The Gift of Yesterday: Green Pines Romance, #5

By Milou Koenings

Bailey's looking for a new start, someplace where she's got nothing and no one to lose. But small-town Green Pines, where she's come to open a pastry shop, turns out to hold far more memories and temptation than she bargained for.

For Joe, having Bailey back in town is like having all his Christmas wishes come true—if only he can convince her to risk her heart again.

The Gift of Yesterday is the fifth book in the Green Pines Romance series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milou Koenings
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386575092

Milou Koenings

Milou Koenings is an award-winning USA Today bestselling author who writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with happy endings bring joy to the world and so make it a better place.

Book preview

The Gift of Yesterday

––––––––

Milou Koenings

USA Today Bestselling Author

Copyright © 2016 by Milou Koenings

Acknowledgment

To my family, for all the sweet memories of loving holidays spent above the bakery and elsewhere.

Table of Contents

The Gift of Yesterday

Acknowledgment

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Bailey’s Merveilleux Recipe

Get a FREE Book!

A Note From The Author

Contact Information

Chapter 1

The day of her aunt’s funeral, Bailey baked two hundred lemon cookies, three loaves of bread, and a dozen milk rolls. She emptied the kitchen of fruit and ended up with half a dozen pies: four apple, two blueberry. By then it was dawn. She delivered the grief-soaked lot to Sister Xavier at the homeless shelter where her aunt had volunteered and went back to her empty apartment.

There wasn’t so much as a slice of bread left for her breakfast. Bailey, who had been up almost thirty-six hours straight, made herself a cafe crème like the ones she’d had in Paris and felt the house settle heavily upon her shoulders. The tenant upstairs was getting ready to go to work—her heels clacked across the hardwood living room floor overhead.

Her tenant, now, Bailey realized.

Cup in hand, she walked slowly through the rooms of the first-floor apartment she’d shared with her aunt. What had been homey and comforting a week ago now seemed impossibly foreign to her. The needlepoint tapestry above the sideboard, the cut-glass candy dish still filled with nonpareils, the avocado-green refrigerator Auntie Muriel hadn’t replaced since 1978, long before Bailey was born. Bailey had been living in these rooms since she’d been fourteen years old, yet none of it seemed to have anything to do with her.

Only a wood-carved giraffe on the mantel in the living room gave her pause. She traced the giraffe’s graceful neck with a finger. She remembered buying that with her parents as a gift for Auntie Muriel when they’d gone on safari in South Africa. Bailey even remembered wrapping it up and taking it to the post office to mail. Now only she and the giraffe were left.

You can come with me, Bailey thought. Where, she didn’t know. She’d figure it out later. Bailey crawled into bed and slept for twenty-four hours.

When she woke up, the plan was fully formed in her mind, as if it had been assembling itself in her subconscious during the last two years of Aunt Muriel’s illness.

She could have done the safe thing, stay put and keep her job.

She could have gone back to Paris, where’d she’d lived since she’d graduated high school and had gone to culinary school. If not for finding out that Aunt Muriel had cancer, Bailey would probably still have been there, only coming back to Chicago twice a year for visits. But it had been two years now; most of her friends there had moved on. And as she’d often discussed with Aunt Muriel, Paris, with a café on every corner, wasn’t the best place to open a pastry shop, no matter how amazing you were.

Instead, Bailey pulled out the crumpled magazine article she'd been carrying around in her messenger bag for the past six months. She smoothed the pages and stared at them. The new restaurant review section from an old issue of Chicagoland Magazine. It was a glowing article about the hottest restaurant in the country that was attracting celebrities from both coasts, flying in for a single meal—in a small town Bailey had never thought she'd see again. She powered up her laptop and started making lists.

After a few hours of steadily cranking out emails to suppliers, she stretched and went for a walk to clear her head. She went two blocks to Lincoln Park and crossed the park to the lagoon. Bailey stared at the late afternoon sun on the water. It was the end of summer. A jogger in a tank top huffed past her. Bailey turned back, leaves crunching underfoot. In the distance, on the other side of Lake Shore Drive, the white triangles of sailboats skimmed the horizon of summer on Lake Michigan, unaware that winter was on its way, was, for some, already here.

That was how Bailey came to Green Pines.

Chapter 2

Only one more box to unpack. Bailey set the last pair of shoes on the floor of the closet, then sat back on her heels and pushed the hair out of her face with a sigh. She looked around from her vantage point on the floor of the bedroom. Her clothes hung above her in the closet, her stack of identical black T-shirts arranged on the one shelf. The old-fashioned radiator sighed and gurgled as if turning over in contented sleep. Bailey was grateful for the comforting sound and warmth of it. The cast-iron white bed that Aunt Muriel had bought for her when she'd moved in with her in Chicago—thinking it would remind her of the one she was leaving behind in Paris—was already neatly made. The dresser and the worn couch in the living room were the only other pieces of furniture in the apartment. She had taken very little from Aunt Muriel's home, which she had rented out as furnished.

Her cell phone rang. Bailey scrambled back up to retrieve it from the dresser, knocking over the last box.

Sister Xavier.

Bailey took a deep breath and answered the call.

Bailey, the nun's warm voice was tinged with concern.

She knew.

Bailey pushed her hair back again and braced herself.

I just wanted to thank you again for all the wonderful Thanksgiving goodies you brought us this weekend. And the cranberry muffins! You've spoiled us—everyone keeps asking when we're going to have them again.

Bailey nodded, as if Sister Xavier could see her.

In fact, I wanted to thank you in person, the nun said.

Ouch. Bailey hadn't counted on that.

So imagine my surprise when I drive up to your house and see a big moving truck in front of the door—

Bailey closed her eyes.

—and find someone else moving into your apartment! Bailey, what have you done? Where are you?

Bailey moved to the window and stared out blindly at the dark town square below. It's something I'd talked about with Aunt Muriel for a long time— Well, sort of. As a distant dream. She took a deep breath. I'm in Green Pines. I'm opening my own pastry shop.

There was a moment of surprise at the end of the line while Sister Xavier obviously regrouped. Green Pines?

Yup. I bought a three-story building on the square and I'm living on the second floor. And I'm going to have my own pastry shop downstairs. You'll have to come visit when it opens.

That's wonderful, Bailey! Muriel would have been so proud of you. Bailey could tell from her tone that the nun was still concerned. Don't worry—I'm only two hours west. You'll still see me, she said lightly. She knew she'd still visit the homeless shelter, delivering cakes, pies, and other homemade sweetness, if only in Aunt Muriel's memory.

Still, honey. You could have told us you were leaving. We would have made you a goodbye party!

That's the point, Bailey blurted out. "I've had enough goodbye parties—Aunt Muriel's, my grandfather's, my