Cinnamon and Sunshine Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  From Lexi's Kitchen

  Contact Hollie

  Cinnamon and Sunshine

  Sage Springs Series, Book 3

  Hollie Westring

  Sage Springs Series

  Whispers and Wishes

  Spirits and Spells

  Cinnamon and Sunshine

  Cinnamon and Sunshine

  Published by Willow Branch Press

  Copyright © 2015 Hollie Westring

  Photography © K Keeton Designs

  Cover design by K Keeton Designs

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, businesses, places, and events are either a product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with someone else, please purchase a copy for each person.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Whew.” I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and grinned. “I think this is it,” I said as I looked around my new house. Pots, pans, and furniture were scattered on every surface, including the floor.

  “Damn it,” Ivy grumbled as she tripped over a box of cookie sheets.

  “Ooops,” I giggled, quickly grabbing the blender she had hauled in from the moving truck. “Sorry, Grumpelstiltskin.”

  “You inherited this spacious cottage where you could put anything, and you choose to put a box on the floor where everyone’s walking,” Ivy snapped, frowning at me. She was one of my best friends and pretty much my opposite. Ivy offered sarcasm when I offered sweetness. Where I saw hope, she saw a lost cause.

  “Someone doesn’t respond well to doing manual labor,” Oliver said, coming up behind his wife. Ivy turned to him and her glare softened slightly.

  “I just placed the box there for a second. Don’t be so grumpy, Ivy.” I moved the offending cookie sheets and placed them on the counter in my brand-new kitchen. I still couldn’t believe I had inherited a small cottage nestled outside of Sage Springs from my father’s aunt Dorothy. It had taken a few months to get the place in shape, but now it was my new home and headquarters for Sweet Stuff, my baking business. “Can you believe I live here?” I squeaked, turning to grin at Ivy.

  “Yes,” she said, unimpressed.

  Not even Ivy’s dour demeanor could pop my bubble. Oliver had already brought the kitchen up to chef-caliber status, which was all I needed for now. No more baking in the back of my parents’ diner, the Spoon. I’d used the money I’d been saving to renovate the inside of the cottage the last few months, making sure the kitchen had all the bells and whistles, and that the home had an open-concept feel—warm and welcoming and cheerful. I brushed my fingertips over the cool metal of the stove and sighed, already imagining the good times I’d be having creating treats as I looked through my living room and out the window to the garden outside.

  “You have any food in here?” Jake asked as he placed two crates on the countertop.

  “Of course,” I replied to my cousin, peering around at all the boxes littered across the floor. “I have some stuff right over …” I trailed off, scratching my head. All the boxes were starting to look the same.

  “How about we go to the Spoon?” suggested Eliza, my other best friend and Jake’s girlfriend. “I think we could all use a little break.” Oliver and Jake nodded, and Ivy was already walking out onto the porch. She lived for food.

  “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll meet you guys there. I have something I need to do first.” Eliza sent me a questioning look, her blue eyes narrowing, but I smiled and waved her off. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Okay.” She paused one last second before following Oliver and Jake through the door.

  I waited until I saw their cars head in the direction of the Spoon before I let the dancing commence. I blasted Katy Perry from my phone and let the music roll through me as I sang at the tops of my lungs and twirled around my house with my arms stretched wide. All mine.

  It wasn’t that I disliked living at my old place, but it was an apartment. Now I could do anything I wanted and not worry about bothering the neighbors. I tossed an oven mitt onto the counter as I tested out a new dance move from a pop starlet that had been splashed all over the Internet.

  “Oh!” I heard a startled gasp behind me and immediately stopped shaking what my mama gave me. “Is that what young women are doing now? My, my, my. In my day, we had something called self-respect. We believed in leaving a little something to the imagination.”

  I cringed in embarrassment and slowly turned around. “Hello, Dorothy. How are you?” My eyes flitted to the ghost of the former owner of the gingerbread cottage I now called home. What I really wanted to do was ask her why my great-aunt was spying on me, but my good manners prevented that, so I smiled instead.

  “It’s a good thing my heart’s not beating any longer. That show you were putting on with all those gyrations was enough to startle anyone,” Dorothy reproved as she lifted her nearly transparent eyebrows shrewdly. “I knew you weren’t mature enough to take on the family responsibility. You’re not ready to become the—”

  “I am ready,” I interrupted, standing taller. Dorothy shook her head and pursed her lips as her eyes drilled into mine. “I love the cottage. I really do. Thank you so much for leaving it to me. And I feel like I’ve gotten to know you better the last few months with you training me, but I thought we had an agreement about … you know, setting boundaries and giving me space and stuff.” My tone rose at the end, making it sound like a question. I was terrible at anything close to confrontation, but if I was going to live here, we needed to coexist peacefully if she insisted upon staying around. What if she popped in while I had been running through the house naked because I forgot the towels were in the dryer as I was stepping into the shower? I grimaced at the thought. We needed boundaries.

  Dorothy brought her hand up to remove her ghostly bifocals and sighed. “This has been my home and my duty for more than fifty years. Letting go isn’t a simple task, as you will one day discover.”

  My heart broke a little. She was the former town historian, among other things. Since Sage Springs was a small town with a smattering of buildings dotted along Main Street and the town square, we tended to hold our history close. Dorothy had even headed the efforts to get a tiny museum set up forty years ago. Several of the structures that had been established when the town was set up in the late 1800s still stood, and Dorothy made sure each of those buildings had documented histories and proper brass plaques posted by the entrances.

  According to legend, the founding families had settled in Sage Springs after they’d camped overnight and drunk from a spring. Turns
out that spring had a little something to it, and they soon discovered they could communicate with spirits. Why they chose to stay is still a hot-topic debate. Some people insisted it was to protect the spring from evildoers. Others argued the founders’ motives might not have been so pure. Regardless, Sage Springs was now an eclectic village less than an hour outside Kansas City, Missouri. Residents and spirits coexisted here, which brought me back to my current situation as I stared at the ghost of my great-aunt.

  “There’s no need to worry,” I assured her. “I know what’s expected of me, and I’m dedicated to my new role, so you really don’t have to stay.” I smiled to show her I meant it.

  “Well, I see. You want me to hurry up and move on.” Dorothy placed her bifocals back on her nose. “Maybe I don’t want to move on.”

  “And that’s your choice,” I acknowledged, thinking about the multitude of ghosts who’d chosen to stay earthbound. Some preferred hanging around the living. Spirits decided for themselves if they wanted to move on or stick around, so it truly was up to Dorothy to decide, but having her watch me to see if I was worthy of my new job was getting tiresome.

  “I’ll leave you to settle in, Lexi.” She nodded her head once in goodbye and began floating toward the porch. “But I won’t be prying now that you’ve moved in, if that’s your concern. This is your place now.” I beamed at her before she continued. “So by all means, turn up that clamorous music and enjoy yourself.” She pursed her lips and mumbled something before she disappeared.

  My phone chimed and glancing down at it, I saw I’d missed several text messages the last few hours. Oops. I wasn’t the best with technology.

  Ivy: Where are you? I’m not waiting forever to order.

  Me: On my way.

  I scrolled through my missed texts and saw one from Phil and one from Jonathan, two of my latest men of interest, both asking me what I was doing tomorrow night. I giggled as I thought about how far I’d come in the last five months. I’d gone from a sad, lonely woman wishing that love would find me to a spunky woman who thoroughly enjoyed online dating. Not that every date turned out great, but that was life, right? This twenty-three-year-old version of me was all about experiencing life.

  I hopped into my car and drove the short distance into town while I hummed happily to myself. My cottage was about three miles from the city limits, but my mother complained it was too far. I had to kindly remind her that it wasn’t like I was moving to a different state. I’d never wanted to go far from home. And now I never would. I had responsibilities.

  Eliza had traveled the U.S., and Ivy had done a bit of traveling before she moved to Sage Springs last fall, but I was always content being in my hometown.

  My phone chimed again as I pulled in front of the Spoon. I glanced down to see Justin’s handsome face beaming up at me.

  Justin: Looking forward to seeing your new place.

  I smiled and tucked my phone back into my bag. Justin and I had gone on a handful of dates. He was a veterinarian in Kansas City I’d met while volunteering at an animal shelter one weekend. Tall, blond, tan. Not bad on the eyes, but a little … opinionated.

  I’d never had luck with love. Unlucky was putting it mildly. By the time I turned twenty-two, I’d about given up hope. Then I watched ever-traveling Eliza fall in love with Jake. After that, the snarky witch Ivy fell in love with Oliver. I sighed dreamily as I got out of my Range Rover. Lucky women.

  I so desperately wanted to fall in love. I wanted to fall into the kind of love that took my breath away; that made me feel like I was drowning in it. The kind of love that filled me up inside and made me feel whole, but the kind of whole I never even knew existed. The sort of love that made the brightest ray of sunshine seem like a dull glow. The kind of love that would leave me defenseless but so much stronger.

  I was determined to find that kind of love.

  And while I looked for it, I was also determined to enjoy the pit stops. I grabbed my phone and shot Phil a quick text, letting him know I’d be available for an early supper tomorrow night. Then I texted Jonathan and said the same for the night after that.

  I’d settle for Mr. Right Now as long as it brought me closer to my ultimate goal of falling in love. As Aggie, Eliza’s grandmother, reminded me the other day, there might be plenty of fish in the sea, but “no one’s willing to dangle their rod in the river if no fish bite.” While I was pretty sure she was making an inappropriate analogy, it had some truth to it. I couldn’t find Mr. Right if I was eating my way through cookies and watching reality TV marathons every night. I needed to get out there and experience life, which is why I’d started online dating at the beginning of the summer.

  “Glad you could join us,” Jake teased, sliding over to make room for me in the booth. Eliza and Oliver laughed as Ivy shoved a chicken strip into her mouth with fingernails speckled with chipped black polish.

  “What held you up?” she asked, mouth full.

  “Dorothy,” I admitted, not bringing up the dance party. No one needed to know about that.

  “She’s still around?” Oliver asked, stealing a fry off Ivy’s plate. While that would have earned anyone else a stab in the hand with a fork, Ivy merely shot her husband a glare.

  “Yeah,” I told Oliver, who was a former ghost. Ivy had found a way to keep him in human form last May, and they’d been inseparable since. Heck, Oliver even got Ivy to marry him after the whole ordeal was over.

  “It’s your house now,” Ivy said bluntly.

  “But it’s kind of sweet she wants to hang around,” Eliza said, exchanging knowing glances with Ivy and me. Dorothy wasn’t simply hanging around because she liked it. She was making sure I stayed in line.

  “It’ll work out,” I responded as my dad pushed a plate stacked high with a burger and chips in front of me. I dug in with gusto.

  “Figured you’d be hungry with all that moving,” he said with a grin. “My girl’s all grown up and in her very own house.”

  “Dad, I’m twenty-three,” I said, wiping mustard from my chin as Eliza chuckled. “I’ve been grown up for a while now.”

  “Yes, well, you’ll always be my little girl.” He made a play for one of my chips, but I swatted his hand.

  “You’re looking good, Mr. A,” Eliza complimented, patting Dad’s arm.

  My father smiled and stood a little straighter. “Thanks, doll. I’m down ten pounds. Apparently eating bird food is good for something.”

  “It’s not bird food, Walter,” my mom said, joining the table. “It’s called healthy eating. You’ll be dining on salads and fresh vegetables until the doctor says differently.” My father scoffed at Mom and placed a meaty hand around her tiny waist. I got my looks from my mother—petite frame, blonde hair, hazel eyes. I had more of my father’s calm temperament, though. Mom could be a spitfire, as was apparent anytime my dad tried to sneak a candy bar.

  “Whatever you say, dear.” He looked at my mom with a silly smile on his face. After thirty years together, they still looked at one another like the sun rose and fell within each other’s eyes.

  Ivy’s phone rang, and she groaned as she looked at the screen. “Why does he have to call now? I just ordered dessert.” She rolled her eyes and stood up. “I gotta take this.”

  She stepped outside the diner as my parents left the table, promising to stop by my house soon. My phone chimed and I dug through my bag to see if it was one of the guys responding about a date. Instead, I saw Cruz’s name pop up.

  Cruz: Get your baking stuff ready, Sunshine. The contract was signed. We’re coming to Sage Springs.

  The door clanged, startling me, as Ivy walked back through, shaking her head. “Everyone prepare yourselves.”

  “What’s going on?” Eliza asked.

  “Cruz is coming to town,” Ivy shared. Cruz was Ivy’s best friend from St. Louis. He was a ghost-seeing witch, much like her, and was the host of a paranormal TV show called Cruz’s Fearsome Phantoms, which was slowly gaining momentum and a cult following.<
br />
  Cruz had also been my secret text buddy for the last several months.

  It had started with me texting him to say thanks for sending some of his TV friends my way for baking orders, but our exchanges had quickly become my guilty pleasure. Cruz was a playboy, and I knew Ivy and Eliza would either protect me or tease me if they knew I regularly chatted with him, so I never talked about it.

  Besides, having secret communications with Cruz was as close to playing with fire as I’d ever been … and I kind of liked it.

  “Then it’s all settled?” Oliver asked, startling me out of my reverie.

  “Yeah. Cruz mentioned you’re going to be doing some baking for the crew, Lexi. Have fun with that,” she said dryly. “They are a bunch of—” Ivy’s voice faded into the background as her words sank in.

  Cruz was actually coming to town. I took a deep breath to calm myself as I imagined his green eyes with the gold rings around each iris, short black hair, tattoos, piercings, and flirtatious smile.

  Before I could stop myself, I recalled Cruz’s strong lips as they pressed against mine the night we’d both had a few too many drinks when we found out Oliver was going to stay alive. The cool metal of Cruz’s lip ring tempered the spark that ignited on my warm lips that night last May as we sat on Cedar Inn’s porch.

  My breath caught as we slowly pulled away from one another.

  “Lexi, I’m sorry,” he said softly, eyes growing wide.

  The smile that was dancing around the corners of my tingling lips was destroyed like a bug smashed against a windshield.

  Cruz was sorry.

  Of course he was. While the kiss might have been a special moment for me, this was Cruz Drakov—TV star and ladies’ man extraordinaire. This moment was nothing more than a casual kiss to him. I swallowed my pride and forced a bright grin on my face.

  “For what?” I chirped and shrugged. “Friends can kiss. No big deal.”