- Book info
- Sample
- Media
- Author updates
- Lists
Synopsis
Mercilessly bullied in high school, May Wu took her first ticket out of town and never looked back. Her job as a travel writer keeps her on the move, and that's how she likes it. Right until her editor assigns her a story in the last place she ever wanted to go: home. Even worse? The first person she runs into is her ex.
After the death of his father, Han Leung took over his family's restaurant. It’s a far cry from his dream of opening his own place, but duty comes first. His own desires always come last. Until May shows up again and makes those desires impossible to ignore. She was his first love, and he’s never really gotten over her. Back in school, they couldn't find a way to let her have her wings while he kept his feet on the ground. But it turns out love is even stronger the second time around...
Release date: August 23, 2022
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Print pages: 352
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Reader buzz
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
Author updates
Close
Second Chance at Blue Cedar Falls
Jeannie Chin
Chapter One
I have to hand it to you, May.” May Wu’s best friend Ruby shook her head before passing May’s phone back across the table to her. “I didn’t think it could be done, but you managed it.”
“Story of my life,” May said dryly.
She always had been an overachiever, but even she wasn’t particularly impressed with this accomplishment.
“How exactly does a person run out of options on a dating site?” Ruby held up her hands and gestured around them in bewilderment. “In New York? It’s like hitting the end of Netflix.”
May shrugged. “I just have high standards, I guess.”
They were about forty-five minutes into their “weekly” catch-up lunch, squeezed in amid both their busy workdays. Weekly was probably a stretch at this point, though. May traveled so much for her job she was lucky if she managed once a month.
Which meant Ruby had to cram all of her marveling about May’s lack of a personal life into a mere fraction of the time.
Ruby picked up her chopsticks again and laughed. “That’s one way of putting it. What was wrong with the last guy you got matched with?”
“He carried a picture of his mother in his wallet, Ru. His mother.”
“So?”
“So?” May didn’t have anything against a healthy parent-child relationship, but she’d seen a guy get too attached to his mom before, and she wasn’t going there again. Besides…“It was cut in the shape of a heart.”
Ruby pulled a face. “Okay, yeah, that’s kind of weird. But what about the guy before him?”
“You mean twelve-bottles-of-mustard-in-his-fridge guy?”
“Right.” Ruby rolled her eyes. “How could I have forgotten.”
“Fine, fine, so maybe I was little picky on that one,” May conceded—though she still maintained that a man who owned more condiments than food was a bad bet. “But remember his predecessor? The one who brought baggies to an all-you-can-eat place?”
Scrunching up her mouth, Ruby brushed her dark hair back from her face. She was half Chinese and half white, and the slight wave to her hair still made May envious. “Yeah, you were right to pass on him.”
With a dramatic sigh, May pocketed her phone and snagged a piece of mango tuna roll off the little boat of sushi they were sharing.
After giving the roll a quick dip in the soy sauce, she popped it in her mouth. Yum.
There was a sour note to the bite, though, and it had nothing to do with the flavor of the food. This was her favorite sushi place in Midtown, but she should know better than to order anything with fruit in it. More than a decade had passed, but mango and soy would never not bring up old memories.
She chewed and swallowed, dark eyes and a soft smile floating through her mind.
There was a reason she had high standards, after all.
Taking a sip of water, she frowned at herself in her head. She was a grown woman. At thirty years old, she’d achieved every one of her goals. She lived in New York. She had a great job that paid well, writing for a travel magazine. She got to visit incredible places all over the world.
And she still got mushy, thinking about her high school sweetheart whenever she ate something that reminded her of his cooking.
“Seriously, though,” Ruby said, continuing as if one bite of sushi hadn’t sent May on an unwelcome jaunt down memory lane. She tipped her head toward where May had stashed her phone. “You reject a lot of guys.”
“All for good reasons.”
Reasons that had nothing to do with said high school sweetheart.
Ruby narrowed her eyes. “You said that back in college, too.”
Okay, maybe Ruby wasn’t as oblivious as she seemed.
May had met Ruby their first semester together at NYU. May had been born in New York—Queens, to be specific—but her mom and sisters had relocated to a tiny dot in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, when May was in middle school. She’d spent every day after that trying to find a way back. Upon her triumphant return, May had been desperate to experience everything life and the big city had to offer. She would have, too, if the aforementioned high school sweetheart hadn’t been an anchor wrapped around her heart.
A fact that Ruby knew entirely too well.
May sighed. “What? You think I should have married the first guy to hit on me at a frat party?”
“No. But I think you’ve been avoiding commitments for about thirteen years now.”
“Hardly.” She had commitments. Her job, for one. Her pet tortoise, Todd, for another. Those things could live for thirty years.
“When’s the last time you went on more than three dates with a guy?”
“It’s been a while,” May admitted.
“You and Josh broke up, what? Five years ago.”
“Something like that.” Her one and only real adult relationship should probably be more of a milestone in her mind, but it wasn’t. They’d spent just shy of a year together, and she’d liked him. Maybe she’d even loved him, a little.
But there’d been no fire. No passion.
And in the end, no compatibility about what they really wanted from their lives.
Turned out Josh had loved having a stay-at-home mom when he was a kid. He expected his children to have the same.
Which meant he was going to need to find somebody else to have them with.
May wasn’t against having kids. But if she’d wanted to quit her job and stay in one place for the rest of her life, she could have done it thirteen years ago—and with a guy she actually cared about.
Something in Ruby’s expression softened. “Look, you know I support you all the way. But I worry about you sometimes.”
May let out a long breath. “I know.”
“Do you want to be single forever? Because if you do, that’s fine—totally a valid life choice. But if you don’t…”
May’s insides squirmed, and she looked toward the window.
She didn’t like being alone, exactly. But she hadn’t been joking earlier. She had a great life, so she had high standards for letting anyone into it. Work was her priority. It always had been, ever since she was a nerdy kid, concentrating on her homework instead of paying attention to what the mean girls were saying about her at school.
Looking back at her friend, she reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I’ll loosen up my filters a little, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” She pulled her hand back to snag the last of the shrimp tempura. “Just as soon as I get through this next round of layoffs at work.”
Ruby scoffed. “They’d be fools to let you go.”
Darn right they would, but ever since her magazine had been acquired by a bigger publisher back in the fall, the threat of the chopping block had been hanging over them all.
Speaking of which…
Catching the look in May’s eyes, Ruby let out a put-upon sigh. “Fine, fine, you have to get back, I know.” She lifted a hand to get the server’s attention. “Check, please!”
Ten minutes later, May emerged from the elevator at her office. Passage magazine’s headquarters was a clean, modern space, decorated with giant prints of photographs from all over the world. It had an open layout with writers, editors, and researchers at their desks focused on their screens, while assistants flitted from one station to the next.
She smiled to herself. It wasn’t for everybody, but the hustle and bustle of the place filled her with energy.
Right until one of the interns stopped her some ten feet in the door. “Boss is looking for you.”
“Oh?”
“Uh-huh.” The intern nodded in the direction of the chief editor’s office. “She’s in a mood, too, so watch out.”
May’s pulse ticked up. That was never good. She cursed herself and her hubris in her head. What had she been thinking, agreeing with Ruby that her job should be safe? The fates could always hear that kind of thing and find a way to put you back in your place.
She kept her smile bright, though. “Thanks for the tip.”
After stashing her jacket and purse at her desk and checking her lipstick, she headed straight for the big open door in the southwest corner—no point prolonging the agony.
May knocked on the glass without hesitation.
Zahra Thorne was a middle-aged Black woman with dark brown skin and short hair, buzzed on the sides, with longer, natural curls on top. At May’s approach, she held up a single finger, her gaze glued to her screen through her chunky black reading glasses. She lowered her hand to tap rapidly at her keyboard for a second. Then she lifted her head.
Her crimson lips curled into a smile. “May, just the person I was hoping to see. Come on in.”
Relief flooded May’s nervous system. Whatever kind of “mood” Zahra might be in today, her wrath wasn’t directed at May.
May settled into the chair on the other side of Zahra’s desk. “What’s up?”
“You unpacked from Costa Rica yet?”
“Does it matter?”
“Nope.” Zahra clicked her mouse a couple of times, then turned her screen so May could see.
May’s stomach just about dropped into her toes.
“You’re from North Carolina, right?” Zahra asked.
“Uh-huh,” May said numbly.
“You seen this?”
Of course she had.
She’d seen it when her younger sister, Elizabeth, had sent it to her.
“And why exactly have you been holding out on me?”
May jerked her gaze to the side to meet her editor’s. “I mean, I…”
“There a lot of Wus in Blue Cedar Falls?”
“No, ma’am. No, there are not.”
“Didn’t think so.”
There were three, in fact. Once upon a time, there had been four, but that was before May had run screaming from the place.
Now it was just her mom and her sisters. They weren’t the only Asian people in the tiny little tourist town in the Carolina mountains, but they were close.
A fact May had been reminded of over and over again.
“So your mom’s cat becomes an internet celebrity.” Zahra tapped a pink-polished fingernail against the screen right over Sunny’s face. “Bringing tons of tourists to a town where your sister launched a giant fall festival and helped a local vet open a bar. And you didn’t think that was worthy of my attention?”
May just about swallowed her tongue.
She stared at the photo Zahra had brought up for a long second, trying to figure out how to get her mouth to work. In the shot, her mom was holding Sunny, the mean, three-legged calico that had basically become her fourth child since she’d had her stroke a year and a half ago. Beside her stood May’s older sister, June, looking annoyingly perfect, as usual, with soft curls in her hair and wearing a red and black flowery dress. The guy with his arm around June was the aforementioned army veteran, a big, muscular white guy covered in tattoos named Clay—aka June’s new boyfriend—and didn’t that still make May’s head spin.
“Look.” Zahra turned her monitor back around, breaking the spell May had been under. “I know you have some issues with your hometown.”
“Understatement,” May said under her breath.
“But this is literally your family being highlighted in our competitor’s magazine.”
Could May’s stomach sink any lower than her toes? At this point it was buried in the carpet.
Because her sister June had asked her to come to the Pumpkin Festival she’d revived back home in Blue Cedar Falls. May had wanted to go, even, but Zahra had handed her a last-minute assignment to write a story on the maiden voyage of a hot new luxury cruise liner, and sure, she could have begged off. But with Passage magazine’s new owners looking for places to make cuts, she’d been afraid to miss the boat—literally.
Deep down, she had to admit that wasn’t the only thing she’d been afraid of.
“I can send somebody else.” Zahra gestured at the busy office beyond the glass wall. “But for a cover feature, an insider perspective is what’s going to sell copies.”
May sat up straighter. “A cover feature?”
“Local driving tours are the new staycation. People may not be able to afford to go to Costa Rica, but they can put the top down and head a few states over. I’m thinking we do the whole region. Lots of little towns in the area.”
“There sure are.” Despite herself, she started listing them in her head. All her information was a decade or so out of date, but June would be happy to catch her up. Running their family’s inn had basically turned her into a walking, talking travel encyclopedia. And then, when June was done, their baby sister Elizabeth could give May the real scoop on where all the cool people were hanging out.
Zahra smiled and leaned back in her chair. “So what do you say?”
May bit her lip and calculated for all of ten seconds. She hadn’t been back to Blue Cedar Falls outside of Christmas and family emergencies in thirteen years. She had good reason, too.
Heading back there to research a cover feature on the region would be a weeklong assignment. Her family would be happy to have her, and she’d be happy to see them, of course.
But June would give her that look. The guilt-tripping one she pulled out every time May showed her face. Her mom and stepdad would give her a gentler one, but it would still turn her inside out.
And being there that long, touring around, finding hidden treasures to spotlight for the story…
Who knew who she’d run into. A dozen faces flashed through her thoughts. Ones that made her blood boil.
And one that squeezed at her heart.
She pushed them all aside. This was a cover feature they were talking about.
“When do I leave?” she asked.
Zahra’s smile only grew. “How fast can you repack your bags?”
* * *
“Still can’t believe how fast you pack that stuff up.”
Han Leung chuckled as he fit the last container of hot and sour soup into one of the cut-open liquor boxes the Jade Garden used to package up pretty much all of their takeout orders.
“Decades of practice.” He tapped a couple of keys on the register, waited for it to print the sales slip, then stapled it to a fresh menu and slotted it into the front of the box. “Plus, I played a ton of Tetris on Uncle Arthur’s old Nintendo.”
“Don’t remind me.” Han’s buddy Devin shook his head and kept slowly folding menus over on the other side of the counter.
“You’re just mad I always beat you.”
“Neither of you ever touched my high score.” Han’s mom reached past him to place a neat packet of napkins, chopsticks, and fortune cookies on top of the smallest of the containers.
“To be fair, you haven’t given us a shot at a rematch in twenty years,” Han said.
His mom made a disapproving sound in the back of her throat. “The queen does not need to prove her right to the throne.”
She retreated into the back of the restaurant as the front door opened, probably off to go get ready for her bridge club.
Han greeted their customer with a smile. It was an out-of-towner with a coupon from the new visitor guide that had been circulating this spring. Asking about their stay, Han applied the discount.
The Jade Garden was his family’s restaurant, started by his uncle Arthur and continued by his folks and now mostly by him. Tourism in Blue Cedar Falls had been on the decline the past few years, and it had just about gone off a cliff when the freeway outside of town had opened. For a while there, business at the restaurant had been eighty percent locals.
But ever since the previous fall, when June Wu had relaunched the Pumpkin Festival and her mom had gone viral with her cat photos, tourists had started coming back. June had used her success with the festival to introduce a bunch of other promotions, including a coupon book that advertised all the Main Street businesses, and Han was grateful for the extra traffic.
Even if he didn’t love being constantly reminded about the Wus.
Never mind that half of his social circle seemed to revolve around their family these days, despite his best efforts to avoid them for the past decade or so.
Putting on a smile, he finished the transaction just in time to catch the phone for the next incoming order.
“Want me to get this started?” his mom asked. She already had her jacket on and her purse slung over her shoulder, but she never made offers she didn’t mean.
The lunch rush was just about over, though. He shook his head. “Nah, I got it. Say hi to the ladies for me.”
One corner of his mom’s lips tilted up, and she fussed with her scarf. “There are some gentlemen at bridge club, too.”
Han tried not to vomit in his mouth.
He wanted his mom to be happy, after all. She’d been alone for over a dozen years now, ever since Han’s father had died.
“Have fun, Mrs. Leung,” Devin called.
Han’s mom shot him a look that probably seemed friendly, but there was a chill underneath it.
Devin had been hanging out with Han since they were kids, so he reacted properly—by dropping his gaze and shutting his mouth.
Satisfied, his mom headed out the back.
As soon as she was gone, Devin scrubbed a hand over his face. “Think she’s ever going to get over me dating your sister?”
“I am literally the last person you should be asking about that, you realize.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The thing between Devin and Han’s youngest sister Zoe was a few months old now, and Han tried not to act weird about it, but it was still taking some getting used to.
He wasn’t willing to lose either of them over it, though, and at least he trusted Devin to treat Zoe well. So in the end, his own feelings about the relationship didn’t matter.
“How’s construction going on the new house?” he asked as he got a pan heating. He was interrupted by another order coming in online, and he grabbed a second wok down from the shelf.
Handling everything himself was hectic, but at least it meant he got to cook.
“It’s good,” Devin said, not missing a beat. “Framing’s just about done.”
He kept on folding menus. Beyond that, he didn’t offer to help; Han had trained him out of that ages ago. Devin was his friend, and Han appreciated the company during long shifts behind the counter. He didn’t want him here out of any kind of obligation or duty, though.
“Nice. You still hoping to be in there this fall?”
“I’d move in tomorrow if it weren’t a code violation.” He frowned. “Or if I thought there was any chance Zoe would go for it.”
Han laughed. He could see it. Devin had been saving up to build his own place on the outskirts of town forever, and now that it was finally under way, he was champing at the bit.
“Just you, a sleeping bag, and a concrete slab?”
“I’ve had worse.” Devin shrugged, a hint of darkness to his gaze. It disappeared quickly, though. Faster than it had before he and Zoe had gotten together, Han had to begrudgingly admit. “Anyway, you know me. Home is anywhere you feel like you belong.”
“Home is my bed in my house with my dog in my hometown,” Han countered. He’d tried it elsewhere, and it had felt like his skin was itching the entire time.
Sure, he would’ve liked to finish culinary school. Some days, he idly daydreamed about going back. But even if he hadn’t gotten the call about his father a few months into his first term, he wasn’t sure he would have stuck with it.
This was where he belonged.
Anything—or anyone—trying to lure him elsewhere didn’t have his best interests at heart.
Too bad he’d had to learn that the hard way.
Han and Devin lapsed into quiet as Han focused on cooking, multitasking like mad to get six different dishes going. He rolled his eyes as he made yet another General Tso’s, but someone in the second group had picked a new pomegranate shrimp dish off his experimental menu, so at least that was fun.
The bells over the front door chimed, and he looked up from the stove to spot their mail carrier Amy coming in. “Hey,” he called out.
“Afternoon, Han.”
“Here, I can grab that.” Devin took the bundle of bills and junk mail and started skimming through it.
“Isn’t opening someone else’s mail a felony, Amy?” Han asked.
“Sure is. Want me to ring Officer Dwight?”
“You guys are hilarious.”
“Have a good one, boys.” Amy turned to the door, waving at them over their shoulder.
“Just leave it,” Han told Devin, gesturing for him to put the mail on the counter as he stirred the sauce for the shrimp.
“You got something from the AARP. Want me to set it aside for you?”
“Ha-ha. Seriously, you don’t have to—”
“What’s this?”
Han squeezed some lemon over the shrimp and looked up. He squinted at the big manila envelope in Devin’s hand. “I don’t know. You’re holding it—you tell me.”
“It’s hand-addressed from town hall.”
Han dropped the lemon, flicked off all the burners, and strode over to snatch the envelope away.
“Well, excuse you.” Devin rolled his eyes but he backed off.
Han glanced around before tearing open the envelope. His mom had left a while ago now, but she was like a cat. She snuck up out of nowhere sometimes. Lucky thing, this arriving on bridge club day.
He took a deep breath. The stack of papers he found inside was thick—that was a good sign, right?
“Seriously, what is it?” Devin asked.
Han shooed him away.
His heartbeat quickened. The logo at the top of the letter was a familiar one, blue and yellow set on a white background.
Taste of Blue Cedar Falls.
It was another of June’s brainchildren. She’d sold it as a festival for foodies. Fancy, gourmet, upscale, refined, blah, blah, blah. Tourists ate that stuff up.
Well, tourists ate up Chinese takeout, too.
Han had put in his application on the first day. He hadn’t told June. They weren’t particularly close, outside of her being attached at the hip to his buddy Clay, but he hadn’t wanted any possibility of favoritism. He was already a long shot for a festival like this.
But his proposal for a booth serving upscale Asian fusion street food had been good enough to get him an interview. It had been a pain in the rear preparing for it without his mother finding out. She already thought his “secret” experimental menu was an indulgence. He wasn’t going to tell her he was wasting time developing a menu for a specialty food festival unless he got in. He’d had to wait forever—the committee made its decisions about out-of-town vendors first, leaving locals until just a few weeks before the event.
And now it was the moment of truth.
The judges who had tried his samples at the interview had seemed impressed. He was pretty sure he’d even managed to sound coherent when he’d talked to them about his “unique perspective on the culinary arts.”
He swallowed and scanned the opening paragraph of the letter.
Dear Mr. Leung,
The selection committee for the first annual Taste of Blue Cedar Falls received an overwhelming number of entries, from both restaurant professionals and creative home cooks. After a very competitive review process, we are pleased to offer you a booth…
Han whooped out loud.
Holy crap. Like, holy crap, holy crap.
“What?” Devin crowded him, trying to read over his shoulder.
Han passed the letter over and dove into the rest of the paperwork. Details and terms and important dates were laid out with excruciating specificity, and he’d take the time to go through it soon.
For the moment, though, he set the entire stack aside.
He was going to have a booth at Taste of Blue Cedar Falls.
He might not have any real interest in going back to culinary school, but he still had a dream.
Back before he died, his father used to tell Han he could have anything he wanted if he worked hard enough. The sky was the limit, and the family restaurant was just a jumping-off point.
Han didn’t know about all that. He loved the family restaurant. Fulfilling his duty and stepping into his old man’s shoes behind the counter had been fun, for the most part.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t also want something more. Something that was his.
If the booth was a success at Taste, who knew?
It might be his chance to move up in the world.
Chapter Two
Well, this was certainly a step down in the world.
As May rolled her suitcase through the tiny airport in Asheville, she sighed. One week ago, she’d been at a deluxe resort twelve feet from the ocean in Costa Rica.
Now she was getting ready to do battle with a rental car company about getting a vehicle with four-wheel drive instead of the compact sedan the magazine’s travel agency had secured for her.
Even as she grumbled to herself about the hassles, though, a bubble of anticipation grew behind her ribs. Part of it was dread, of course. There was a reason she had left western North Carolina in her rearview mirror over a decade ago.
But there was a lightness to her step, too.
Costa Rica had been beautiful, but May had been doing solo trips around the world nonstop for years now, researching spectacular destinations for Passage. Once upon a time, when she’d been dating Josh, he’d gone on a couple of her adventures with her, and it had been fun, having somebody to talk to. Even if he was kind of boring.
She rolled her eyes at herself and chuckled.
One thing she could say about her family was that they were never boring. She hadn’t been home for more than. . .
I have to hand it to you, May.” May Wu’s best friend Ruby shook her head before passing May’s phone back across the table to her. “I didn’t think it could be done, but you managed it.”
“Story of my life,” May said dryly.
She always had been an overachiever, but even she wasn’t particularly impressed with this accomplishment.
“How exactly does a person run out of options on a dating site?” Ruby held up her hands and gestured around them in bewilderment. “In New York? It’s like hitting the end of Netflix.”
May shrugged. “I just have high standards, I guess.”
They were about forty-five minutes into their “weekly” catch-up lunch, squeezed in amid both their busy workdays. Weekly was probably a stretch at this point, though. May traveled so much for her job she was lucky if she managed once a month.
Which meant Ruby had to cram all of her marveling about May’s lack of a personal life into a mere fraction of the time.
Ruby picked up her chopsticks again and laughed. “That’s one way of putting it. What was wrong with the last guy you got matched with?”
“He carried a picture of his mother in his wallet, Ru. His mother.”
“So?”
“So?” May didn’t have anything against a healthy parent-child relationship, but she’d seen a guy get too attached to his mom before, and she wasn’t going there again. Besides…“It was cut in the shape of a heart.”
Ruby pulled a face. “Okay, yeah, that’s kind of weird. But what about the guy before him?”
“You mean twelve-bottles-of-mustard-in-his-fridge guy?”
“Right.” Ruby rolled her eyes. “How could I have forgotten.”
“Fine, fine, so maybe I was little picky on that one,” May conceded—though she still maintained that a man who owned more condiments than food was a bad bet. “But remember his predecessor? The one who brought baggies to an all-you-can-eat place?”
Scrunching up her mouth, Ruby brushed her dark hair back from her face. She was half Chinese and half white, and the slight wave to her hair still made May envious. “Yeah, you were right to pass on him.”
With a dramatic sigh, May pocketed her phone and snagged a piece of mango tuna roll off the little boat of sushi they were sharing.
After giving the roll a quick dip in the soy sauce, she popped it in her mouth. Yum.
There was a sour note to the bite, though, and it had nothing to do with the flavor of the food. This was her favorite sushi place in Midtown, but she should know better than to order anything with fruit in it. More than a decade had passed, but mango and soy would never not bring up old memories.
She chewed and swallowed, dark eyes and a soft smile floating through her mind.
There was a reason she had high standards, after all.
Taking a sip of water, she frowned at herself in her head. She was a grown woman. At thirty years old, she’d achieved every one of her goals. She lived in New York. She had a great job that paid well, writing for a travel magazine. She got to visit incredible places all over the world.
And she still got mushy, thinking about her high school sweetheart whenever she ate something that reminded her of his cooking.
“Seriously, though,” Ruby said, continuing as if one bite of sushi hadn’t sent May on an unwelcome jaunt down memory lane. She tipped her head toward where May had stashed her phone. “You reject a lot of guys.”
“All for good reasons.”
Reasons that had nothing to do with said high school sweetheart.
Ruby narrowed her eyes. “You said that back in college, too.”
Okay, maybe Ruby wasn’t as oblivious as she seemed.
May had met Ruby their first semester together at NYU. May had been born in New York—Queens, to be specific—but her mom and sisters had relocated to a tiny dot in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, when May was in middle school. She’d spent every day after that trying to find a way back. Upon her triumphant return, May had been desperate to experience everything life and the big city had to offer. She would have, too, if the aforementioned high school sweetheart hadn’t been an anchor wrapped around her heart.
A fact that Ruby knew entirely too well.
May sighed. “What? You think I should have married the first guy to hit on me at a frat party?”
“No. But I think you’ve been avoiding commitments for about thirteen years now.”
“Hardly.” She had commitments. Her job, for one. Her pet tortoise, Todd, for another. Those things could live for thirty years.
“When’s the last time you went on more than three dates with a guy?”
“It’s been a while,” May admitted.
“You and Josh broke up, what? Five years ago.”
“Something like that.” Her one and only real adult relationship should probably be more of a milestone in her mind, but it wasn’t. They’d spent just shy of a year together, and she’d liked him. Maybe she’d even loved him, a little.
But there’d been no fire. No passion.
And in the end, no compatibility about what they really wanted from their lives.
Turned out Josh had loved having a stay-at-home mom when he was a kid. He expected his children to have the same.
Which meant he was going to need to find somebody else to have them with.
May wasn’t against having kids. But if she’d wanted to quit her job and stay in one place for the rest of her life, she could have done it thirteen years ago—and with a guy she actually cared about.
Something in Ruby’s expression softened. “Look, you know I support you all the way. But I worry about you sometimes.”
May let out a long breath. “I know.”
“Do you want to be single forever? Because if you do, that’s fine—totally a valid life choice. But if you don’t…”
May’s insides squirmed, and she looked toward the window.
She didn’t like being alone, exactly. But she hadn’t been joking earlier. She had a great life, so she had high standards for letting anyone into it. Work was her priority. It always had been, ever since she was a nerdy kid, concentrating on her homework instead of paying attention to what the mean girls were saying about her at school.
Looking back at her friend, she reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I’ll loosen up my filters a little, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” She pulled her hand back to snag the last of the shrimp tempura. “Just as soon as I get through this next round of layoffs at work.”
Ruby scoffed. “They’d be fools to let you go.”
Darn right they would, but ever since her magazine had been acquired by a bigger publisher back in the fall, the threat of the chopping block had been hanging over them all.
Speaking of which…
Catching the look in May’s eyes, Ruby let out a put-upon sigh. “Fine, fine, you have to get back, I know.” She lifted a hand to get the server’s attention. “Check, please!”
Ten minutes later, May emerged from the elevator at her office. Passage magazine’s headquarters was a clean, modern space, decorated with giant prints of photographs from all over the world. It had an open layout with writers, editors, and researchers at their desks focused on their screens, while assistants flitted from one station to the next.
She smiled to herself. It wasn’t for everybody, but the hustle and bustle of the place filled her with energy.
Right until one of the interns stopped her some ten feet in the door. “Boss is looking for you.”
“Oh?”
“Uh-huh.” The intern nodded in the direction of the chief editor’s office. “She’s in a mood, too, so watch out.”
May’s pulse ticked up. That was never good. She cursed herself and her hubris in her head. What had she been thinking, agreeing with Ruby that her job should be safe? The fates could always hear that kind of thing and find a way to put you back in your place.
She kept her smile bright, though. “Thanks for the tip.”
After stashing her jacket and purse at her desk and checking her lipstick, she headed straight for the big open door in the southwest corner—no point prolonging the agony.
May knocked on the glass without hesitation.
Zahra Thorne was a middle-aged Black woman with dark brown skin and short hair, buzzed on the sides, with longer, natural curls on top. At May’s approach, she held up a single finger, her gaze glued to her screen through her chunky black reading glasses. She lowered her hand to tap rapidly at her keyboard for a second. Then she lifted her head.
Her crimson lips curled into a smile. “May, just the person I was hoping to see. Come on in.”
Relief flooded May’s nervous system. Whatever kind of “mood” Zahra might be in today, her wrath wasn’t directed at May.
May settled into the chair on the other side of Zahra’s desk. “What’s up?”
“You unpacked from Costa Rica yet?”
“Does it matter?”
“Nope.” Zahra clicked her mouse a couple of times, then turned her screen so May could see.
May’s stomach just about dropped into her toes.
“You’re from North Carolina, right?” Zahra asked.
“Uh-huh,” May said numbly.
“You seen this?”
Of course she had.
She’d seen it when her younger sister, Elizabeth, had sent it to her.
“And why exactly have you been holding out on me?”
May jerked her gaze to the side to meet her editor’s. “I mean, I…”
“There a lot of Wus in Blue Cedar Falls?”
“No, ma’am. No, there are not.”
“Didn’t think so.”
There were three, in fact. Once upon a time, there had been four, but that was before May had run screaming from the place.
Now it was just her mom and her sisters. They weren’t the only Asian people in the tiny little tourist town in the Carolina mountains, but they were close.
A fact May had been reminded of over and over again.
“So your mom’s cat becomes an internet celebrity.” Zahra tapped a pink-polished fingernail against the screen right over Sunny’s face. “Bringing tons of tourists to a town where your sister launched a giant fall festival and helped a local vet open a bar. And you didn’t think that was worthy of my attention?”
May just about swallowed her tongue.
She stared at the photo Zahra had brought up for a long second, trying to figure out how to get her mouth to work. In the shot, her mom was holding Sunny, the mean, three-legged calico that had basically become her fourth child since she’d had her stroke a year and a half ago. Beside her stood May’s older sister, June, looking annoyingly perfect, as usual, with soft curls in her hair and wearing a red and black flowery dress. The guy with his arm around June was the aforementioned army veteran, a big, muscular white guy covered in tattoos named Clay—aka June’s new boyfriend—and didn’t that still make May’s head spin.
“Look.” Zahra turned her monitor back around, breaking the spell May had been under. “I know you have some issues with your hometown.”
“Understatement,” May said under her breath.
“But this is literally your family being highlighted in our competitor’s magazine.”
Could May’s stomach sink any lower than her toes? At this point it was buried in the carpet.
Because her sister June had asked her to come to the Pumpkin Festival she’d revived back home in Blue Cedar Falls. May had wanted to go, even, but Zahra had handed her a last-minute assignment to write a story on the maiden voyage of a hot new luxury cruise liner, and sure, she could have begged off. But with Passage magazine’s new owners looking for places to make cuts, she’d been afraid to miss the boat—literally.
Deep down, she had to admit that wasn’t the only thing she’d been afraid of.
“I can send somebody else.” Zahra gestured at the busy office beyond the glass wall. “But for a cover feature, an insider perspective is what’s going to sell copies.”
May sat up straighter. “A cover feature?”
“Local driving tours are the new staycation. People may not be able to afford to go to Costa Rica, but they can put the top down and head a few states over. I’m thinking we do the whole region. Lots of little towns in the area.”
“There sure are.” Despite herself, she started listing them in her head. All her information was a decade or so out of date, but June would be happy to catch her up. Running their family’s inn had basically turned her into a walking, talking travel encyclopedia. And then, when June was done, their baby sister Elizabeth could give May the real scoop on where all the cool people were hanging out.
Zahra smiled and leaned back in her chair. “So what do you say?”
May bit her lip and calculated for all of ten seconds. She hadn’t been back to Blue Cedar Falls outside of Christmas and family emergencies in thirteen years. She had good reason, too.
Heading back there to research a cover feature on the region would be a weeklong assignment. Her family would be happy to have her, and she’d be happy to see them, of course.
But June would give her that look. The guilt-tripping one she pulled out every time May showed her face. Her mom and stepdad would give her a gentler one, but it would still turn her inside out.
And being there that long, touring around, finding hidden treasures to spotlight for the story…
Who knew who she’d run into. A dozen faces flashed through her thoughts. Ones that made her blood boil.
And one that squeezed at her heart.
She pushed them all aside. This was a cover feature they were talking about.
“When do I leave?” she asked.
Zahra’s smile only grew. “How fast can you repack your bags?”
* * *
“Still can’t believe how fast you pack that stuff up.”
Han Leung chuckled as he fit the last container of hot and sour soup into one of the cut-open liquor boxes the Jade Garden used to package up pretty much all of their takeout orders.
“Decades of practice.” He tapped a couple of keys on the register, waited for it to print the sales slip, then stapled it to a fresh menu and slotted it into the front of the box. “Plus, I played a ton of Tetris on Uncle Arthur’s old Nintendo.”
“Don’t remind me.” Han’s buddy Devin shook his head and kept slowly folding menus over on the other side of the counter.
“You’re just mad I always beat you.”
“Neither of you ever touched my high score.” Han’s mom reached past him to place a neat packet of napkins, chopsticks, and fortune cookies on top of the smallest of the containers.
“To be fair, you haven’t given us a shot at a rematch in twenty years,” Han said.
His mom made a disapproving sound in the back of her throat. “The queen does not need to prove her right to the throne.”
She retreated into the back of the restaurant as the front door opened, probably off to go get ready for her bridge club.
Han greeted their customer with a smile. It was an out-of-towner with a coupon from the new visitor guide that had been circulating this spring. Asking about their stay, Han applied the discount.
The Jade Garden was his family’s restaurant, started by his uncle Arthur and continued by his folks and now mostly by him. Tourism in Blue Cedar Falls had been on the decline the past few years, and it had just about gone off a cliff when the freeway outside of town had opened. For a while there, business at the restaurant had been eighty percent locals.
But ever since the previous fall, when June Wu had relaunched the Pumpkin Festival and her mom had gone viral with her cat photos, tourists had started coming back. June had used her success with the festival to introduce a bunch of other promotions, including a coupon book that advertised all the Main Street businesses, and Han was grateful for the extra traffic.
Even if he didn’t love being constantly reminded about the Wus.
Never mind that half of his social circle seemed to revolve around their family these days, despite his best efforts to avoid them for the past decade or so.
Putting on a smile, he finished the transaction just in time to catch the phone for the next incoming order.
“Want me to get this started?” his mom asked. She already had her jacket on and her purse slung over her shoulder, but she never made offers she didn’t mean.
The lunch rush was just about over, though. He shook his head. “Nah, I got it. Say hi to the ladies for me.”
One corner of his mom’s lips tilted up, and she fussed with her scarf. “There are some gentlemen at bridge club, too.”
Han tried not to vomit in his mouth.
He wanted his mom to be happy, after all. She’d been alone for over a dozen years now, ever since Han’s father had died.
“Have fun, Mrs. Leung,” Devin called.
Han’s mom shot him a look that probably seemed friendly, but there was a chill underneath it.
Devin had been hanging out with Han since they were kids, so he reacted properly—by dropping his gaze and shutting his mouth.
Satisfied, his mom headed out the back.
As soon as she was gone, Devin scrubbed a hand over his face. “Think she’s ever going to get over me dating your sister?”
“I am literally the last person you should be asking about that, you realize.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The thing between Devin and Han’s youngest sister Zoe was a few months old now, and Han tried not to act weird about it, but it was still taking some getting used to.
He wasn’t willing to lose either of them over it, though, and at least he trusted Devin to treat Zoe well. So in the end, his own feelings about the relationship didn’t matter.
“How’s construction going on the new house?” he asked as he got a pan heating. He was interrupted by another order coming in online, and he grabbed a second wok down from the shelf.
Handling everything himself was hectic, but at least it meant he got to cook.
“It’s good,” Devin said, not missing a beat. “Framing’s just about done.”
He kept on folding menus. Beyond that, he didn’t offer to help; Han had trained him out of that ages ago. Devin was his friend, and Han appreciated the company during long shifts behind the counter. He didn’t want him here out of any kind of obligation or duty, though.
“Nice. You still hoping to be in there this fall?”
“I’d move in tomorrow if it weren’t a code violation.” He frowned. “Or if I thought there was any chance Zoe would go for it.”
Han laughed. He could see it. Devin had been saving up to build his own place on the outskirts of town forever, and now that it was finally under way, he was champing at the bit.
“Just you, a sleeping bag, and a concrete slab?”
“I’ve had worse.” Devin shrugged, a hint of darkness to his gaze. It disappeared quickly, though. Faster than it had before he and Zoe had gotten together, Han had to begrudgingly admit. “Anyway, you know me. Home is anywhere you feel like you belong.”
“Home is my bed in my house with my dog in my hometown,” Han countered. He’d tried it elsewhere, and it had felt like his skin was itching the entire time.
Sure, he would’ve liked to finish culinary school. Some days, he idly daydreamed about going back. But even if he hadn’t gotten the call about his father a few months into his first term, he wasn’t sure he would have stuck with it.
This was where he belonged.
Anything—or anyone—trying to lure him elsewhere didn’t have his best interests at heart.
Too bad he’d had to learn that the hard way.
Han and Devin lapsed into quiet as Han focused on cooking, multitasking like mad to get six different dishes going. He rolled his eyes as he made yet another General Tso’s, but someone in the second group had picked a new pomegranate shrimp dish off his experimental menu, so at least that was fun.
The bells over the front door chimed, and he looked up from the stove to spot their mail carrier Amy coming in. “Hey,” he called out.
“Afternoon, Han.”
“Here, I can grab that.” Devin took the bundle of bills and junk mail and started skimming through it.
“Isn’t opening someone else’s mail a felony, Amy?” Han asked.
“Sure is. Want me to ring Officer Dwight?”
“You guys are hilarious.”
“Have a good one, boys.” Amy turned to the door, waving at them over their shoulder.
“Just leave it,” Han told Devin, gesturing for him to put the mail on the counter as he stirred the sauce for the shrimp.
“You got something from the AARP. Want me to set it aside for you?”
“Ha-ha. Seriously, you don’t have to—”
“What’s this?”
Han squeezed some lemon over the shrimp and looked up. He squinted at the big manila envelope in Devin’s hand. “I don’t know. You’re holding it—you tell me.”
“It’s hand-addressed from town hall.”
Han dropped the lemon, flicked off all the burners, and strode over to snatch the envelope away.
“Well, excuse you.” Devin rolled his eyes but he backed off.
Han glanced around before tearing open the envelope. His mom had left a while ago now, but she was like a cat. She snuck up out of nowhere sometimes. Lucky thing, this arriving on bridge club day.
He took a deep breath. The stack of papers he found inside was thick—that was a good sign, right?
“Seriously, what is it?” Devin asked.
Han shooed him away.
His heartbeat quickened. The logo at the top of the letter was a familiar one, blue and yellow set on a white background.
Taste of Blue Cedar Falls.
It was another of June’s brainchildren. She’d sold it as a festival for foodies. Fancy, gourmet, upscale, refined, blah, blah, blah. Tourists ate that stuff up.
Well, tourists ate up Chinese takeout, too.
Han had put in his application on the first day. He hadn’t told June. They weren’t particularly close, outside of her being attached at the hip to his buddy Clay, but he hadn’t wanted any possibility of favoritism. He was already a long shot for a festival like this.
But his proposal for a booth serving upscale Asian fusion street food had been good enough to get him an interview. It had been a pain in the rear preparing for it without his mother finding out. She already thought his “secret” experimental menu was an indulgence. He wasn’t going to tell her he was wasting time developing a menu for a specialty food festival unless he got in. He’d had to wait forever—the committee made its decisions about out-of-town vendors first, leaving locals until just a few weeks before the event.
And now it was the moment of truth.
The judges who had tried his samples at the interview had seemed impressed. He was pretty sure he’d even managed to sound coherent when he’d talked to them about his “unique perspective on the culinary arts.”
He swallowed and scanned the opening paragraph of the letter.
Dear Mr. Leung,
The selection committee for the first annual Taste of Blue Cedar Falls received an overwhelming number of entries, from both restaurant professionals and creative home cooks. After a very competitive review process, we are pleased to offer you a booth…
Han whooped out loud.
Holy crap. Like, holy crap, holy crap.
“What?” Devin crowded him, trying to read over his shoulder.
Han passed the letter over and dove into the rest of the paperwork. Details and terms and important dates were laid out with excruciating specificity, and he’d take the time to go through it soon.
For the moment, though, he set the entire stack aside.
He was going to have a booth at Taste of Blue Cedar Falls.
He might not have any real interest in going back to culinary school, but he still had a dream.
Back before he died, his father used to tell Han he could have anything he wanted if he worked hard enough. The sky was the limit, and the family restaurant was just a jumping-off point.
Han didn’t know about all that. He loved the family restaurant. Fulfilling his duty and stepping into his old man’s shoes behind the counter had been fun, for the most part.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t also want something more. Something that was his.
If the booth was a success at Taste, who knew?
It might be his chance to move up in the world.
Chapter Two
Well, this was certainly a step down in the world.
As May rolled her suitcase through the tiny airport in Asheville, she sighed. One week ago, she’d been at a deluxe resort twelve feet from the ocean in Costa Rica.
Now she was getting ready to do battle with a rental car company about getting a vehicle with four-wheel drive instead of the compact sedan the magazine’s travel agency had secured for her.
Even as she grumbled to herself about the hassles, though, a bubble of anticipation grew behind her ribs. Part of it was dread, of course. There was a reason she had left western North Carolina in her rearview mirror over a decade ago.
But there was a lightness to her step, too.
Costa Rica had been beautiful, but May had been doing solo trips around the world nonstop for years now, researching spectacular destinations for Passage. Once upon a time, when she’d been dating Josh, he’d gone on a couple of her adventures with her, and it had been fun, having somebody to talk to. Even if he was kind of boring.
She rolled her eyes at herself and chuckled.
One thing she could say about her family was that they were never boring. She hadn’t been home for more than. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Second Chance at Blue Cedar Falls
Jeannie Chin
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
