Page 9 of The Candlemaker

Biting back a curse, I limped around and grabbed the first pen in sight from the clear jam jar on my desk that had servedas a pen holder for the last three years. Instantly, my eyes focused on the worn label sticking out of the glass. The edges curled slightly, but the blue ink in the center hadn’t faded in the slightest.

Chandler.

Gigi’s squiggly handwriting had never looked so clear.So accusatory.

“Frankie?”

Shit.I fumbled the pen in my fingers, managing to catch it before it fell as my head snapped up, meeting my oldest brother Jamie’s curious stare as he brushed a strand of red hair back from his forehead.

“Yeah?” I croaked and straightened.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” I gave him a pained smile. “Just banged my knee on the desk.”Not false.

“Should I add bumpers to it?” Jamie teased with a chuckle.

He’d made the desk for me almost two years ago now. Jamie was an expert carpenter and craftsman and had his own business making custom furniture from one of the old, restored barns on Mom’s property.

I stuck my tongue out at him and then said, “The last boxes of candles for Max are in the back room.” I pointed over my shoulder to where a curtain covered the doorway into my workspace.

This cabin—the Candle Cabin—was my sanctuary. I’d bought it four years ago with the earnings from selling my candles at the Stonebar Farms store. Mom would’ve let me sell there forever, and I still sold candles there, but I wanted my own space. I might be a lot of things—many of them lighthearted and playful—but not when it came to my business. Not when it came to my candles.

Jamie hesitated, and I was sure he was going to asksomething else, but then he strode to the back room, the curtain whooshing behind him and giving me a moment alone.

The front part of the building housed my shop, open for a few hours in the afternoon most days to customers, and the back was my workshop. I spent my morning hours there in peace and solitude, testing and sampling new scents as well as making candles for any larger orders.Like this.

“Is Max okay?” I called to him.

Max was supposed to be the one stopping by to pick up the second batch of five hundred candles today, not Jamie.

While I waited for his answer, I caught sight of the offending label again. Gritting my teeth, I reached for the jar and plucked the slip out of it, yanking open the bottom drawer of my desk where I shoved all the things I didn’t want to think about, dropped it inside, and closed the drawer tight.

I heard my brother grunt and the box shuffle, and then he appeared through the curtain, all of him tense as he strode through my store with the last box of candles that easily weighed about sixty pounds.

A few seconds later, he came back inside, his arms banded over his chest. “Yeah, Max is fine. He said something was going on with his friend, so he asked me to bring these up.”

“Have you talked to Lou?” he called, and then I heard his grunt and the shuffling of the box.

“This morning. Why?” I asked cautiously when he returned and rested the box on my desk.

“Kit told me there was another offer on the table.”

I stilled and then nodded, choosing my next words carefully because if there was anyone who could realize when one of myplans wasafoot, it was Jamie Kinkade.

Jamie went beyond older brother material. My and Lou’s dad left Mom when he learned she was pregnant and that he wasn’t going to get any of the Stonebar fortune, and from themoment he walked away, Jamie had stepped up. He’d been a teenager when we were born, so it was hard to say that he had even really been an older brother—or technically a half-brother—even though that was what he was.

Jamie had raised us. Start to finish. The strength of our moral compass. The steadiness of our character. Mom…Mom was incredible. But Jamie…he was both brother and father. Guardian and friend. Between him and Mom—who they calledCI-Ailenefor a reason—there was no secret that went uncovered.

Well, except for the one time I’d listed Jamie’s cottage on a vacation rental website without him realizing it. I was desperate to find someone for him—to find some happiness for him.And a little reprieve from his overbearing concern for me.Thankfully, that worked out better than I could’ve ever imagined; the woman who’d rented his cabin, Violet, was now his wife.

“Yeah, she mentioned that.” I kept my eyes focused on the sheet of notepaper I’d been doodling on, trying to perfect a scent that had eluded me for weeks.

“Someone who wants to tear it down.”

“Mm-hmm,” I hummed, my heart starting to pick up.

“Frankie…”

---