Page 90 of The Candlemaker

I reached for her, pulling her tight to me. “Don’t be sorry,” I whispered, sighing when she hugged me back. If she hadn’t apologized a hundred times since that first night… “You were trying to protect me—trying to do whatever you could to get the inn. I’m sorry I was upset. I never should’ve been upset with you.”

We stayed hugging for what could’ve been seconds or several minutes, I wasn’t sure.

“Lou? Where are—oh, there you are.” Gigi appeared through the curtain, smiling when she saw the two of us embracing. “The bond between two sisters…”Can never be broken.She would say that all the time to us when we were younger.

“I’m ready when you are, Gigi.” Lou pulled away first and then added, “We’re on our way to the stair place to pick out banisters.”

By the time reality sank in that Chandler had left and wasn’t coming back, the inn was officially Lou’s, and renovations had begun. Everyone in Friendship had celebrated the dayshe’d posted the brand new wrought-iron sign out front that read theLamplight Inn.She’d even received donations—big ones—from people who were glad to see the inn restored to local ownership and in the care of someone who would diligently and dutifully preserve its history and heritage.

“Sounds like fun.”

“They just finished all the floors. You have to stop by and see it.”

I smiled and nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I hadn’t been back inside the inn since the morning I left it. I kept busy or made excuses, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back. Not yet. Not until everything looked so different that it would never make me recall what it had been before with bare rooms, an air mattress on top of the subfloor, and the man of my dreams.

“Yeah, maybe when they finish the stairs.” And the painting and decorating and furnishing.

Gigi wrinkled her nose at me. “I’ve never known you to run from a challenge, Francesca.”

“Gigi,” I warned and lowered my hand to my stomach. “I’m not running.”

She jutted her chin out. “You need to tell him.”

Air deflated from my lungs.Gigi was the only one who argued with me. For some reason, she believed Chandler should know. She insisted on giving him the benefit of the doubt. Not some reason—the silly little label she’d given me a decade ago. Because she’d writtenChandleron a stupid piece of paper, she believed that this tale had a happy ending, no matter how many times I insisted it was nothing more than a ghost story.

“It’s not meant to be, Gigi.”

“You’ll see.”

“See what?” Usually I didn’t press her, but today I was feeling feisty.

She grinned and cupped my cheek. “That sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan.”

No crap,I wanted to retort. I was pregnant. From a two-night fling with a billionaire jerk who’d ghosted me in the morning.Not part of my plan at all.

“I know that, Gigi.”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh.“You will.”

I bit into the side of my cheek, nodding at Lou’s mouthed apology as she herded Gigi toward the front door. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until the door dinged close behind them and my chest caved in.

I was exhausted, and it wasn’t even the baby. It was the not knowing.

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

A low, grumbly noise escaped my chest, recalling the little bit of wisdom Chandler had shared that first night and then beating myself up over it. I’d failed to plan. On him. On us. On this baby. And I was continuing to fail at planning with each day that passed.

Maybe the next step was talking to my brothers—to Jamie. Once I cleared his anger phase, I knew I could count on him to guide me, just like he always had.

But before I did that, I needed a nap.

I glanced at my phone; it was only a half-hour until close. I went to the back and sank onto the cushion chair I’d moved into the corner for my increasingly frequent power naps. I’d just close my eyes for a few minutes. I was sure I’d wake up if the door dinged.

It wasn’t the bell at the entrance that woke me, it was voices.

“Thank you so much for all your help. This smells absolutely divine.”

Help?My eyes fluttered open at the sound of people in the front of my shop.Whose help? I was the only?—

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