Forever Starts Now Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  A Lot Like Love, Jennifer Snow

  The Wedding Date Disaster, by Avery Flynn

  Wishing For A Cowboy, by Victoria James

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Stefanie London. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  10940 S Parker Road

  Suite 327

  Parker, CO 80134

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Liz Pelletier and Lydia Sharp

  Cover design and illustration by Elizabeth Turner Stokes

  Photo of umbrella © dilyaz/Shutterstock

  Photo of boots © Antonsoz85/Shutterstock

  Photo of boots © HelenaQueen/Shutterstock

  Interior design by Toni Kerr

  Print ISBN 978-1-64937-023-5

  ebook ISBN 978-1-64937-036-5

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition July 2021

  Also by Stefanie London

  Kissing Creek series

  Kissing Lessons

  The Patterson’s Bluff series

  The Aussie Next Door

  Her Aussie Holiday

  The Behind The Bar series

  The Rules According to Gracie

  Pretend It’s Love

  Betting the Bad Boy

  Other Romantic Comedies

  How To Win a Fiancé

  How to Lose a Fiancé

  Trouble Next Door

  Loving the Odds

  Millionaire Under the Mistletoe

  Taken By the CEO

  Forever Starts Now is a sweet, small-town romance that is full of hope and heart, but there are images and themes that might be triggering to some readers. Divorce, infidelity in a character’s backstory, death, and cancer are discussed in the novel. There is no death shown on the page and there is no cheating in the romance. However, readers who may be sensitive to any of these elements, please take note.

  To all the people who’ve found the

  courage to try again.

  Chapter One

  Monroe Roberts stood in the kitchen of the Sunshine Diner, hands on her hips, mouth open in disbelief. There were some days she was sure the universe was testing her, like she was a big ol’ goldfish and the almighty was tapping a finger against the glass to see what she’d do next.

  “What do you mean Jackson quit?” she asked, shaking her head.

  A young server named Rai sighed and repeated herself, “He said that he could get paid more for working less at McDonald’s.”

  “He said those exact words?”

  Rai looked down, her cheeks red. “Actually, he said he could get paid more for taking less shit at McDonald’s.”

  Monroe looked over to the cook, Big Frank, for support. The older man, who’d earned his name for his towering stature and barrel-like chest, simply turned to the stovetop so he could flip the French toast he was currently cooking, an amused smirk quirking his lips.

  “And by ‘taking less shit’ he means doing the job I pay him to do instead of slacking off?” Monroe sucked in a deep breath to take her frustration down a notch. There was no sense blowing a fuse over the small stuff.

  Hadn’t her father always told her that when she was younger? Apparently Monroe lived a little too closely to the stereotype for her bright red hair—too argumentative, too fiery. Too difficult.

  She was pretty sure her ex would agree with that one.

  “Thanks for passing it on.” Monroe reached out and touched the teen’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to shoot the messenger. I don’t suppose you want an extra shift or two while I find a replacement?”

  “Sure thing.” Rai nodded, looking relieved to be extracting herself from the awkward conversation. She grabbed the plate that sat on the warming shelf and headed out of the kitchen, her long black braid swinging behind her.

  Over at the stove, Frank chuckled to himself.

  “Don’t you start,” Monroe said. “That’s the fifth resignation this month.”

  Frank slid a spatula under the French toast and carefully placed it on a plate. Then he drizzled syrup over the top and added a gentle dusting of powdered sugar and a spoonful of his incredible berry compote. Using a pair of tweezers, he carefully placed paper-thin curls of orange rind on top.

  For a dude who looked like he could be a member of a motorcycle gang, Big Frank had a surprisingly deft touch when it came to plating food.

  “Can you blame them?” he said.

  Monroe frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Look out there.” Frank gestured to the diner’s main area, which could be seen over the top of the warming shelf. “What do you see?”

  Monroe sucked on the inside of her cheek. What she saw was a sad sight. The Sunshine Diner, once a thriving local business, was eerily quiet. Only one table was occupied. An older gentleman sat with a newspaper in his hands, which he lowered as Rai brought his toast and eggs to the table. It was a familiar scene. The same man came in morning after morning to buy the same plate of eggs and toast and to drink his body weight in coffee.

  Some days he was the only person they’d see for the first three hours of opening.

  Granted, winter had only recently passed and tourism season wouldn’t begin for a little while yet. But this year, more than any before it, the diner had felt frighteningly empty. Her staff often hovered nervously around where she posted the work schedule, as though they were waiting for some kind of hammer to fall.

  “What do you see?” Frank asked again.

  “Empty tables,” she replied, scrubbing a hand over her face. She’d tried everything—breakfast specials, lunch specials, an afternoon “happy hour” for coffee and cake. Nothing seemed to work. “Empty…everything.”

  “You think young kids want to work here when you’re ordering them to clean, clean, clean and yet nobody is coming in?” Frank put the plate of French toast in front of Monroe on the prep table, but she’d completely lost her appetite.

  “If they’re turning up for a shift, then they’re expected to work even if the place is empty.” Monroe folded her arms across her chest. “That’s no excuse.”

  She liked everything to be done properly. But for the last few years she’d come to the r
ealization that not everyone cared about rules or promises or commitments. Even if no one else seemed to honor those things, wasn’t it her duty to keep a high standard?

  “What are you still doing here?” he asked her, shaking his head. “I remember some plucky redhead telling me a few years back that if she was still working here when she turned thirty that I officially had permission to shove her out the front door and lock it behind her.”

  “You don’t want me to quit.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m an amazing manager.”

  “You’re grumpy as shit.” The edge of his lips tugged up into a smirk. “And you fired my last sous chef.”

  “Okay, firstly,” Monroe said, holding up a finger. “I’m only grumpy when people are lazy. Secondly, Dax was a dishwasher, not your sous chef, and I fired him because he was incapable of turning up to work on time. I gave him triple the amount of chances I would give a regular employee because you liked him, but if the guy can’t tell the difference between a.m. and p.m. on his schedule, then…”

  She threw her hands up in the air.

  “Fine,” Frank conceded. “But I think you’re grumpy because you know this isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing.”

  Monroe swallowed down the sick feeling that always came up whenever she thought about the dreams she’d once harbored. God, how was she so naive to ever think she’d be anything more than a diner manager? She visualized the cupboard in her kitchen that held the remnants of those dreams—cake tins and specialty decorating tools and expensive dyes and gold leaf and every kind of piping nozzle known to man.

  She’d even kept the obnoxious trophy from the nationally televised baking competition she’d won there. It was shoved way in the back, behind a stack of nested round tins and her electric hand mixer.

  “What I’m supposed to be doing is making rent and taking care of my dad. That’s it.” She waved her hand as if shooing a fly. “Sorry I don’t buy into the whole #bossbabe bullshit.”

  “You don’t think it’s a good idea to have ambitions?” Frank frowned. “I tell Adrienne all the time that she has to dream, because that’s the whole point of life. Why get out of bed in the morning if you’re not working toward something?”

  “It’s different for Adrienne,” Monroe said, shaking her head. “She’s sixteen. You should be telling her to dream, because she has her whole life ahead of her. But for me, I’m governed by reality and the reality is that I have responsibilities and people who rely on me.”

  “Your sisters can help take care of your dad.”

  “Loren has the girls.” Four of them, all under ten and each one more mischievous than the last. “And Taylor has the tattoo parlor. That takes up a lot of her time and she’s growing her business.”

  “When is your turn?”

  “You think life is so fair that we can all get a turn?” Monroe scoffed. “Come now.”

  “It’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes,” Frank muttered.

  “At least I’m consistent.” She grinned.

  “If you’re not going to eat this, I will,” he said, gesturing to the French Toast. “It would be a crime for such art to go to waste.”

  “Have at it. I need to go over yesterday’s numbers anyway.” Monroe pulled off her apron and smiled as she watched Big Frank scoop up the plate and head out into the diner to take a break. They might butt heads on the regular, but he was as standup a guy as she’d ever met.

  Even if he did like to constantly poke her sore spots.

  She was glad he pushed his daughter to excel, but that wasn’t what Monroe needed. Sometimes dreams crashed and burned. That was life. Why the hell would she put her heart in the crosshairs by striking out on her own when she had a steady, reliable life already? Staying here was the low risk, smart move.

  At that moment, the staff entrance at the back of the kitchen swung open and Monroe’s boss, the owner of the diner, walked in.

  “Mr. Sullivan.” She instinctively perked up. “I didn’t know you were coming in today.”

  “Monroe.” He nodded and walked forward a little stiffly.

  She knew better than to offer her arm to him for support. Because woe to anyone who assumed the man was fragile—Jacob Sullivan was sharp as a tack and had the kind of steely disposition of someone who’d lived through tough times. Not only that, he was surprisingly quick to clip your ear if he felt like you were encroaching on his space. For as far back as Monroe could remember, he’d been like a third grandfather to her. He was a family friend as well as her employer, and she held endless quantities of love and respect for him.

  “Empty again?” he asked with a sigh.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He headed into the storage room, which doubled as an office, since that’s where they kept the internet modem and the printer. Mr. Sullivan frowned and looked over the sales report from the last week. “I see we hired yet another dishwasher. Jackson something?”

  “Uh, about that…he quit.”

  He cut her a sharp look. “Why?”

  “Long story.”

  “Well, don’t take too long. I’m eighty-one, and I don’t want to die listening to you tell a story about how my business is failing,” her boss groused.

  “Your birthday isn’t for another three months, so technically you’re only eighty,” Monroe fired back. “No sense giving up those months before they happen.”

  “Only eighty.” He snorted. “Live a couple more decades before you tell me it’s ‘only’ anything.”

  “You didn’t want to focus on the part where I remembered your birthday?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest and fighting an amused smile.

  “Remembering won’t keep you in my good graces, girlie. Gifts will. You know the whiskey I like.”

  Monroe already had a bottle of it sitting in a royal blue gift bag at home. The liquor store had a discount the previous week, so she’d planned ahead. He wanted the same thing every year—a bottle of the good stuff and a boozy chocolate cake, which she always took pleasure in making for him.

  She was certain the man would live until he was a hundred, not because he’d lived a healthy lifestyle but because he’d pickled his insides.

  “Nice job at dodging my question anyway,” Mr. Sullivan said. He sighed and for a moment, he looked every bit of his eighty, almost eighty-one, years. “Look, I’ve known this was coming for some time.”

  Monroe’s throat suddenly felt tight. “What do you mean?”

  “Ingredients cost more, but people expect to pay less because of all these damn fast food places. The winters seem to be getting longer and we can’t keep any of the young hires for more than five minutes.”

  Monroe bit down on her lip. Sure, they’d had a bit of a turnover issue recently, but that was par for the course in food service. And yes, the profit had taken a hit, but Monroe had been trying to get creative with the menu. Problem was, the Sunshine Diner wasn’t as cheap as the fast food outlets and not as quirky as the hipster places, so they slipped through the cracks of people’s attention.

  Like that wasn’t a sad trend for every damn thing in her life.

  “What are you trying to say?” she asked warily.

  “I’m thinking of selling.”

  The words were like a fist to her solar plexus. “You can’t sell.”

  She expected Mr. Sullivan to have some crabby comeback or a “you listen here, Missy” type response. Hell, she liked the way he played up being a curmudgeonly old man. It was part of his schtick. But he simply placed a weathered hand on her arm and squeezed.

  “Sometimes you have to know when to walk away, kid.”

  You could only walk away when you had something to walk to. And Monroe didn’t have anything else aside from her job. She didn’t want to work anywhere else. She liked bouncing ideas around with Big Frank and having her weekly meetings with Jacob Sullivan. She e
ven liked most of the rotating youngsters who came in and out.

  “We can fix this,” she said. “I just need to think about how we can get more people through the door and—”

  “Roe.” She knew he was serious when he called her that, because it’s what he used to call her when she was a little girl and her grandpa took her and her sisters around to “Uncle Jacob’s” place. He had no grandkids of his own. “Stop panicking.”

  “I’m not panicking,” she said stubbornly. “But you’re being rash.”

  “I’ve thought about this a lot.” He released her arm. “I’m getting old and you should be off building something of your own, not working for me.”

  “I thought we were building something together.” She hated herself for the pathetic little waver in her voice, for the fear that was so close to the surface right now.

  Why did it feel like the last couple of years had taken her life and shaken it up like she was an ice cube rattling around the inside of a cocktail shaker? She didn’t want things to change. Her life was comfortable, steady. Reliable. And she liked it that way.

  “Give me a chance to turn this around.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Please.”

  Jacob’s eyes searched hers and she got the distinct impression he was disappointed in her, which stung. But underneath the gruff exterior, he was pure kindness. Goodness. Monroe loved him like he was one of her own family and she knew he couldn’t refuse her.

  “I’m trying to do you a favor, kid.” He shook his head.

  “One month,” she bargained. “Just give me a month to turn this place around and I swear to God, if it’s not working then you won’t hear another peep out of me.”

  “That’s some bullshit if I ever heard it.” He let out a raspy chuckle. “You won’t be quiet until you’re dead. It’s what I like about you.”

  “You have my word.” She caught his pinkie in hers and hooked him. She’d taught him how to pinkie swear when she was seven and he’d seen her doing it with her sisters—he’d always been fascinated by them. A pretty flock of seagulls, he used to call them.

  “Dammit, Monroe. Fine. One month.” He kept his finger wrapped tightly around hers. “But if after a month there’s no change, then you’ll let this place go out with dignity.”