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Jude Gregory proposedto Eve Carlyle for the first time when she was twenty-one.

At twenty-six, Jude had already graduated from college and published his first three novels—all of them fictionalized accounts of historical mysteries. They hadn’t become bestsellers but had gotten some traction with book clubs. He’d begun falling into reclusive habits, rarely going to social events and sometimes not showing his face in public for weeks at a time.

Then his mother died from a brain tumor, and a month later he asked Eve to marry him.

They’d known each other most of their lives since her father was the Gregory family attorney, but because of the age difference, they’d never been friends. They’d never dated. Never held hands. Never kissed. Certainly never had sex.

But he’d asked her to marry him anyway.

At first she’d thought he was joking. She’d laughed and told him to stop teasing.

When she’d realized he was serious, she told him to stop being weird.

Of course she wasn’t going to marry him. Sure, he was born into an incredibly wealthy family and he was good-looking in a coffeehouse-philosopher way. But she had plans—both for her personal life and her career. She was halfway through a master’s degree in sociology. She was going to complete her PhD after that and get a job as a college professor.

She wanted to fall in love for real. She wasn’t sure yet about kids, but she definitely wanted to get married.

But not to Jude.

He might be brilliant and oddly compelling, but he was also antisocial and overly intense.

After all, who proposed out of the blue to a woman he’d never even dated?

Jude had accepted her rejection with a detached resignation that proved his heart wasn’t involved in the offer. He hadn’t fully explained himself, but eventually she figured it out.

His mother had wanted him to get married before she died, and the proposal was an ill-advised reaction to his grief.

She didn’t hold it against him, although she avoided him for a couple of years after that because seeing him embarrassed her.

It wasn’t difficult to avoid Jude. He became more and more reclusive until he could genuinely be described as a hermit. He used to date on and off, but he eventually stopped completely. He made an appearance maybe once or twice a year. He kept writing, publishing a book a year. All of them well written and thoroughly researched. Most of them receiving critical acclaim but only moderate sales.

Eve completed her master’s and two years of coursework toward her PhD. At twenty-four, she was already at the point of starting to write her dissertation.

Three years after the first proposal, she came home to spend the summer at home with her father, needing a break before she started working on her dissertation full time in the fall. She’donly talked to Jude once since he’d asked her to marry him, and that was at his father’s Christmas party last year. They’d traded polite civilities. He’d asked her about her graduate work, and she’d asked him about his latest book.

That was it.

Until she received a text message from Jude in early May, a couple of days after she got back to Green Valley. He asked if she could stop by at her convenience that week. He had something to talk to her about.

Eve had absolutely no idea what he could possibly want from her. She didn’t really want to make the effort of driving out to the Gregory estate. She was tired after the academic year, and she still felt kind of awkward around Jude.

The Gregory family had always been good to her, however, and she couldn’t bring herself to say no to a harmless request.

So she put on a somewhat decent outfit—a long summer skirt and a simple V-neck top—and drove the twenty minutes from her childhood home to the mansion on the sprawling property where the Gregorys had lived for the past sixty years.

Nancy, the housekeeper, answered the door. She greeted Eve warmly and explained that Mr. Gregory was out of the country but Jude was in the library waiting for her.

Eve had never been a social butterfly. She liked old houses and ideas and art and deep conversation and a mostly quiet life, and she was often a bit shy around strangers. But she’d known Nancy for twenty years, so she chatted with the older woman about her four grandkids and six granddogs as they walked through the marble-floored entry hall and down the wide hallway that led through the west wing of the house where the library was located.

When they reached the closed door, Nancy extended a hand and pressed her palm against Eve’s cheek, her linedface tightening with emotion. “Bless you, dear. Bless both your hearts.”

Eve blinked. Her eyes widened. She had absolutely no idea what had prompted the emotional gesture, and she couldn’t ask because Nancy was already tapping on the library door and then opening it at Jude’s muffled response from inside the room.

The library was a booklover’s dream—tall walls lined with bookshelves, big antique furniture, cozy reading nooks in unexpected places. Eve had always loved it, and she felt a familiar pleasure waft through her as she stepped in.

Jude was seated at a desk that faced a big window. There was a laptop open in front of him, along with messy piles of books and papers. He was typing as she walked in, but he withdrew his hands and spun his chair around before she reached him.

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