This garden was how she’d won him over.
He hadn’t had one, which was a shame because the run-down house-turned-inn, with its faded white adobe brick and aging red roof tiles, had zero curb appeal. She’d gone out into the desert to hunt for interesting rocks and plants, trading the last of her possessions for paint, some good soil and a few perennials to make something special.
She’d expanded on it over the years, creating a xeriscape that required minimal maintenance and irrigation. Groupings of blue agave, shrubs of pink desert beardtongue, colorful pampas grass and yucca plants. The desert was full of life and color, and she wanted to show it off in style.
Near the porch was a small boulder she’d talked several local artists into decorating. They’d painted the word WELCOME, each letter a scene depicting life in Sedona. It always brought a smile to her face, as did the metal lizard sculpture her friend Fran had made to lounge on top.
Some teal paint on the front door and matching swings she’d installed on the front and back porch added the finishing touches that made the inn look more like a home. The only one she’d ever known.
Her green thumb was all she’d ever gotten from her mother. Bailey had grown up twenty minutes away in Cottonwood. A dull place, in her opinion, until you got to the Wagner mobile home. Stacy Wagner never had much luck in love or career choices, but she’d created a secret garden in their front yard that should have won awards.
She’d called it window dressing, and it had done its job hiding the truth from the neighbors. The truth was that love wasn’t required to make a garden or a child grow, and Stacy never really took to being a mother.
Bailey would always remember coming home from school to find the goodbye note on the fridge. Her mother left Post-it notes on how to keep her plants alive, but she hadn’t told her teenage daughter how to pay the lot rent, or balance school with a job that paid enough to afford groceries.
She didn’t like to dwell on those first few years alone and what she did to survive. As far as she was concerned, her life had started after she’d seen that postcard of Sedona and decided to leave her past behind. It was literally right down the road, but it might as well have been on another planet with how different it was from her hometown.
Coming here was like turning on a light after years in darkness. Sedona was everything bright and full of possibilities—not to mention populated with the most interesting people she’d ever met. An entire town of runaways, running-froms and running-tos. From mystics to millionaires, every one of them was looking for their own piece of paradise.
Her friend Dani had been a runaway—Bailey recognized the broken look in her eyes the moment they met—and having just escaped from a violent man, it took her months to stop jumping every time a door opened. To remember who she’d been before she was afraid.
After seeing the ex in action, Bailey couldn’t blame her for the drastic steps she’d taken to start over, or for what Liam Cane had done in secret to ensure her safety.
She thought that was part of why they were all drawn to each other. Dani, Kaya and Bailey had nothing obvious in common, but they all had pasts they wanted to put behind them. And they’d found a safe haven here. Friendship and sisterhood. A second chance.
This inn had been hers.
Bailey curled her gloved hands and studied the garden again. In some ways she was still her mother’s daughter. Focused on hiding the flaws with pretty packaging.
She’d come out here because this was something that was hers. Something she could control. It stung her pride that in less than twenty-four hours, Locke had already taken care of things she’d never been able to.
She should be grateful. Her guests would be safer and more comfortable. She could now offer them homecooked meals instead of wrinkled takeout menus. She could focus on their satisfaction, instead of racing to keep the bathrooms clean and the beds freshly made.
These were all good things, she told herself firmly, gazing up at the roofline where the men had been productively flexing all morning. And the eye candy wasn’t bad either.
Celeste hadn’t told her she was hiring new employees, but Bailey wouldn’t complain. They were glorious, and they’d been removing all the old clay tiles since breakfast, tossing the broken ones into the construction roll-off and carefully preserving the intact ones in stacks to recycle through a local dealer, all while wearing smiles that could melt a heart at fifty paces.
One of the dynamic duo appeared to be missing at the moment. Buffly—which was the name she’d given him when he hadn’t bothered to introduce himself—had disappeared and taken his fabulously chiseled abs with him.