Rebecca Raisin - Celebrations and Confetti At Cedarwood Lodge - The cosy romantic comedy to fall in love with!

Surprise knocked me sideways that she’d left town, left Micah.

“Sorry, Micah. I thought…” Way to go, Clio!

He touched my shoulder, giving me time to wrench the metaphorical foot from my mouth. “It’s OK.” He let out a half laugh. “One day she just decided that this place was too small for her big dreams. This town, it isn’t for everyone.”

An awkward silence hung between us. What kind of friend had I been to him? If I’d have known I would have come home for a visit to comfort him, make sure he was OK. Shame colored my cheeks, and in reality, I realized if he had called me I probably would have played the too busy card.

I knew Micah inside out, and sensed he was downplaying the split. I could see by the set of his jaw that the conversation was closed. A part of me deflated – if they couldn’t make it, what hope did any of us have? They’d been the perfect couple.

I tried desperately to think of a subject that would get us back on an even keel. “Look at that view, Micah. Tell me I’m not imagining it – this place is magical, right?”

“Magic to its very core.” He flashed a grin, reminding me of the playful guy he was in high school. The one who transcended cliques and was friends with everyone. “And soon you’ll have the banging of hammers and the whine of drills to contend with, so soak up the serenity while you can.”

Work was set to start today – with plumbers, electricians, glaziers and carpenters arriving. Once they’d completed their jobs, painters would come in to pretty the place up. A project manager called Kai would be here soon to oversee it all while I concentrated on the business and event side of things. Micah would float between us all and make sure things ran smoothly.

“Who’d have thought I’d end up back here, the proud and slightly nervous owner of Cedarwood Lodge?” I scrunched up my nose, my earlier doubts creeping back in. What had I done? I planned parties , not renovations! I hired places for events, I didn’t buy them! Sometimes my audacity at buying Cedarwood Lodge scared me silly. It was such a huge gamble.

With a smile Micah said softly, “Never in a million years would I have thought you’d come back from the bright lights of the big city. Seems once people get a taste for it, Evergreen pales into insignificance. But I’m so glad you did. Remember when we were kids and hung out here? Even back then you talked about the parties you’d host, colors you’d paint the place. Ten-years-old and you predicted Cedarwood would be yours, and you were right.”

The memories brought out a rash of goosebumps.

Cedarwood had been our own private playground. We’d run breathless through the overgrown grounds, peeked into dusty windows and imagined the scenes that might have taken place there before it was abandoned.

The lodge had been closed ever since we could remember and while stories had been whispered around town about the previous owners, we’d been too young to understand.

“It feels good to be home,” I said, meaning it. At that moment Manhattan seemed light years away. “I didn’t realize how much I missed you until I saw your goofy face.”

“Oh, that hurt, that hurt a lot. Goofy ? Don’t think that just because you’ve come back all New York-ified that I’ve forgotten the girl with the uneven pig tails and a mouth full of metal? The one who wore leg warmers as a fashion statement!” He raised a brow, challenging me.

I stifled a laugh. He was right. I had been a fashion don’t when I was a teenager, but things quickly changed when I met Amory – my best friend in New York – who showed me how to dress to impress.

Would I regress, being back home? Go back to sweats and trainers? In my tailored suits and perilously high heels, I felt as though I slipped on a different persona.

In the so-called ‘city that never sleeps’ it had been crucial to be assertive, ambitious, and one step ahead of the game. It had taken me years to build up my client list and I worked so damn hard for it. Maybe the old adage was true: you can take the girl out of Evergreen but you can’t take Evergreen out of the girl, because here I was, home again.

I shielded my eyes from the rising sun. In the distance the mountain range was a riot of autumnal color, reds, ochres, dusty orange, and saffron yellow – the leaves on the hardwood trees clinging on for one more day.

“I hope I don’t mess things up, Micah. This is my last chance. So many things could go wrong,” I said seriously. I could lose everything. The place could remain silent, might never be filled with the tapping of high heel shoes, the popping of champagne corks and peals of laughter. I couldn’t go back to Manhattan, that door was firmly closed. “What if after all the work is done no one hires the place?”

“Hey…” he said, gently rubbing my arm. “That’s not the Clio I know. Where’s the girl who left town screeching about setting the world ablaze?” He gave me a playful shove. “Where’s she gone?”

Up until a few months ago I’d been brimming with confidence, sure of my place in the world. But then I’d messed up – being too honest with a bride, misunderstanding her nerves for something else entirely. It had shaken me up, and made me question myself and my ambitions. Maybe I’d just been lucky before, but that bride kicked my legs out from under me, and I hadn’t quite managed to get back up yet.

“She’s. Right. Here.” I rallied, pasting on a smile.

“Is that supposed to be a smile or a grimace?”

I flashed a sillier grin, regressing back to my teenage self and finding it refreshing. “God, it’s good to see you, Micah.” He was the one person I could be myself with. There was no point pretending because he knew the real me.

“Evergreen was never quite the same without you.”

During our teenage years we’d spent weekends dreaming of a life outside of here. I guess we always thought the grass was greener elsewhere, and for a small town girl, it was. It was so damn green it glowed, and I wished things had turned out differently. At least I had Cedarwood as a consolation prize.

Micah grinned. “Hey,” he checked his watch. “Where’s your mom? I thought she’d be here.”

I shrugged. “I have no idea. When I rang again she made some flimsy excuse. I honestly thought she’d be bursting to see the inside of the lodge after all these years. But I guess she’ll get here when she gets here.”

My first day back in Evergreen I had driven straight to Mom’s place to surprise her with the news about buying Cedarwood Lodge. It had been almost impossible to keep it secret but I’d wanted to tell her face to face and had guilelessly expected shrieks of joy. Instead she paled to a ghostly white, as if I had told her something shocking. We’d never been super close, but still, I’d expected a smile, a word of encouragement, a hug welcome home .

Up until last winter Mom had owned an inn in the center of Evergreen, so I’d also been hoping for a bit of guidance. In my heart of hearts I hoped buying the lodge to would bring us closer together, but I guessed hoping didn’t make it so.

Micah smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “She’s probably just tying things up so she can concentrate properly once she gets here.” He pulled me into one of his breath-stealing bear hugs to comfort me, because we both knew it was more than that.

“Yeah,” I said, pulling away. Mom was retired now, so it wasn’t as if she had anything keeping her away per se . Maybe she just needed to get used to the idea that her taking-the-world-by-storm daughter was back home… without actually having exactly taken the world by storm. Was she disappointed in me? It was hard to tell.