Free A Fairytale Bride by Hope Ramsay Page B

the Liberty Avenue Merchants Association at oh dark thirty this morning. You know how everyone loved Harriet. And everyone remembers you as a little girl, and we’re all just a little overprotective of you, I guess. So this Jefferson Lyndon situation has gotten everyone into an uproar. Half the shop owners think Pam Lyndon sent that man to soften you up. To convince you to sell out.”
    “But—”
    Gracie held up a hand. “I know, hon. Why would a man help you fix up the store if he’d been sent to convince you that keeping it going was pointless?”
    Melissa nodded. “Exactly.”
    “Well, not everyone is as logical as you and I. Anyway,” Gracie said with a little gleam in her eye, “at the meeting this morning, some of the merchants took up a collection to help you with your taxes. It’s not much, but we figured it might be enough to buy you some time. I was nominated to go down to the county clerk’s office to make a payment on your behalf. But when I got there, I found out that someone had already paid your taxes in full.”
    “What?”
    “That’s right. Paid in full first thing this morning, just an hour before I got there. The clerk wouldn’t tell me who. She said it was a privacy matter or something. As if there’s any privacy in a town as small as Shenandoah Falls.”
    “You think Jeff paid my taxes?” The weight in Melissa’s chest began to lift.
    “That would be my guess. Now, why would a man do a thing like that?”
    Melissa tried to think of a good business reason and drew a blank. “Because he believes in independent bookstores?” It was lame.
    “Or maybe he believes in you?” Gracie said, covering one of Melissa’s hands with hers.
    Melissa’s eyes filled up, but this time the tears weren’t angry. “And I believe in him, Gracie,” she whispered, her lips trembling. “I’ve been sitting here reading the things he’s written, and I can’t help myself. I think what he wrote in that story about the Durand nomination is true. I think he ran away from New York because even his father refused to stand by him.”
    “You know,” Gracie said, “if my daddy had publicly disavowed me, I think I might return the favor. You know, by dropping the hyphenated part of my last name.”
    “Really? Because now that I’m sober and I’ve read his story and the reaction to it, I’ve come to the same conclusion.”
    Just then Dickens jumped up on the kitchen table, sat down facing Melissa, and proceeded to meow at her as if he were scolding her or something. Hugo followed suit, only he yowled in a way that was practically mournful.
    “Mercy,” Gracie said. “I’ve never seen them do anything like that before.”
    Melissa got up from the table. “It’s a sign, Gracie. They’ve been trying to tell me for days that Jeff belongs here. I just wasn’t listening.”
    *  *  *
    Melissa called Walter Braden back and canceled her meeting. Without a tax bill looming over her, maybe she could make a go of keeping Secondhand Prose alive, saving Hugo and Dickens’s home, and preserving a little piece of Grammy for a while.
    And all because of Jeff, who had walked into her store and insisted on fixing it up. Not because he was paid to do it. Not because she’d asked him to do it. But because he had simply belonged there.
    The cats knew it. And now Melissa did, too.
    She needed to talk to him, so she decided the ball wasn’t in his court after all. The ball was in hers. She texted him.
    Melissa: We need to talk . Where are you?
    Jeff: I’m just leaving Charlotte’s Grove. Expect an apology call from Pam. I’ll be at the store in ten minutes.
    Melissa: No, not here. Too many busybodies. Where’s your cabin?
    Jeff: :)
    His emoticon was followed by an address in the Blue Ridge off Scottish Heights Road. She told him she’d meet him there in twenty minutes.
    The cabin turned out to be high up on the ridge off a dirt road. Jeff certainly hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that he’d been