it was some old-fashioned gown you bought. This is lovely.”

      The way he said it, as if he understood the tiny differences between good-and fine-quality garments, made her feel better inside. “Thank you.”

      “This isn’t sewing,” he went on as he admired two other outfits on the rack behind Gianna’s sewing corner.

      She arched a brow and looked up, waiting for him to finish.

      Time stopped. So did her heart, and if the look on his face was any indication, his reaction mimicked hers, so she took a deep breath and a full step back. “It’s not?”

      “It’s art. Like a fine painting or a book you can’t put down.”

      He needed to stop talking. He needed to stop being so nice, so kind, so capable, so big, strong and handsome. If you weren’t working in the garment district or with a costume designer on Broadway, sewing skills were relegated to the occasional alterations shop these days. Her grandmother’s talent and skill was becoming a lost art, just like Seth said. But not on Gianna’s watch. She may have given up the streets of the Big Apple, but she wouldn’t abandon the God-given artistry of their combined efforts. Their location on the quaint and upscale lakeshore would provide a tremendous tourist trade, while special orders on the internet helped balance the books.

      She retreated one more step, but it wasn’t far enough, because the spiced-wood scent of him called to her. She’d answered that call once, to a man who wore a uniform, a man with a badge. She’d loved him, heart and soul.

      She’d lost him the same way.

      * * *

      He’d work when Gianna was out of the shop,