Page 1 of Mountain Man’s Mystic Touch

Chapter 1

Loralee

The universe has sent me the same message four times in seventeen days. The first arrived at Ava’s birthday party between a questionable Capricorn cookie and an eleven-minute séance. Mountains. Autumn. A man with stubborn energy. At the time, the message felt promising, although possibly influenced by maple-spice cake and the fact that I had spent most of the evening surrounded by candles.

The second came three nights later while I slept. I stood beneath trees covered in red and gold leaves, watching a dark-haired man walk toward me through a spill of amber light. I couldn’t see his face, but I felt his attention land on me with enough force to wake me.

The third appeared in my tarot cards last Monday. The fourth is currently blinking on my phone.

ONE VENDOR SPACE AVAILABLE — CADY SPRINGS AUTUMN FESTIVAL

I stare at the announcement while the espresso machine hisses behind me. Sweet Treats does not officially open for another twenty-three minutes, which means Ava has already been working for at least two hours and would prefer that I stop looking at my phone.

She has not said this yet. She doesn’t need to. Her energy becomes extremely specific when she is irritated.

“Whatever you’re reading,” she says from the kitchen doorway, “it will still exist after the orange-cranberry muffins are in the display.”

I look toward the tray cooling on the prep table. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether the universe uses disappearing messages.”

Ava closes her eyes for a moment. Marriage has softened some of her sharper edges, but it has not diminished her commitment to schedules, properly aligned pastries, or employees arriving late for their assigned shifts. Fortunately, I am six minutes early today.

I slide my phone into the pocket of my cardigan and carry the tray toward the front. “The muffins need another minute.”

“They have had twenty-two.”

I smile and begin transferring the muffins into the glass display. Sweet Treats smells like coffee, cinnamon, and the maple syrup Jake has persuaded Ava to add to increasingly inappropriate numbers of baked goods.

The bakery has changed since I began working here. Not in large ways. Ava still arranges everything with military precision. Customers still line up for cinnamon rolls on Fridays, and the front door still sticks whenever the weather turns damp.

But Jake’s dark jacket now hangs beside Ava’s apron in the back room. His enormous boots occasionally appear beneath the smallest table near the window. Ava smiles at her phone more than she realizes and has stopped looking personally betrayed when someone offers to help her.

Energy changes before people admit they have.

A loose section of my braid falls over my shoulder as I bend to place the last muffin. The honey-blonde strands catch the display lights, brighter against the darker hair near my roots. Last month, I walked into a salon intending to have the ends trimmed and walked out three hours later looking as though someone had threaded sunlight through half my head.

Ava called it an impulse. I called it alignment. Neither of us mentioned that I had begun changing things about my life before I knew what I wanted the changes to become.

The bell above the front door jingles. Jake steps inside wearing work boots, faded jeans, and a dark Dalton Restoration shirt stretched across his shoulders. He wipes his feet carefully on the mat before crossing the floor. This ritual has become so consistent that I suspect it qualifies as foreplay for them.

Ava’s expression changes when she sees him. Only slightly, but I notice. I notice most things.

“You’re early,” she tells him.

“You’re open.”

“We are not.”

“The door was unlocked.”

“I have an employee arriving.”

Jake glances at me. “She’s already here.”

“I’m early,” I confirm.