“Right about the time you stopped spending summers here,” her mom observed.

“Mm-hmm,” Eve said vaguely. Her parents didn’t know about Sawyer. Well, they knew she’d dated him as a teenager, but nothing beyond that.

It had been Lucille’s idea for Eve to start coming to Moonflower Bay, and Eve’s parents had readily agreed. Child care in the summer was expensive, and Lucille was free. But as Eve had gotten older, her parents had started to grumble about how spending the whole summer with her aunt meant missing important opportunities. Like that summer she was sixteen, when she’d been admitted to a prestigious summer program but hadn’t wanted to go. They’d had a huge fight, which wasn’t normal for them. Her parents were determined—dead set determined—that she would get the higher education they hadn’t.

Eve had won that particular battle, but not before her parents had accused her of letting a boy come before her studies.

So despite the fact that they were close, she’d clammed up on the topic of Sawyer—especially since she’d been contemplating staying in Moonflower Bay for good, instead of going to university.

All this meant she had never told her parents exactly what Sawyer had meant to her. That he’d been her first love.

She’d certainly never told them that he’d been her only love.

Sure, she’d thought she loved the handful of crushes and boyfriends she’d had in the intervening years. But those guys had all…worn off.

Sawyer had not worn off.

Worse, even once he was gone, once she’d physically left, he’d retained his power over her. She had let him keep her away from Lucille, from the inn, for ten years. Which made her hopping mad. “Well, whenever Lucille redid her will, she clearly wanted you to have the inn,” her father said. “Have it. Run it. She wouldn’t have put that clause in otherwise.”

“So just because she wanted me to uproot my life and become a small-town innkeeper, I have to do that?” Eve hated the way her voice got high and shrill when she was upset. She made a conscious effort to speak more calmly. “I have a life, Dad, and it’s in Toronto. With you guys. At the library.”

“I know,” he said quickly. “I know.” He waved a dismissive hand.

Crap. Her father so rarely had an opinion. The strong, silent type, he was usually just there in the background, being quietly supportive of both her mother and her. He let them decide pretty much everything—what to watch on movie night, when everyone should take off work for their annual family staycation.

All this was to say that on the rare occasion that Dad did issue an opinion, she and her mom paid attention.