Page 72 of Save a Wish

Suddenly her not wanting her photo on the website and her being short on details about where she’d lived before and her not telling me a single thing about her past or her family or anything really all made sense.

She’d been pretending not to be a fucking princess.

And I’d believed her act. I’d genuinely thought she’d come to Vermont merely looking for a place to start her business. Sure, I’d wondered why she’d been so tight-lipped about her life before coming to Greenridge, but never in a million years had I suspected I’d been falling in love with royalty.

Secret royalty.

Lying royalty.

But why was it a secret? Why had Sadie left her country? What was so bad about Verdalach that she’d take on the role of a . . . of a commoner and mix and mingle with a bunch of small-town folk in the middle of the woods?

I dug around online for a bit longer, but other than repeatedly seeing that Verdalach wasn’t a super advanced country, I didn’t find anything about harsh living conditions there. It didn’t appear to be a war-ravaged area or have difficult terrain or weather or poverty and disease.

So why would Sadie flee and not want to be associated with her roots at all?

And why would she lure me in and make a fool of me?

I’d only get these answers one way and unfortunately it wasn’t from combing the internet. I had to talk to Sadie directly and find out what was so horrible back in Verdalach that she felt the need to lie to me in Vermont.

Over and over and over again.

Since the day we met actually.

Unless she just had an uncanny resemblance to this Princess Aislinn and I was completely overreacting.

Again, I’d only know for sure if I talked to her.

I stormed out of my office, grabbed my keys, and ran to my SUV, but someone calling my name made me look over my shoulder. Logan gave me a wave as he jogged over.

“You look like a man on an urgent mission,” he said. “What’s the rush about?”

“I have to talk to Sadie.” I quickly updated him on what I’d found online.

“I’m coming with you.” He didn’t wait for me to protest. Instead, he ran around the back of my SUV and hopped in the passenger seat.

I was in too much of a hurry to get to Sadie to argue with him. And maybe I wanted the company.

Logan had his phone out when I got into the driver’s seat. “What’s the name of the country again?”

I repeated it and then Logan said, “Who is the princess of Verdalach?” He squinted at his screen and I realized he was using voice command to search online.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “That definitely looks like Sadie.”

“Fuck.” I started the SUV and navigated onto the dirt road. “I was hoping you’d tell me I was being crazy and the resemblance was all in my mind.”

“I’ll always agree that you’re crazy,” Logan said, “but not about this.” He touched his screen to make the photo bigger. “She’s even got the freckles across her nose and cheeks, man.”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “I can’t believe she’d lie like this.”

“I’m sure she has her reasons,” Logan said. “The Sadie we’ve all come to know is a great person.”

“The Sadie we’ve all come to know is a liar,” I grumbled.

“Remember when Ashley first came to Greenridge,” Logan said. “She wasn’t totally honest about who she was either. She’d taken that job at Faraday’s Hardware and completely concealed the fact that she was actually a robotics engineer. A freaking genius in fact. But she had her reasons, Beckett. Traumatic ones.”

That made me loosen my grip on the steering wheel. Had Sadie experienced trauma? Had she lied to cover up some deep hurt? Who had hurt her?

I thought about the night we’d showered together after the dogs had gotten us all muddy. She’d thanked me for treating her with respect and had said the person who hadn’t done so was out of her life now. Did hiding her identity have something to do with that jackass?