Chapter One
Gemma
Gemma Morgan should have been staring at the blinking cursor on her computer screen, not looking down at her now bare finger, the indentation of her two-carat, brilliant-cut engagement ring still fresh, even though months had passed since she’d taken it off. Five months. Five long, hard months. She rubbed at the skin, trying to banish the mark, but, like the memory it carried, it seemed determined to stay.
She sighed and pushed her chair away from her desk. The rain that had been falling since early morning had stopped, replaced just as quickly with bright sunshine and a clear blue sky, and she walked to the window of her living room, looking out onto Lincoln Park. It was her favorite thing about this apartment—the view. Ironic, she supposed, that she had come to Chicago thirteen years ago specifically to live in the city and be part of the whole urban experience, and yet the apartment she’d chosen overlooked nature instead of the buildings that had once appealed to her.
The only way she’d even been able to afford this apartment was because of her grandmother, who had left all three Morgan sisters a not completely insignificant trust and equal ownership of Gran’s house on a small, carless island in northern Michigan, about seven hours from Chicago. When Gran had passed away last summer, Gemma had used her inheritance to upgrade her apartment, allowing enough left over to quit her rather soulless job as an account executive at the advertising agency so she could write fulltime (in theory). Her older sister, Hope, had put her share into a compounding-interest savings plan for her twin daughters, and Ellie, the youngest, had rented an art studio on the island where she lived year-round in Gran’s house, so she could pursue her painting career, or at least try to do so until her funds ran out, as their father liked to grumble.
Ellie’s decision was the only decision that their father didn’t support, but then, Bart Morgan had never agreed with Ellie’s choices, from the way she spent her free time growing up (wandering and daydreaming rather than studying and excelling at music or sports) to where she applied to college (art school). But as their mother was quick to point out, it was Ellie who had stayed at the house and taken care of Gran in her final years, so there was really nothing that Bart could say about anything. He had been free to run his steel company in suburban Ohio, and Gemma’s mother, Celia, had been free to enjoy her private tennis lessons at the club.
It had been nearly a year now since Gran had died, peacefully, at the island hospital (something else that Bart didn’t agree with, thinking she should have gone to Cleveland for better care). Nearly a year since Gemma had moved into this apartment. And nearly a year since she’d given her notice at the agency and walked home to the smaller walk-up she had then shared with her fiancé Sean, feeling purposeful and excited, knowing that now she would have all the time in the world needed to write the second book on her publishing contract. But the months had passed quickly, almost in a blur, and now that book was due in a month. Twenty-seven days, really.
And she only had seventy-three pages written. Well, seventy-two if you took away the title page.
Gemma turned from the window. The day was slipping away, as the days seemed to do lately. She glanced down at her attire: pink tee and grey sweatpants that still bore the stain of spilled pizza sauce from last night (yes, she had slept in them, too), because she hadn’t yet showered. She had cleaned the apartment, though. Scrubbed the floors on her hands and knees and even dusted the blinds. But she hadn’t written anything. And now it was already after two.
Was it any wonder that Sean had broken up with her?
Though, really, back when she was with Sean, she didn’t walk around the apartment wearing the same clothes for days on end, eating exclusively from takeout menus. Back when she was with Sean, she had written seventy-three (okay, seventy-two!) pages of her second contracted novel.
She could blame it on the time it had taken to undo her wedding plans; the endless calls to the photographer, band, church director, and hotel event coordinator had left her hot with humiliation and unable to do much more than sit in her lovely new apartment in flannel pajamas with a bowl of ice cream on her lap and a box of tissues at her side. She could blame it on the way her mother had cried, “But what are we supposed to tell all our friends? They’ll be so disappointed!” when she’d finally broken the news, after three weeks of waiting for Sean to change his mind. But ultimately the blame was hers alone. She was in a funk. And she needed to snap out of it.
If only she knew how.
After all, who was she to write a romance novel when she knew nothing about love?
Quickly, she showered and dressed, cringing a little when she realized how tight the waistband of her jeans had become since she’d worn them last month for Hope’s thirty-fourth birthday celebration at a trendy restaurant in the suburbs, where Gemma had felt like a third wheel surrounded by her sister’s beautiful family and realizing that, not even three years younger, Gemma was in danger of never having the wonderful things her sister possessed at this rate.
Now the top button of the jeans pressed against her stomach, making it a little hard to bend over and reach for her shoes. Regardless, they would have to do, because she didn’t have any time to shave her legs for a skirt or a dress if she wanted to make the three-fifteen train to the bucolic suburb where Hope was throwing a birthday party for her twin girls.
Gemma grabbed the birthday gifts she’d ordered last week, paying extra to have them wrapped in bright pink paper because she knew that if she wrapped them herself, they would have tape marks and creases, whereas Hope’s gifts always looked professionally wrapped, even though they were not, and hurried to the elevator at the end of the hall, hoping that she would be able to flag down a passing cab.
They pulled up to Union Station with ten minutes to spare. Enough time for her to stand outside, on the edge of the Chicago River, and take in the view of the skyscrapers across the bridge. There, two blocks to the north and hugging the river to its west, was Sean’s office building—once her office building, where they’d first met, years ago, when the city was still new and life still felt full of possibility. His view, she knew, faced this way. And for reasons she couldn’t explain, and couldn’t even justify, she counted up the floors until she found the twenty-third, and stared until she liked to think he might just sense her presence, and then, she held up her hand, just in case he was working on a Saturday, which he sometimes did when he was working on a big campaign, and just in case he’d swiveled in his chair and turned to look down, catching her in that moment, she flipped him the bird.
She smiled as she hurried through the station and paid for her ticket. And she smiled as she boarded the train and pulled out her latest paperback (that she was reading, not writing), and she smiled when her brother-in-law picked her up thirty minutes later, even though she would have preferred a little one-on-one time with Hope instead.
“Hope would have come but she was busy with last-minute party preparations,” Evan said, giving her a wry look. They both knew, after all, how Hope could fuss over details. He turned onto their winding, tree-lined street where large, four- and five-bedroom homes sat beneath the eaves of old elm trees, their lawns professionally manicured, the grass forever green.
Hope’s house was not the largest on the block, but it was, in Gemma’s opinion, the prettiest: a Tudor-style common in the Chicago area, with original paned windows and a bluestone walkway leading to the arched front door. Inside, Hope had painted out the dark woodwork, leaving only the exposed beams on the ceiling in the living room, giving it a light and airy feeling even if those white sofas did seem a little impractical with twin girls. Still, they were always pristine, every pillow plumped, every surface bare aside from a few cozy touches: a vase of fresh-cut seasonal flowers, a few coffee-table books, a framed photo of the girls at the lakefront, looking absolutely adorable.