Love Reimagined Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Love Redefined Chapter 1

  Love Redefined Chapter 2

  Love Reimagined

  Delancey Stewart

  Contents

  Love Reimagined

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek

  Love Redefined Chapter 1

  Love Redefined Chapter 2

  Love Redefined Pre-Order Info

  Afterword

  Also by Delancey Stewart

  Love Reimagined

  Kings Grove - Book Two

  by Delancey Stewart

  Copyright © 2018 Delancey Stewart

  All rights reserved.

  LOVE REIMAGINED by Delancey Stewart

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  LOVE REIMAGINED is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Chapter 1

  Miranda

  Remember, it’s all about getting the corners lined up.” My mother’s voice floated toward me when I walked into the house, and my stomach clenched.

  Oh God. I thought we’d gotten past this.

  “Just flip that second corner over the first one on your right hand.” She giggled maniacally after this line. I could deliver this entire thing from heart, getting every single inflection exactly right, I’d heard it so many times.

  “Mom, not again.” I walked into the living room to find Mom standing in front of the television, a fitted sheet dangling from her hands and tears running down her face. On the television in front of her, she stood in exactly the same position, a brighter, younger version of herself. “I thought you’d made peace with this.”

  She gave me an apologetic shrug and turned back to the television, where her younger self was just beginning to run into trouble.

  “It’s just this third corner that is always so difficult, but I promise you, everyone—once you get this one, it all just falls into place. You’ll have beautifully folded sheets from now on and that linen closet will finally be neat and orderly.” A false brightness had crept into TV Mom’s voice, along with a sharp edge of panic. I hated watching this part.

  “Mom, we should turn this off.” I walked to the television and reached to stop the DVR, but Mom stopped me.

  “No, I need to see it. I just …” As Mom’s TV self started to flail miserably and blush furiously while she tried time and again to fold that bright red fitted sheet into submission on Wake Up Kings Grove, real-life Mom had folded her sheet into a perfectly tidy little square. “How could I have done that?” Mom asked me, setting the sheet on the coffee table and patting it. She sank to the couch. “How did it go so wrong?”

  I sat down beside her, dropping my keys on top of her sheet. We watched the rest together, painful as it was.

  “Maybe if you try again, slowly?” Angela Sugar, the host of King’s Grove’s morning show was trying to help TV Mom fold the sheet. “I’m sure you do this all the time successfully …”

  TV Mom snapped, “I do!” Her voice was high and warbly. “I do this all the time. I’m a professional goddamn organizer. What is wrong with me?” The sheet that filled the TV screen almost blocked out Angela’s shocked face, but not quite.

  The segment was nearing its awful end, my mother next to me wracked with silent sobs. “It ruined me,” she was moaning. “It was supposed to launch my business, and instead I’m the organizing laughing stock.”

  “You’re overreacting.” She wasn’t, really. The last part of the segment, where Mom began to flip out and her face turned bright red as she flung the sheet this way and that, had gone viral on the Internet not long after it aired. Her desperate attempts to demonstrate how easy it was to fold a fitted sheet became a meme that had even popped up on my Facebook feed. And since half of Mom’s business revolved around her blog, it didn’t take long for her to catch wind of it. When that happened, she definitely overreacted. I thought it would have been great if she’d owned it, and used her flub to promote her business—“Even a professional organizer struggles to get things in order sometimes…”—something like that. But Mom had tried to pretend it never happened. Except at home, where she watched the segment on endless repeat, practicing the skill that had “ruined” her. Our linen closet was extremely tidy.

  “You can turn it off,” she sniffed as TV Mom ran from the stage, the sheet bundled in her arms and her wailing voice following behind her as Angela smiled into the camera with wide what-just-happened? eyes.

  “No, I like this next part,” I said. I put an arm around her and patted her shoulder. Angela introduced the next guest.

  “President of Palmer Construction, and the man who’s singlehandedly saving the Kings Grove campground cottages … Please help me welcome Chance Palmer!”

  My heart raced as gorgeous Chance Palmer strode confidently across the stage to give Angela a warm hug. His dark hair was waved over his forehead, cut short around the sides, and the perfect teeth showed as he smiled at her with a warmth I envied. He arranged his long limbs into the chair next to her and looked out into the camera. This was the part where I always pretended Chance was looking out at me, smiling that perfect smile at me.

  Angela leaned in when Chance got close and tried to share a knowing giggle with him as my mother’s wailing cry floated back onto the set, but Chance shook his head. “You know, I cannot fold one of those for the life of me. I usually end up in tears, too,” he said. “I think I’m going to call Esther to come take a look at my linen closet. It’s a disaster …” He smiled and there was something so sincere about him I had no doubt every person watching fell in love with him just a little bit right then. I fell in love with him a little more every time I watched him try to make my mother’s humiliation just a little bit less horrid.

  Angela was clea
rly won over. She smiled a moony smile at him. “Tell us about this latest project, Chance. Is it true you’re renovating the Kings Grove cottages out of the goodness of your heart?”

  Chance laughed, his low honeyed voice stirring something in my blood to life. I was warm all over as he began to speak. “I don’t know that I’d put it that way, Angela. Those cottages are part of our history—Kings Grove history. They’ve stood for almost a hundred years, and I just can’t stomach the state of disrepair they’ve fallen into. Palmer Construction has a not-for-profit foundation in addition to our primary business—and this is just the latest project for the Foundation.”

  “That’s wonderful, Chance. You’re really preserving a piece of Kings Grove history then, aren’t you?”

  Chance nodded, a lock of dark hair falling across his forehead. “That’s the idea,” he said. “My great grandparents came up here as visitors in the early 1900s, and these big trees got under their skin and they stayed. I know lots of folks now who come up here as guests every summer, and those cottages are part of their experience, their family memory. I want to be sure that future generations will have the same opportunity—if not to live up here, then to have a way to visit every year.”

  I’d fallen into a kind of trance, watching Chance Palmer in the unguarded way I wanted to stare at him in real life. In front of the television I could study him, notice the way the fine lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes, focus on how he lifted his chin just so when he made a point. I could stare at him forever. But when he came into the diner where I worked, I could barely form two words, and I usually spilled something on him just to seal the deal.

  “Miranda.” Mom was staring at me.

  When Chance’s segment ended, I turned to face her, eyebrows up in question.

  “Honey, enough. You can’t stay up here your whole life mooning over that boy and working in a diner. Look what’s become of me.”

  “I think you’re being a little dramatic. Besides, I’m working on my degree. And then I’ll decide what to do.”

  She shook her head. “Interior design isn’t something folks need a lot of in the mountains, honey.”

  “Maybe I can start a blog, make a living like you do.”

  Dad had wandered through the living room, eating a sandwich, and overheard this last part. “She used to make a living,” he said. “But since Sheetgate …” He grinned.

  Mom began to cry again.

  I stood. I’d had enough. “I’ve got work, guys. Are you coming in for dinner tonight?” My folks liked to eat at the diner once a week when I was working.

  Dad nodded. His olive green uniform was covered in dust. “Just gotta get cleaned up.”

  “You’re a mess, Dad.”

  “It’s so dry out there,” he said. “There are just clouds of dust floating around the trails in some places—especially if you run into horses.” Dad was a park ranger, and he spent his days working at the visitor center, leading hikes, and working on the trails around the National Park.

  I grabbed my Kings Grover Diner shirt and headed back out the door.

  “See you at the diner!”

  Chapter 2

  Sam

  Chance, I’ll see you at the office,” I called behind me as I opened the front door of the house I’d lived in since I’d been born.

  “See you,” he called back, lifting a coffee cup my way and staring down at his phone. “You stopping by Carolynn Teague’s place? She called the office three times yesterday.” He looked up and grinned at me.

  I blew out a breath and gave him a level look. “Yes.”

  His grin spread wider. “Got a ladder?” He was enjoying this too much.

  “I have the ladder. I’m just going to go fix her imaginary leak, and then I’ll be in.”

  He chuckled and returned his gaze to his phone. “Have fun, Sam. Don’t let her get you as you climb down…”

  It was a valid warning. Mrs. Teague had what might have been described as ‘a thing’ for me; she called me out to her cabin at least once every two weeks to repair shingles that weren’t broken, patch pipes that hadn’t burst, and rehang doors that were perfectly hung. It was our thing. And I put up with it for two reasons—one, Mrs. Teague was a nice old lady, even if she did get a little handsy now and then; and two—she always paid for the work.

  Today I found myself climbing up to the roof, Mrs. Teague insisting that she needed to ‘hold the ladder’ as I went up. I could feel her eyes boring holes into my butt as I climbed above her, but she was mostly harmless, so I just swallowed hard and hustled to the top. With a normal job, I’d send one of the guys out, but Mrs. Teague had been asking for me specifically since high school, and I’d been coming down here to help her long enough to know the whole situation was benign.

  “Right up here, Mrs. Teague?” I called down, choosing a random spot on her perfectly intact shingled roof to repair.

  She had stepped out a few feet, so she had a perfect view of me as I knelt on her sloped roof. I smiled down at her while simultaneously trying to make sure I didn’t slide off. Death wasn’t on my agenda today. “That’s perfect, Sam,” she called up. “My, you’re so strong and capable.”

  Working for Mrs. Teague should have been an ego boost. She definitely appreciated my, uh, assets. And it was nice to hear sometimes, but the compliments would have been more appreciated coming from someone else. Specifically Miranda George, who I was pretty sure hadn’t actually looked at me since we were six. Miranda had decided about then that she was in love with my older brother Chance, and while everyone said we look alike, Miranda didn’t seem to share that opinion, or she just didn’t care. I doubted she’d really ever even noticed the similarities, because she was too blinded by Chance and his glittering perfection. Chance was all charm and personality. I was…well, I was just me.

  “Yep, I think I’ve got it just about patched up here,” I called down to Mrs. Teague.

  “Was it a big hole, Sam?”

  “Big enough,” I lied, hammering in a fresh shingle to replace the perfectly good one I’d removed. “This ought to do it.” I scooted back down the roof toward the ladder, tucking my hammer into the tool belt at my waist.

  “Oh, careful now!” She called up, and I could tell that she’d moved back to ‘hold the ladder’ for me again. I swallowed my pride and climbed down, wishing she’d take a few steps back as my butt ended up pretty much in her face at the bottom.

  It was a surprisingly hot morning, and sweat was already beading on my forehead. I wiped at it and rolled up my sleeves when I hit the ground. Mrs. Teague’s appreciative eyes followed every motion.

  “Iced tea, Sam?” She smiled sweetly at me.

  “That’s awfully nice of you, Mrs. Teague, but I need to get on into work. My brother will be expecting me,” I told her.

  She nodded and continued smiling at me. “You boys work so hard,” she said. “All that hammering and nailing and…drilling.” She blushed and I tried not to cringe, turning instead to pull down the ladder and get it hooked back to the truck.

  Chance and I didn’t do a lot of actual construction at this point, hiring out crews for most of the labor, but she didn’t need to be corrected. Mrs. Teague was all by herself up here, and I didn’t really mind dropping by now and then if it made her…happy.

  “Okay, well,” I said, pulling my keys from my pocket. “I think we’re all set here. You take care, Mrs. Teague, and give me a call when you need me.” I dropped one arm over the old lady’s shoulder and leaned down to kiss her cheek. She giggled and grinned like a girl, blushing furiously.

  “Thank you, Sam,” she said. Her voice was breathy and high, and her eyes didn’t leave me as I climbed into the truck and gave her a final wave.

  I got back to the office a few minutes later, and Chance called out as I came through the front door, “Did you get out of there okay, little bro? Chastity intact?”

  “Shut up.” I threw my bag into the corner of my office and sat down at my desk. I guessed t
hat was one of the differences between Chance and me. He would never have gotten into a situation like the one I was in with Mrs. Teague because he would have charmed and avoided. And I would never get out of it because I didn’t have that skill set. I was pretty much just me—what you see is what you get. And I didn’t have it in me to disappoint little old ladies.

  Chapter 3

  Miranda

  The familiar smell of bacon grease and Pine-Sol greeted me as I flew through the diner door, Adele on guard at the podium to shake her head at me as always. I knew deep down she really liked me, but she did her best to hide it.

  “Twelve minutes late,” she said.

  I gave her a grin and went to the back to clock in. There was no point arguing with Adele. She and her husband Frank owned the diner, and had run it as long as I’d been there—Adele with a firm hand and Frank with a soft smile.

  “Hey you.” Maddie Turner greeted me when I came back out, a pot of coffee in her hand and a smile on her face. Behind her, her fiancé Connor shot a hand up in greeting before returning to the laptop on the table in front of him.