Page 5 of Secret Southern Promises

I let out a chuckle, though it was more nervous than amused. “Oh, you heard about that?”

“Jack called me this afternoon after he spotted him on Meadow Drive. He said Boone bought the house at the end of the road.”

Holy crap.

My stomach dropped, and I felt a cold sweat break out across my skin.Thathouse? The one right at the bend of the river? The one that, if I went down to the shore behind my own house, I could see clear as day?

Oh my god.

“Wait, wait. Are you sure he lives there?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “Maybe he was just visiting someone. It doesn’t make sense for him to settle down here after all this time.”

Lindsay clicked her tongue, the sound sharp over the line. “Oh, he lives there, alright. Jack talked to him. In his front yard. Said Boone mentioned something about wanting to be back home.”

Home. Magnolia Grove. The place we both had sworn we’d never leave when we were teenagers without each other, the town where our love story was supposed to have a forever. Now, Boone was back, and the past felt like it was breathing down my neck.

My heart raced, and I felt my face flush. He was going to be right there, just a ride down the river from my backyard. How was I supposed to deal with that?

“You know,” Lindsay continued, her tone teasing, “the only thing keeping me from rushing to your house is the fact thatI’m twenty-four hundred miles away. Allen’s already looking at plane tickets.”

I shook my head, gripping the phone tighter as I leaned against the counter for support. “Wait, what?” I called out louder than I meant to. My eyes darted around the kitchen, making sure Nash hadn’t heard me. “You’re not coming here.”

Lindsay’s voice came through the phone, calm but insistent. “Boone West is back in town, Dolly. What on earth are you going to do? You need me there.”

My stomach twisted at the mention of his name. Boone. It seemed to be doing that today.

“Linds, you don’t need to do that. Seriously,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “You’ve got Allen and the kids to think about. Plus, you just visited last month.”

“That was before Boone decided to come waltzing back into town like he’s got no business being anywhere else,” Lindsay shot back. I could hear her pacing in the background. “What are you going to do, Dolly? Pretend like it’s not happening?”

I pressed a hand to my forehead and felt a headache start to creep in. “I don’t know yet, okay? The man literally waltzed into the grocery store four hours ago,” I groaned and ran my hand through my hair. “But you’re not coming. You were just here for a long weekend, and you told me you couldn’t come back until Christmas or you’d run out of PTO and lose your job.”

Lindsay made a disgruntled noise on the other end of the line. “I’ll figure it out.”

“No, no, no,” I countered quickly, straightening up and trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Tell Allen to stop the airfare search. I have enough to worry about with Boone being back in town. I don’t need to also worry about you losing your job.”

“Dolly,” she sighed, dragging out my name in that way that meant she wasn’t convinced. “I knew moving to Spokane wasgoing to bite me in the butt one day. You need me right now, and I stupidly ate up all my PTO.”

I let out a short laugh out of disbelief more than anything else. “Now you know you need to save at least three days for a Dolly crisis.”

“This is the most crisis-y crisis of them all,” she moaned dramatically.

I couldn’t argue with that. Boone’s return was definitely stirring up a mess of feelings I wasn’t ready to unpack. But as much as I wanted Lindsay here to lean on, this was something I was going to have to handle myself. Boone wasn’t going anywhere unless he wanted to, and no amount of Lindsay flying in to help would change that.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to believe it myself. “And you’re always a phone call away if I need help.”

Lindsay huffed, clearly not buying it. “I can also tell Jack to help you if you need it.”

I rolled my eyes at that. “How about we just leave Jack in the dark about this right now, yeah? He doesn’t need to know every detail of my life.”

Jack, Lindsay’s brother, was sweet, but the last thing I needed was for him to come storming in like some sort of knight in shining armor. He’d only make things more complicated.

“Fine,” Lindsay conceded, though I could hear the reluctance in her voice. “But what are you going to do? Just avoid Boone?”

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? I sighed, leaning back against the counter and stared out the window at the oak trees swaying gently in the breeze. Magnolia Grove had always been small, the kind of town where everyone knew everyone’s business. Avoiding Boone would be impossible.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, my voice small. “Maybe he’ll decide Magnolia Grove is too slow for him, and he’ll move on,” I added, not so much hopeful as wistful. “A girl can wish, right?”

“You really think that’s gonna happen?” Lindsay asked, her tone softening. “Boone left once, but maybe there’s a reason he’s back. And maybe that reason has something to do with you.”

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