The Discarded Wife Is A Billionaire Heiress

Merrin Fallon is a baker and a bookkeeper, and for ten years she has been the quiet wife of a property developer who never really looked at her.

At the Pryce Properties anniversary dinner her mother in law slides a cream folder across the tablecloth. Divorce papers, a small check, and a courtesy called page nine, a release that waives any present or future inheritance or family claims. Merrin signs the divorce. She does not sign the release, because she has no family she knows of, and that is the sentence that stops her.

The next morning a final notice arrives from a storage company on Route Nine. Unit one fourteen is in her late mother's name and goes to auction on Friday. Merrin pays the back rent with the check and opens the door. Inside are an apron, a brass measuring spoon, a bundle of unopened envelopes with her name on them, a key tagged Cold Spring and a torn recipe page that begins with one line: Start where you fed someone.

Her mother, Linnea, was the heiress of the Marchbanks bakeries and the keeper of their recipe book. Before she ran, she tore it into eight pages and hid them in eight storage units in eight towns, with the proof that a trusted relative had been stealing from the company for years. Merrin's grandfather Leander is dying, and his will leaves everything to whoever lays the whole book on the table at the Centennial Bake.

Between Merrin and the first page stands Dashiell Harcourt, the blunt, patient billionaire who runs the Marchbanks family's biggest rival and who has been named executor of Leander's estate. He has known where she was for nine years and was forbidden to say. He cannot help her. He can only drive, write in her ledger, and keep his hands to himself.

A cousin who wants to sell the company, a mother in law who arranged Merrin's marriage, and a woman with a stolen face are all racing her to the pages.

Eight towns. Eight spoons. One recipe, and the right person to bake it.