CHAPTER ONE

“You about done with your lunch, Ivy?” my boss, Miss Hazel Burton, asked when she walked past me with a box of Christmas lights in her arms. “The tree will be ready to decorate in just a few minutes.” 

“I’ll be there soon.” I glanced away from the social media feed I’d been browsing at the table to where Hazel was setting the box on the floor near the artificial tree in the main living area of the Sutton Creek Inn. 

It was the first of December and we’d been working all week to get the bed and breakfast Hazel owned ready for the holiday season.

We’d already set up the seaside-themed tree in the Cape Cod room this morning, and I’d finished decorating the tree in the Enchanted Forest room last night.

We just had the North Pole tree to set up in the reception area today and then we’d be done with tree decorating for the year.

“Is that your old roommate, Kate, and her new baby?” Hazel nodded toward my phone before pulling a string of lights from the box at her feet. .

“Yeah. Isn’t he so cute?” I held my phone up so she could see the screen better.

“He’s adorable.” The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled.

He was adorable—the perfect mixture of Kate and her husband Drew.

I scrolled through the rest of the newborn photos Kate had posted and tried not to think about the twinge of jealousy that formed in my stomach as I thought about how lucky she was to have the perfect husband and baby while I was still single.

Not just single, but utterly single, as Hazel liked to tell our male patrons when she tried to set me up on dates with them. Hazel was the seventy-five-year-old grandmother figure in my life, and had therefore taken it upon herself to try and be my matchmaker.

But either she wasn’t very good at it, or I was just destined to grow old and live alone forever because despite her best efforts, none of those first dates ever turned into second dates.

After I finished scrolling through the photos, I noticed that Kate had also shared the new trailer for the movie that was coming out soon, based on a screenplay she’d written.

Yes, my awesome college roommate hadn’t only married the famous “Billionaire Bachelor,” Drew Burrows, but she was also becoming a famous screenwriter in her own right.

It was hard not to be jealous of her success when the gossip blog I’d created in college that had once thrived with all the juicy secrets celebrities didn’t want us knowing about their lives, was now as stale as the package of potato chips sitting in the backseat of my car. 

Sure, my life was much better now than it had been growing up in the foster care system. But I just thought things would be different when I turned twenty-six. I thought I’d at least have my life figured out by now, instead of twiddling my thumbs at Hazel’s inn while I tried to figure out what the heck I wanted to do now that my gossip blog wasn’t fulfilling me like it once had.

I turned on the sound for Kate’s movie trailer and decided to focus on that instead of my failed dreams. On the screen was a man walking out of a foggy darkness. I could only see the bottom half of him at first. His black suit pants and jacket were tattered and dirty, like he’d just been in some sort of fight or disaster. But even with the disheveled look, I knew he was hot and had the body of a male model. Kate always wrote her characters to be that way, at least.

The camera panned up to the man’s torso. His dress shirt was ripped at just the right place for us to see that he must have a great upper body workout routine. But before I could drool too much over the actor’s abs or the perfectly sculpted chest, it moved up to his face.

And that’s when I choked on the sip of water I’d just swallowed.

Not because the guy was unattractive, but because for those few seconds, I had allowed myself to be attracted to him.

How had Kate let this happen? 

How had she allowed the director to cast Justin Banks—the guy who had turned me into the laughing stock of my high school—as the lead in her movie?

There was an unwritten rule that you just did not work with people who were jerks to your friends.

Had she completely forgotten everything I’d told her about him?

I didn’t care if he was one of the most famous actors in the business or that almost every movie he starred in turned into an international blockbuster.

“She must have shared the wrong movie trailer,” I mumbled as I watched the character Justin played knock on the front door of a run-down house.

“Did you say something?” Hazel asked from behind me.

“No.” I shook my head and held up my phone for her to see what I was watching. “I’m just mumbling about Kate’s movie.”

Hazel’s gray eyebrows knit together, like she still didn’t understand what I was talking about.

I sighed and paused the video. “You remember when I told you that Kate was having one of her screenplays turned into a movie?”

“Yes.” Hazel nodded. 

“Well, I thought she just wanted to be mysterious about who they had cast for the lead. I didn’t know she was actually just keeping it a secret because she knew how much I hate the actor.”

“Oh.” Hazel nodded slowly as understanding showed in her hazel-colored eyes. “I’m guessing that Justin is starring in another movie?”

Justin.

She said his name like they were old friends. Like he wasn’t the guy who made me bawl my eyes out on the night that I should have been attending my senior prom.

Hazel must have seen my grimace because she said, “Do you think you’ll ever forgive him for that? You graduated from high school so long ago. Don’t you think it’s time to move on? You know what they say…”

“That holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies?” I finished for her.

She may have said that quote to me once or twice before.

“I just wonder if there’s something we don’t know about that night.” She shrugged and finished untangling the strand of lights she was working on. “Justin always seemed like such a sweetheart to me.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, I thought that too until he stood me up without any explanation and made me feel like an idiot.”

All the girls at our small high school had told me I was crazy to drop hints about him taking me to the final dance of our senior year, but I hadn’t listened to them. Justin had always been kind to me, unlike all the other guys who had made fun of me for being forty pounds overweight.

When he did ask me to the dance, I’d thought that my dreams of having a high school boyfriend could possibly come true.

But he ended up being just like every other guy at our school who made fun of the nerdy fat girl. He may not have said the insults out loud, but I’d gotten the message loud and clear when I was left to sit inside the front room of this very inn, wearing a fancy pink dress Hazel had helped me buy and watching the clock as the night of the prom turned into the morning after.

He hadn’t even tried to make up excuses when I saw him at school the next week. He just let everyone tease me about how I was so dumb to believe I’d ever had a shot with him.

Well, if only Justin Banks could see me now.

It had taken a really strict diet and a lot of exercise, but I’d managed to lose most of the weight that summer after I graduated and was ready to start fresh when I moved to California. Sure, I had stretch marks here and there, but I looked pretty dang good, if I didn’t say so myself.

I’d even grown out my black hair that had been in an unflattering pixie cut back then and learned how to apply makeup to help make me stand out more instead of blend into the background.

Not that Justin would be that impressed. He did work with and date some of the most beautiful women in the world.

Plus, in order to see my transformation, he’d have to actually come back to Sutton Creek. And he hadn’t been back to Colorado since we’d graduated high school. He was out of here and off to California almost as soon as they’d handed him his diploma.

“Are you about ready to grab the last box of ornaments from the basement? Or would you like to finish your video first?” Hazel eyed my phone, which was still paused on the up close image of Justin standing on the front porch of a house.

“No. I’m good.” I darkened the phone. “I’ll go get the North Pole ornaments from the basement.”

Justin didn’t need to be on my screen for a moment longer.

* * *

Decorating the tree took two hours. Hazel focused on the lower half since she was barely over five feet and I took care of the upper half since I was five-foot-nine and more steady on the step stool than she was. But even though it was the sixth tree I’d decorated this week, it was still enjoyable. And listening to the old Christmas music Hazel played on the record player made me feel like I was back in a time when life was a lot more slower-paced and simple.

“Did the guy who reserved the whole place ever let you know what time we should expect him?” I asked Hazel, hooking a sparkly white bulb on a high branch.

When Hazel had told me about the odd reservation several months ago, I had been intrigued since we’d never had one person book the entire bed and breakfast before.

But when she’d told me that the reservation hadn’t indicated any other guests, I’d been confused.

What kind of person needed five rooms for himself?

Did he plan to store his luggage in the Cape Cod room, take naps in the Island Paradise room, shower in the Safari room and then alternate nights sleeping in the Victorian and Enchanted Forest rooms?

I’d tried looking him up online, to see if he looked as high maintenance as I imagined. But there were way too many guys named Tyler Smith for me to get very far in figuring the mystery guest out.

“Do you think he’s, like, a spy or something?” I asked, trying one of my theories out on Hazel. “Maybe he’s planning to swear us to silence and make sure no one ever knows he came to Sutton Creek on a top-secret mission to save Christmas from being over-commercialized.”

Hazel’s peach-colored lips quirked up into a half-smile. “That would be something, now wouldn’t it?”

But she said nothing else.

She had to be at least curious about this guy.

“Do you really not know anything about him?” I grabbed Santa’s sleigh ornament out of the box. “I mean, for all we know, he could be some sort of serial killer and have reserved the whole place to insure that no other guests are around to witness our murders.”

Hazel chuckled. “I think I’ll take my chances. I’m already seventy-five. I doubt anyone would see anything fun about killing an old woman.”

“She’s correct,” a deep voice said from behind us, startling the crap out of me. “I much prefer taking out my serial killer tendencies on people closer to my own age.”

I whipped my head around, my stomach jumping into my throat as I looked to see who had snuck into the inn without either of us noticing.

And in the next moment, I was gaping at the last person I ever imagined coming face to face with again.

I blinked my eyes a few times, not certain I wasn’t hallucinating. But when they focused again, they saw a guy with the same chiseled jawline, same golden-brown eyes and the same six-foot-four inch frame, according to IMDb, that I’d seen in Kate’s movie trailer at lunch.

It was indeed my biggest regret-turned-Hollywood royalty standing ten feet away.

Justin Banks.

What the heck was he doing at the Sutton Creek Inn?

Was he lost on his way to his next filming location?

Really, really lost?