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dear.”
    “Wait. What? They’re not ? I’m sorry, who is this, and what have you done with my friend Jonathan?”
    “Hardy har har. I’m just saying the woman is cold. She was practically royalty here once upon a time, and then she just up and left and never looked back. All those people who helped her, supported her? She just left them in her dust.” Altering his voice to a deep, resonating bass, he added, “Her heart is two sizes too small.”
    Cassie couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, Dr. Seuss. I get it. We still on tonight?”
    “Are you kidding? There is nothing I want more than to sit with you and watch grown men skate around on the ice, slam into one another, and hit each other with sticks. I am so there.”
    They said their goodbyes, Cassie still smiling and shaking her head as she ended the call and put her cell back in her pocket.

CHAPTER FOUR

    Emerson flopped back onto the couch, kicked off her pumps, propped her feet on the small coffee table, and groaned in frustration. Bringing the wine glass to her nose, she took a moment to enjoy the bouquet of the smooth Cabernet before taking a sip. The wine rack in the corner held about fifteen bottles, and she’d ended up doing eeny-meeny-miny-moe to decide which to open.
    Flavors of plum and black cherries coated her tongue, and the wine finished with a slight hint of vanilla. Delicious , she thought, and felt her entire body relax into the cushions. She finally allowed herself to look around the small cottage and really study her mother’s living quarters.
    It wasn’t a large place, really no bigger than a sizable one-bedroom apartment would be, but her mother had made it very cozy and welcoming. The living room held a couch and a reclining rocker. Emerson could picture her mother in the rocker on a cold winter night, covered with an afghan and reading a mystery. A large stone fireplace took up one wall, and Emerson noticed it had been altered to accommodate a gas insert. A stack of nicely aged wood looked ready to go, but she realized it was just for show. She picked up the remote on the coffee table, pointed it at the fireplace, and clicked. The flames blazed to life. Probably won’t be long until this needs to be used regularly , Emerson thought. In Los Angeles, she didn’t have much occasion to sit by a roaring fire, and she was not happy about the appeal she suddenly felt for it. Along one wall was the kitchen, simple in its make-up, but functional. A breakfast bar separated it from the living room, three high-backed barstools serving as the only place to eat a meal in the cottage.
    Another large swallow of wine allowed Emerson to shift her gaze to the pictures that decorated much of the room. Some on the walls, some propped on a table, all were of Emerson. There was one picture of her and her father, Fredrik. He was young, blond, and ridiculously handsome, a wide-eyed Emerson sitting on his lap, holding up his Olympic gold medal. In the rest of the photos, she was in ski attire, often holding up her own award or trophy. Slalom. Giant slalom. Alpine downhill. Regional. States. Emerson had won almost every major skiing competition she could enter as a teenager. She was just like her father, and at almost nineteen years old, she was poised to make the US Ski Team and compete in the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
    That was before she’d completely lost her mind and done something inexplicably and selfishly stupid.
    Shaking the memories from her head, she took another slug of wine and shifted her focus to the current problem at hand: The Lakeshore Inn. It was hers now.
    Except she didn’t want it.
    She couldn’t live here in Lake Henry. She already had a home. Well, an apartment. In L.A. On the other side of the country. What was she supposed to do with a small inn on a small lake in a small town in upstate New York?
    Her cell phone rang before she could complete the thought. A glance at the screen told her it was Claire. Emerson took a deep