“It’s Mayor Sue now,” the other woman threw over her shoulder as she headed down the hall.

“You . . . you want me to call you that?”

“Everyone else does.”

“I’m glad Aimee called me,” Jen said. “I would hate to see the games die.”

“Well, you agreed to work for free and Aimee said you know what you’re doing.”

The thing was, Jen knew Sue must have had some form of confidence in her, otherwise why would the older woman have continued to hire her in the past, job after job, summer after summer? Still, would it have killed her to say, just once, “Nice job, Jen. Thanks so much”?

Sue turned in to what must have been a bedroom at one time, but was now a tiny corner conference room with a giant box fan whipping warm air around. A laptop sat on the table. Sue hooked loose strands of wiry hair behind each ear and spun the laptop around so its screen was visible.

Jen bent over and squinted at the spreadsheet, specifically at the tiny number in the bottom right rectangle. “That’s what’s left? Where’d DeeDee run off to again?”

“France, we’re told.” Sue snorted, and Jen wasn’t sure if the disgust came from the fact that the longtime organizer of the Highland Games had run off with a sizable chunk of the town’s money, or that she’d run away to a place that wasn’t Scotland with a man who didn’t have a drop of Scottish blood in him.

Jen wasn’t remotely Scottish either, which might have accounted for some of Sue’s snobbery over the years. In Gleann, there were the descendants of the original founders . . . and everyone else. Sue McCurdy was the former. Years ago, the joke had been that Aimee and Jen Haverhurst were Irish twins in a Scottish town. Also, there was the fact that Aimee had been a hellion during her summers here, and Jen had had to skip out of work on more than one occasion to bail her out. Maybe Sue had never gotten over that joke or Jen’s sister-related absences.

Jen tapped the spreadsheet on the screen. The amount left in the games’ account wouldn’t even have covered her fee back in the city, but she wasn’t here for the money. A part of her got way too excited at this challenge. It was, quite simply, a matter of pride. Aimee’s income, Aunt Bev’s legacy, and Jen’s own childhood memories were at stake.

“I read that the other games across the state are doing amazingly well.”

Sue narrowed her eyes. “Did your research, did you?”

“Always.”

Sue nodded, braids swinging. “They get bigger every year, more commercial, more notoriety, pro athletes. We get smaller. The society doesn’t like giving resources to something that doesn’t even really compete. But we have more history. Better atmosphere.”

Jen hadn’t been to the other games, but she nodded with Sue’s assessment about Gleann’s. It was too bad, however, that they seemed to have lost that history.

“Think you can do it?” Sue crossed her arms under her generous boobs. The Syracuse printed on the front looked like yracus.

Jen pulled her hair back into a ponytail and took a seat. “I think so. Yes.”

Sue frowned at her before leaving, as though she’d had hundreds of other event planners lined up around the block to take this gig for free, and Jen still had to prove herself.

The thing was, she would prove herself. To Aimee, who’d been so clearly disappointed in Jen’s absence the past decade. To dear Aunt Bev, whose love and encouragement had brought her to Gleann and changed her life for the better. To Leith, who’d been so hurt and angry when she’d left. And to her mom, who’d laughed when Jen said she wanted to go to college.

Jen spent the next two hours flipping through old files and memorizing spreadsheets, committing totals and rearranging numbers in her head. There were very few resources, even less money, and practically no organization or innovation. No wonder the society was about to pull out. The timeline to pull this thing off—and to make it better than in years past—would be extremely tough. She couldn’t turn the games into the grand affair she’d like to, but there were lots of small, special things she could add to or improve in the time allotted that would make a nice difference.

She needed to take inventory. She needed to contact vendors and perhaps wrangle some short-notice sponsors. She needed to learn how the hell to run a heavy athletic competition or get someone to do it for her, and, in looking at the scant number of entrants, attract more athletes. She needed—

Her phone rang. Aimee.

“Hel—”

Screeching and sobbing filled her ear.

“Calm down, Aim, I can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”

“Oh my God, the whole place, Jen!” There was splashing and squishing in the background. “The toilet or the bathtub or something up in your room. Something must have burst. Water everywhere. Totally flooded.” A sob, a sniffle. “It’s dripping through the floorboards, into the main room downstairs. Oh my God! I don’t know what to do!”

Despite her earlier vow to give this thing her all for the next two weeks, Jen’s first instinct at hearing Aimee’s panic was to run. To swim like hell far, far away from her sister’s mess. Why the hell was her sister calling her now? Ah, of course. Because Jen was here, and when Jen was here, she took care of things.

All her clothes and toiletries were in that room, sitting right outside the bathroom. Probably floating down the hall by now. Crap.

She ground fingers into her temple. “Maybe you should, I don’t know, turn off the water at the source and then call a plumber?”

“What? No.” More crying, more splashing.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I can’t call him.” It came out like hiiiiiiiim, and Jen finally got it. Aimee had probably slept with whoever hiiiiiiiim was and they hadn’t moved past the After-Sex Awkwardness.

Lovely. Jen Haverhurst to the rescue.

“Just hold on, Aim. Be there in a second. Can you at least find the water shutoff?”

“Okay. Yes. I think so.”

Jen hung up and sighed. She pushed back from the table and poked her head out of the conference room door. “Mrs. McCurdy?”—because she could never, ever bring herself to call her Mayor Sue—“Know of any places in town I can rent? Like, today?”

Chapter

2

Leith MacDougall stacked three bags of topsoil, shoved his hands under the bottom one, and heaved all three into the back of his white pickup truck. On the other side of the barn, his phone jumped and buzzed from where it sat on the empty potting bench. He let it go to voicemail. There was a shitload of packing up and consolidating to do before he closed down this location and handed the keys back to Loughlin, the property owner. Wasn’t like it would be a new client calling anyway.

Chris, his lone remaining employee, entered through the big sliding door, pushing an empty wheelbarrow. The younger guy eyed how much Leith had cleared out in fifteen minutes. “Wow. Motivated?”

“You could say that.”

Leith lifted the bottom of his already-soaked T-shirt to wipe his sweaty face. His muscles ached, but that’s what he loved most about his business. Planning and designing the landscapes fed his brain and gave him a deep sense of accomplishment, but it was the digging and planting and grunt work that really made his blood buzz. The physical stuff always got him going, and over the past year, he hadn’t gotten nearly enough of it.

Was he referring to landscaping or sex? Sadly, either one applied.

The phone stopped ringing.

“Heard this morning at the Kafe they’re still going through with the games this year even though DeeDee took off,” Chris said, crossing the vast, empty floor. “Rumor has it Mayor Sue found some sucker to take over, last minute.”

Leith reached for the last two bags of soil. “Good for them.”