Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Holly surveyed the acres of blossoming apple trees, the early morning sun gilding the soft new bark and tender buds, and knew without a doubt that her family’s apple farm was doomed.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Stacy sighed beside her. Even though the grass was damp with early morning dew, Stacy wore four-inch black stilettos with an A-line skirt and a cream blouse. She was the picture of a professional boss lady, and if Holly didn’t want to slap the smug right out of her rival’s voice, she might have been impressed with Stacy’s extraordinary level of put-togetherness.

Holly glanced down at her chunky hiking boots, ripped jeans, and the navy plaid shirt that was unbuttoned over a tank top stained with coffee. Their respective attire perfectly reflected the success levels of each of their apple farms. The Apple Dream was raking in the dough, and Wicked Good Apples was … not.

“Yes, charming,” Holly said through gritted teeth. “Is this what you wanted to show me?” She didn’t know why she’d taken the requested meeting except that she’d had a masochistic desire to see the orchard that was putting them out of business.

“Only part of it. Follow me.” Stacy beckoned Holly toward The Apple Dream’s rustic barn, its frame the only thing rustic about it. The red paint was fresh, the trim crisp, the doors sanded smooth. Holly’s family barn was, well, a barn. Weathered, falling apart, mice-ridden.

Stacy navigated the uneven ground with unfaltering perfection, and Holly was impressed while also hoping a teeny tiny bit that her nemesis would face-plant. She didn’t.

Once inside the barn, Holly did her very best to suppress her awestruck expression. She’d never seen the inside of The Apple Dream, apart from the photos on their website which she may or may not have stalked a few times, and it was even cleaner and more efficient than it appeared online. A massive stainless steel cider mill took up the entire far wall, and squatting beside it was a gleaming tank that held the finished cider that would be shipped to grocery stores across the state of Maine. There were old-fashioned apple barrels with cute chalkboard signs denoting the apple type; sleek aerial photos of the orchards framed on the walls; and a cozy couch setup where, in the fall, guests could mingle and sip cider from paper cups.

Holly tried hard not to compare The Apple Dream’s customer experience to that of Wicked Good Apples, where last fall a customer had stepped on Prickles, Holly’s hedgehog, and had threatened to sue after a dramatic meltdown.

“We produce over a thousand gallons of cider a day,” Stacy chirped. She brushed a springy black curl over her shoulder, her cheeks glowing with pride even as she briefly pressed her fingers to her temple as if she had the start of a headache. “We have one of the biggest operations in the state. Oh, did I tell you that I—I mean we —just secured a contract to stock over a hundred New Hampshire grocery stores this fall?”

Holly bared her teeth. “That’s great !”

Stacy beckoned Holly toward a closed door at the back of the barn that had a tiny “Private” sign affixed to it. Holly stepped into a modern-day office that had all the right touches of hipster style, and vowed that when she got home she was buying a new set of pens to do the budget books with. Maybe even gel pens.

Stacy perched on the edge of the desk and crossed her arms over her chest. Her nails were manicured with tiny apples. “Listen, Holly, I know our orchards have had a friendly rivalry in the past, and in the spirit of putting that behind us, I’ll admit that your family’s secret cider recipe is unmatched. The truth is we’d love to have that recipe—and the old Gala orchard at the back of your property. That’s why I asked you here today. I wanted to show you what your orchards could be a part of.”

She sounded like a college recruiter. “Just look at what your orchards could ASPIRE to be!”

Holly had half thought Stacy had invited her to The Apple Dream just to rub her successes in Holly’s face. Holly’s apple orchard was going under—had been going under for a while—and everyone knew it. Holly’s family strived for an unremarkable break-even model, but in the past four years they’d slowly sunk into the red. Some of that might have been Holly’s fault. As the eldest sister in the family and the general manager of Wicked Good Apples, she was adamant they keep their operations on a small scale. Not only was it necessary for their business model, but there were other, far scarier reasons they needed to blend in. Maybe she’d been a little too adamant, though, because if Wicked Good Apples didn’t pull a profit this fall, they’d have to close. But being bought out by her lifelong rival? That was worse. Way worse.

Holly’s eyes dropped to a cider glass on the desk printed with The Apple Dream’s name and logo. Stacy had spent all morning humble-bragging about her cider contracts, but Holly knew that Wicked Good Apples’ family recipe was better. Her great-great-grandmother had planted the orchards by hand to spite a town councilman, and the orchards had been passed down through the generations along with the secret cider recipe. There was no way Holly was giving it up.

Actually, Holly couldn’t give up the recipe. There was a special ingredient no one else had.

“We’re prepared to make a generous offer,” Stacy continued, and she gave Holly a sad smile. “We know your business prospects are bleak, but we aren’t going to take advantage of that.” Stacy pressed one slender hand over her heart. “Our family wants to do right by yours.”

Holly swallowed down her nausea and shoved her fists into her back pockets. She always felt vaguely sick around Stacy. She told herself it was because she was allergic to perfectionism, but the truth was she and Stacy had a far more complicated history.

Stacy reached behind her for a folded square of cream stationary and held it out. Holly reluctantly took it. Frig, even their stationary was a class act. When she opened the note, her jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”

“That’s for the orchards and the recipe. We don’t want the house, but we aren’t going to kick you off the land either. You and your aunts and sisters can continue living there. For now.”

Holly counted the zeros six times and then folded the paper and handed it back. “I’ll have to consult with my family.”

It was the polite thing to say, but she already knew their answers. Her sister, Winter, would curse Stacy out until one of their aunts exclaimed that ladies didn’t speak in such a way in her day, and Winter would remind her that she was by no means a lady. Holly’s youngest sister, Missy, would relay all the latest gossip about Stacy but wouldn’t actually commit to weighing in one way or another. As for Holly? She would rather live off potatoes and salt for a year than ever sell the orchards to Stacy, no matter how badly Wicked Good Apples was failing. Their mothers had been rivals long before Stacy and Holly had inherited the farms, and Holly had great respect for tradition.

Stacy gave her a cold smile. “You do that. But don’t take too long.”

The threat was implicit: the longer they took to decide, the lower the offer would go.

A curl of wind slithered over them, rifling Stacy’s perfect hair. Stacy narrowed her eyes, and Holly quickly buried the ember of anger that had flared to life at her rival’s words.

Not here. Anywhere but here.

Holly straightened her shoulders, and the errant breeze vanished. “I’ll see myself out.”

She exited the barn, her boot heels clomping across the waxed floorboards, and she didn’t let her posture slump until she reached her 2009 Kia. Once safely inside, she pressed her forehead to the steering wheel and took several deep breaths, calmly reciting all the reasons she was not going back inside and telling Stacy where she could shove her offer. The main reason was that Holly was already on thin legal ice after the hedgehog incident.

On the short drive home, Holly rehearsed what she would say to her family. They weren’t going to accept Stacy’s offer, but it might be a good time to remind them how important this season was to their future. She wasn’t convinced the others understood how dire their situation had become. Along with her family’s desire to appear unremarkable, there had been a strange and steady decline in customers over the past several years that had chipped away at their margins. Holly wasn’t sure what had changed, but what used to work didn’t anymore, and Wicked Good Apples was barreling toward foreclosure at an alarming rate.

The view along the winding country road helped lift Holly’s spirits. The winter had been long and bitter, and spring had been reluctant to emerge. It was May and it had finally, finally stopped raining. Everything was green and flowering and smelled like rain-washed lilacs and daffodils. The air was still a bit cool, but Holly didn’t care. It was better than the forty-degree April they’d had, and infinitely better than the single digits they’d suffered through all winter.

She turned left at the rusted metal mailbox with the word “Wicked” painted across the side and smothered a smile. The rest of the name had ostensibly worn off.

The driveway was rutted with potholes—just one more thing they had to rectify before they opened for the fall season. Massive maples with tender green buds arched over the dirt drive, forming a woven canopy of delicate branches patched with blue sky. When the maples were leafed out in bright reds and dark maroons in the fall, the driveway would find its way onto dozens of Instagram accounts.

Holly was in a much better mood when she rounded the bend of the long driveway. It was a breathtaking day, and even Stacy and her stupidly amazing stilettos couldn’t keep her down.

Then she saw the truck.

A shiny, forest-green pickup truck with all the latest bells and whistles was parked by the front door of the house. In discreet lettering on the side was the name “Grimm Productions.”

Oh hell no. Not today.

Holly had already sent two Grimm Productions goons packing a couple months ago. Didn’t Grimm understand the word no ? No , she and her sisters did not want him filming his ghost-hunting TV show at their apple orchard. No , she and her sisters did not care that several internet fan sites had popped up claiming Wicked Good Apples was haunted. No , she and her sisters did not want to know how much money Grimm Productions was willing to throw at their dying apple orchard, because the answer was still no!

Holly jammed the Kia in park directly behind the pickup truck and marched toward the house, all of her anger at Stacy now directed toward Grimm Productions. She whipped her hand behind her, and a violent gust of wind slammed her car door shut with enough force that the visor fell open. Holly tried to remember the names of the two men who’d visited a couple months ago. Kevin and Mark, she thought. They’d both been so sure she’d fall over herself at the chance to be on TV that they’d been visibly shocked when she’d told them to get lost.

She almost felt bad for Kevin and Mark because they were about to have their asses handed to them. Today was not the day to be messing with Holly Celeste.

Holly threw open the door like a conquering invader and was horrified to hear laughter coming from the direction of the kitchen. Good God, was that Aunt Rose’s girlish giggle? What on earth was happening? They’d all agreed that exposure in the form of a national TV show would be far more detrimental than the money would be helpful.

Holly wended through the mismatched furniture, pausing only long enough to reach inside the hedgehog enclosure and run her hand along the grain of Prickles’s spines. The Celeste home was two hundred years old and as worn and drafty as one might expect from a farmhouse that had been built before modern insulation. Most of the furniture in the house was antique, which was unusual enough on its own, but when combined with the abnormal number of books the Celestes possessed, it made the house seem downright weird to most visitors. Every room had at least one full wall packed tightly with books, the spines ranging from hardcovers to cracked ninety-nine-cent paperbacks. It was a well-known fact that a Celeste never gave away a book. Holly’s great-great-grandmother had started the collection, and every Celeste had added to it since.

Holly pushed through the swinging door that separated the living room from the kitchen and froze in surprise, the door literally hitting her in the butt and bumping her forward a few inches.

Sitting around the kitchen table were her two sisters, who had the nerve to be glowing with happiness, and Aunt Rose and Aunt Daisy, who were blushing and tittering, respectively. Laid out on the antique walnut table was the good china, the kind Aunt Rose reserved for visitors on par with the Queen of England, steam curling from the tops of the teacups. The kitchen smelled of apple scones and apple jelly, and a block of cheddar cheese was lying on a small charcuterie board in the center of the table, a silver-handled knife sticking out of it.

It wasn’t the cozy domestic scene of entertainment that stopped Holly in her tracks, but the man lounging at the table beside Aunt Rose. He lifted his head as she entered, and Holly’s heart leaped into her throat. It seemed Kevin and Mark had taken her hint after all, because sitting in her kitchen was none other than the Grimm Reality TV show star himself, Connor Grimm.