The sun came up over Willow Creek in warm golds as Sarah hurried down Main Street, Emily's diary snug in her satchel. The scent of fresh bread from the corner café drifted through the crisp autumn air, but she was elsewhere—somewhere in the mystery of torn pages and shattered love.

She cut the corner too sharply.

The crash sent her stumbling backward, her satchel falling from her shoulder. Resilient arms closed around her elbows, steadying her with a sear through her sweater.

"Whoa—easy there."

That voice. Warm and deep and sprinkled with amusement.

Sarah looked up—and the world whirled.

Lucas Reynolds loomed over her, storm-blue eyes wrinkling at the corners when the sun hit the copper tips of his disheveled hair. He was even better-looking up close, painter's hands still gripped tight around her upper arms, mouth open in surprise.

For one instant, time broke.

Sarah doubled back—Lucas in his paint-stained jeans and leather jacket imposed over a picture of a brooding nobleman in a starched waistcoat, his cravat open as though he'd ridden hard through the night. The same eyes. The same set jaw.

Thomas.

"You all right?" Lucas's thumb caressed her wrist, sending a spark of electricity up her arm.

Sarah jerked back, the vision shattering. "I—yes. Sorry. I wasn't looking where—"

The diary dropped that moment to spill out of her satchel and land with a resounding thud on the cobblestones. Pages fanned open to Emily's portrait of Thomas.

Lucas bent to pick it up—halted. His fingers paused over the portrait, his breath trapped. "Where did you get this?"

Sarah's heart thudded in her ears. "It's… an old family diary."

Lucas ran his finger along the edge of the drawing with unnerving awe. "That's not possible." His eyes focused on hers, hard enough to catch her breath. "I have been dreaming about this man for weeks."

The tinkle of a bicycle bell far away shattered the illusion. Lucas stood up, but his knuckles turned white on the diary. "You live in the Montgomery house, by the old hawthorn tree?"

Sarah nodded dumbly.

A wry, slow smile contorted his lips—one that had been designed over centuries. "Then you simply have to see what I've been painting."

He thrust the diary back into her hands before she was able to think, his fingers lingering for a fraction of a second too long. And then he was gone, merging into the Saturday market crowds, leaving Sarah immovable there with the unsettling realization that all this wasn't by accident.

And that hawthorn tree in her garden? She had it planted there since 1784