Love Next Door

Book 1: Lakeside

by Helena Hunting

Genres: Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Helena Hunting comes an evocative small-town romance about family loyalty, finding oneself, and falling in love.

When Dillion Stitch left her hometown, she had no intention of going back. But when her brother gets into trouble, Dillion reluctantly agrees to return home to take her place at the family business.

Being back in Pearl Lake after all these years feels familiar but also brings a few surprises. She’s quick to notice that someone new has shown up at the cottage next door. Dillion gets more than an eyeful when she goes to check out the newcomer and meets Donovan “Van” Firestone—her beloved neighbor’s grandson—in all his unclothed glory.

Having gotten off to a rocky start, it’s not long before they begin bickering with each other all over town. All that back-and-forth inevitably sparks an undeniable attraction. But Dillion’s family has issues, Van’s family resents him, and neither Dillion nor Van feels truly at ease in the small town. For these Pearl Lake exiles, home isn’t just where the heart is—it’s where things get complicated.

Release date: July 27, 2021

Publisher: Montlake

Print pages: 318

Sample

Dillion

I head back to the U-Haul van and grab my suitcase so I can do what Mom suggested and settle in. I shouldn’t be surprised that Billy has my bedroom now. His is tiny, barely able to fit a double bed and a dresser, whereas mine has a closet. The room hasn’t technically been mine in almost ten years, when I moved to the city for college.

And Mom has a point about privacy. There isn’t much in the house. My parents have a bathroom to themselves, but I’ll be sharing the shower with Billy, so this is definitely preferable.

I check the fridge, more to see if it’s cool than anything else. I’m surprised to find a six-pack of beer. And it’s cold. I free one from the plastic ring and crack the top, bring it to my lips, and tip my head back.

After I moved to Chicago, I stopped drinking beer out of cans. I stopped doing most things that reminded me of home, wanting to remove myself as much as I could from small-town life. I drop down on the sofa and sigh. The curtains are a lot to handle in such a compact, brown space. I reach over and pull them open so I can look at something that feels less like a bad acid trip.

Beyond the trees is Bee’s cottage. My heart aches at the sight. I miss her. She was such a huge part of my life growing up, and even after I moved away for college, we stayed close. She helped me in ways I could never forget, so the fact that I couldn’t make it to her funeral gutted me. I’d been overseas at a conference when I got the news, and I wouldn’t have made it back until after the funeral was over. It was better that I’d missed the funeral, though, because if I’d met Bee’s family, I probably would have said things I shouldn’t.

Apart from one of her grandsons, she didn’t have much good to say about them, and she was particularly disenchanted with her son-in-law. I think she blamed him for her daughter’s death. Her daughter, Adelaide, had passed when Bee’s grandchildren were very young due to complications during an elective surgery, one Bee said she hadn’t wanted but felt pressured to go through with. According to Bee, her daughter had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia and suffered a fatal heart attack. She was only in her thirties. Bee called it a waste of a beautiful life. I couldn’t fathom what it would be like to lose your child, no matter how old they were.

Losing Bee felt like losing a family member, and I don’t feel like I’ve had much of a chance to mourn her properly. She passed in her sleep—a brain aneurysm that took her swiftly and painlessly. At least she didn’t suffer.

I decide I should do the thing I’ve been avoiding for the past six months, which is check on Bee’s place. I was hoping that by the time I came home, her grandson would have finally gotten his priorities straight and cleaned it out.

My dad checks on the place every week. Rodents love abandoned homes, and the pipes can seize and the septic system can take a real shitter—pun totally intended—if no one is around to make sure things are working properly. But since I know Dad’s been busy, I wonder what state I’ll find it in.

I push up off the couch, and a flash catches my eye. I pull the curtains open farther and frown as I take in the sports car sitting in Bee’s driveway. It looks expensive, like something an out-of-towner might drive.

Donovan Firestone, Bee’s favorite grandson, is from Chicago, so that might make sense. Ironic that we’ve been living in the same city and he spent all his summers growing up next door, and yet we’ve never officially met. He was the sole recipient of her entire estate, which includes the cottage next door, its contents, and all the land that goes with it. To the left of her cottage is a huge plot of undeveloped land, which also belonged to Bee. I’ve been communicating with Donovan since her passing. This has consisted of a few emails back and forth regarding the estate and me checking on things until he had the time to come out this way to do it himself. Despite what Bee has said about him, he hasn’t proven to be much better than the rest of his family.

Donovan hasn’t seemed particularly concerned about the property, although it’s hard to read someone’s tone in an email. After the will was shown to the family and it was revealed that I was the executor, he called me with some questions about the property. He wanted a better idea of how many acres she had, as well as how much of that was water frontage, and if I could tell him the value. It was an unexpected blow—I was still processing Bee’s death, and all her beloved grandson cared about was how much the property was worth. Apparently Bernie, who had prepared Bee’s will, got a similar call, only this time asking about subdividing the lot and how easy it would be to parcel it off or develop it.

It irked me that this guy who had spent so many summers at Bee’s was so quick to look at trying to squeeze money out of the land by developing it. That maybe he didn’t care about the cottage, like Bee had suggested and I’d believed. I might not have spent time with Donovan, but in a lot of ways I felt like I knew him, because of the stories Bee would tell me and my observations from a distance. He was always helping Bee out, working on the cottage when he was here in the summers. From what I’d seen and heard, he had genuine affection for his grandmother.

So now, the idea that he’d try to parcel off the land or knock down Bee’s cherished cottage is frustrating. Of course it would drive the value up. But it would also have an impact on everyone else’s property value on this side of the lake. Most people would think that was a good thing. But the locals don’t want to pay hefty property taxes because some out-of-towner like Donovan gets ideas in his head.

And maybe he’s already realized that, and that’s why he wasn’t in a rush to come out here. The will hasn’t even been put into probate, and in the last email, he said he didn’t expect he’d be able to come out this way until summer.

Wanting to see if I’m right about who’s scoping out Bee’s cottage, I root around in my purse for my key chain, which includes a key to my parents’ house and one of Bee’s spares. Sadness wells and chokes me up for a moment. I’m aware there’s a distinct possibility that this grandson of hers won’t want her place, and he’ll sell it.

I hop out of the trailer, close the door behind me, and then cut through the narrow path that connects our properties. It’s filled in over the years from disuse, trees bowing toward each other and small shrubs growing heartily under their protective canopy.

I get hit in the face with a few branches and sputter when I walk through a cobweb and nearly eat the freaking spider. I stumble over a root as I wipe my hand over my face and nearly face-plant into the dirt.

When I open my eyes, I’m face to face with Bee’s cottage. I take a moment to breathe through the sudden tightness in my chest. I’m not a sentimental person. Not really. I don’t get attached to places or things. I try not to fall in love with buildings or spaces, because life is fluid and you can’t have roots and wings at the same time.

But as I stare at the old, beautiful, run-down cottage, a million wonderful memories come flooding back. When I moved away for college, Bee made me handwrite letters to her. Once I tried to send a typed one, and she mailed it back. When she passed, she took a piece of my heart with her, and I’m feeling that hole now more than ever. Other than once a year for the holidays, I didn’t see her much after I moved away for college, and I realize now how selfish that was. I didn’t want to feel tied to this place, so I avoided it and everyone in it. I created distance when what I should have been doing was spending as much time as I could with her.

The front porch is in quite a state of disrepair, and once again I’m reminded that my heels are ridiculously impractical around here. I’ll be trading them for flip-flops, flats, and running shoes.

The age of the cottage is starting to show. The exterior is in need of fresh stain; some of the boards on the front porch are soft and beginning to rot through. If I had to guess, I’d say there are probably a few chipmunks living under there. A pair of rocking chairs sit in the corner, a table between them, the layer of dust and dirt making it clear they’ve gone unused since Bee passed. We used to sit out here and play cribbage in the evenings, drinking unsweetened iced tea in the summer or hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream in the fall.

I knock on the front door and wait for someone to answer. After a good thirty seconds I knock again, then move to the window and peer through a gap in the curtains. Everything looks the same inside—a mass of organized clutter.

Maybe it’s not her grandson like I thought. Or maybe he sent a developer to look at the property. I figure it’s probably a good idea to let myself in and check things out, knowing that Bee wouldn’t want a stranger rummaging around her place. I slide the key into the lock. It’s always been a tricky door, so I lift, jiggle, and twist to the right until I hear the faint sound of the lock clicking. The door creaks on its hinges as I push it open and step inside the dimly lit space.

Twenty-year-old wallpaper covers the majority of the open space, and it always takes me a moment to gather my bearings, since it’s a heavy visual assault, at first anyway. The colors are muted with age and sun. Blue teapots are now nearly gray and pink peonies the palest of peach. The living room is a mishmash of eclectic furniture, purchased from the town flea market; nothing matches, not even the chairs around the dining room table. A layer of dust covers nearly every surface, making it an untouched shrine to Bee.

The wall to the right is covered with old framed photos, some black and white, some color. There’s a distinct line through the center of half of them, where the sunlight from the window cuts across it at midday, bleaching the pictures on the top half of the wall.

I move across the room to stand in front of the framed photo collage until I’m casting a shadow over the pictures. Mostly they’re of Bee’s family. My gaze catches on a picture of Bee with Donovan. He was always wearing a ball cap, half his face hidden in shadow, making it impossible to get a clear picture.

I took it on the sly with the camera on my phone while I was working in the food truck, the summer before I left for college. They were picking up deck boards at the hardware store. Bee was trying to climb into the bed of the truck while wearing a dress, and Donovan was trying to stop her. It encapsulated everything about her as a person and the love between them.

Despite being close to Bee, I always kept my distance when her favorite grandson was with her for the summers. I had Bee ten months out of the year, and I knew how much she looked forward to seeing him, so I gave them privacy. So, other than seeing brief glimpses here and there, we never crossed paths.

I touch the corner of the frame to straighten it. Then I step back to make sure the rest of the pictures line up properly as well. Which is when the sound of water running registers. I glance toward the kitchen, but the sound isn’t coming from the sink, which means there’s either a leak somewhere, or someone is in the bathroom.

I take a cautious step toward the center of the living room, and the floor creaks under my foot. The sound is ridiculously loud in the quiet space, and a shiver runs down my spine.

“Hello?” I call out. “Is anybody here?”