Page 44 of Cornered

DOWNFALL

LYNNH. BLACKBURN

ONE

CASSIE QUINN DROPPEDher speed as she approached the employee entrance to The Haven. Everyone in the small town of Gossamer Falls knew Cassie had a lead foot. But violating the fifteen-mile-per-hour speed limit within the gates of The Haven was a one-way ticket to unemployment.

And Cassie wasn’t about to risk that. Especially today, when she was on her way in for a meeting with The Haven’s CEO, Bronwyn Pierce.

She waved her badge in front of the sensor and gave a tiny salute to the security guard she knew watched from the cameras placed along the top of the walls. The massive iron gates opened, and she drove her Jeep inside.

No one could get inside the grounds of The Haven without permission. Bronwyn had a zero-tolerance policy for trespassing. That didn’t mean people didn’t try, but the few who managed to get a toe across the property line found themselves spending the night in a Gossamer Falls jail cell.

The last time it happened, she’d still been dating Officer Donovan Bledsoe.

Don’t go there.Memories of the three months they’d dated last winter had been shoved into the same vault where she’d stuffed the four months of stress followed by twelve hours of intense trauma that she’d experienced in Atlanta a year ago.

Heartbreak came in many forms. Some, like the Atlanta fiasco, she’d never put herself through again. That was in the vault because she didn’t need to relive that. Ever. But Donovan? He’d never been anything but a dream come true.

Right up until the night he ended everything.

So he’d gone into the vault that held the dust of her dreams.

Would her time as chef at Hideaway join him there? Maybe. But when Bronwyn had called her a month ago, desperate after the head chef had a heart attack while The Haven was at capacity with late summer guests, Cassie hadn’t had to think twice before she took the risk.

Just like deep down she knew if Donovan ever came to her and said he’d made a mistake, she’d give him another chance.

Because some dreams were worth it. Weren’t they?

How incredibly stupid was that? He hurt her. He made her fall head over heels, and then he walked away like it was no big deal. How could he do that?

And why hadn’t she insisted that he explain? Instead she’d just let him go.

Five minutes later, she pulled into her reserved parking spot and checked her watch. She was early, but not by much. She checked her makeup in the mirror and climbed out. She was reaching into the back seat to grab her bag when a horn beeped. A few seconds later, Bronwyn parked beside her.

Cassie waited for Bronwyn to exit her car and smiled at the woman who’d given her an opportunity she’d never dared dream of. Would that end today? If it did, she had no idea what would come next. She’d spent the year since she’d come home running a small weekends-only restaurant in town and supplementing her income by working as a personal chef for a few clients in Asheville. She could make the personal chef gig permanent, but she didn’t want to.

“Cassie! Great timing!” Bronwyn’s grin held no tension.

Lord, please let it be good news.

“Want to walk with me over to the breakfast kitchen? I need coffee.”

“Sure.” Cassie fell into step with Bronwyn.

The Haven catered to an exclusive clientele. Celebrities, politicians, and business moguls came to the mountains of North Carolina to get away from it all. But just because they wanted a mountain escape didn’t mean they wanted to rough it. They wanted luxury linens, high-end everything, and room service. Three years earlier, Bronwyn had a separate kitchen built to accommodate the myriad requests for everything from chocolate milk to The Haven’s most popular dish—a fried green tomato BLT.

The breakfast kitchen handled room service requests twenty-four hours a day. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks were provided through the breakfast kitchen and delivered to the individual cabins by resort staff.

Dinner was another matter entirely. The Haven’s fine dining restaurant, Hideaway, had made a quiet name for itself for its intimate atmosphere, professional service, and unique seasonal menu, which featured sophisticated Southern cuisine. Reservations were required and were only available to The Haven’s guests. Dinner was served from six to nine. No exceptions.

Cassie loved everything about it. Well, almost everything.

“Thanks for meeting me so early,” Bronwyn said. “When did you get out of here last night?”

“I left around one.”

Bronwyn tugged on her arm and stopped them in the middle of the path. “One—a.m.? Why? You should be out of here long before then.”

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