“So, when are you coming to visit?”

“Soon, okay? Soon.” Conversation finished, she tossed her phone onto the counter and rinsed the berries. As usual, Jenn was right. Her love life was an endless litany of hopeless infatuations, starting with Brent, the star sprinter for the high school track team who never even knew her name. Brent was followed by Stephen, undergrad environmentalist who smiled from the cover of The Eagle as he summited a mountain of recycling. During grad school, she joined the Hemmingway Seminar. Dr. Harris insisted the students call him James. During his lectures, she closed her eyes and swore he was Jimmy Stewart reincarnated in tweed. Unfortunately, his wife looked like Grace Kelly.

Now, Jonas the Amish guy. Add him to the list.

She spooned strawberries and yogurt and glanced at her phone. Just enough time to eat before the auction. Sticky juice ran down her chin, and she licked her lips.

What was so wrong with high standards, anyway?

She could hear Jenn’s response. “Table for one?”

I’m not crazy. He’s as curious about me as I am about him.

Maybe Monday night at sundown, she’d get some answers.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Thirty-six pies and two armloads of lilacs smelled like…? Tessa sank into the driver’s seat and closed her eyes.

Like Martha Stewart’s sock drawer.

Who would have guessed butter and lilac produced such intoxicating perfume? Maybe she’d just pop the top and nap in the camper all afternoon. She had, after all, set her alarm for an obscene hour that morning so she’d have time to make flower arrangements before the pie pick up.

Just after dawn, she cut a big bundle of the fragrant flowers and arranged them in a tumbling cascade in an old ironstone pitcher. The remaining blossoms she’d bunched in antique milk jars of varying sizes. Cracking open one eye, she surveyed the containers clustered on the passenger’s side floor. The bouquets were casual and country but still elegant. She guessed “the wonderful Claire MacMillan” had fully decorated the venue, but fresh flowers were never out of place. Besides, as far as she knew, the dessert table was entirely her responsibility.

Her vision partly obscured by lilacs, she tottered toward the open-air, party tent. It rose as pearly and inviting as she remembered from her youth. After graduation and reunion weekends, Green Ridge College donated the tent to local organizations before returning it to storage. She peeped through blossoms. Bunches of red and blue helium balloons bobbed in the breeze. Despite overcast skies, the atmosphere under the canvas was a festive summertime picnic.

Once inside, she dodged an army of volunteers hustling among the tables. Which one was Claire? She scanned the crowd. Next to an elevated riser on the far end of the tent, a dark-haired woman in a cherry-red shirtdress huddled with the members of a Dixieland band.