"A vineyard," she said.
"Family tradition." Something flickered behind his easy smile—there and gone before she could identify it. "We've been growing grapes in this valley for three generations."
"I didn't know there were vineyards in Harmony Glen."
"Just the one." His head tilted slightly, those golden eyes studying her with an intensity that made her want to step back. "You should come and see it soon. We've just opened a new tasting room."
*He's inviting you to his vineyard. Of course he is.*
"I'll consider it," she said, which was the politest way she could think of to say absolutely not.
"Please do." He smiled again, but this time the warmth felt less practiced and more genuine. "I suspect we're going to bespending quite a lot of time together over the next few weeks, Marigold Bloom. Might as well get to know each other."
"The festival planning meetings should be sufficient for that."
Ellie laughed, a delighted sound that Marigold was beginning to deeply distrust. "Oh, you two are going to get along wonderfully. I can tell already."
*No,*she thought, slipping his card into her notebook and turning toward the door.*We absolutely are not.*
But as she made her way through the thinning crowd, she could feel those golden-brown eyes watching her intently.
She didn't look back.
She already knew what she'd see if she did: that devastating smile, that easy confidence, that magnetic pull that her mother had never learned to resist.
Marigold was not her mother.
She shoved through the community center's double doors and out into the late afternoon sunlight, breathing in the familiar scents of her adopted town—fresh-baked bread from the bakery, exhaust from the handful of cars on Main Street, and underneath it all, the green growing smell of approaching summer.
*A co-chair,*she thought grimly, fishing her keys from her bag.*Of course they gave me a co-chair. Of course he had to be?—*
She didn't finish the thought. She didn't need to.
The walk back to Bloom & Vine took her down Main Street, past the motley assortment of businesses, interspersed with houses. Harmony Glen wasn't a large town—you could walk from oneend to the other in twenty minutes if you didn't stop to chat—but it had a density of personality that still surprised her. Humans lived here alongside satyrs and pixies, centaurs and selkies, goblins and the occasional visiting fae. They ran businesses together, argued over zoning laws together, organized festivals together.
Festivals like the one that she was now apparently responsible for.
She unlocked the shop's front door and stepped into the familiar green sanctuary of Bloom & Vine. The scent of fresh flowers wrapped around her like a hug—roses and eucalyptus, sweet peas and herbs from the little kitchen garden she'd started in the back room. The vintage garden pieces scattered throughout the space gave it the comfortable feeling she'd wanted.
This was hers. All hers. The first thing she'd ever built for herself instead of for someone else.
She set her notebook on the counter and stared at the business card still tucked between its pages.
*Thallos Fine Wines & Vineyard.*
She could still see that knowing smile and those watchful golden eyes, and hear the way he'd said her name like it meant something.
*Dangerous,* she thought. *He's dangerous.*
Not in any physical sense. In the way that quicksand was dangerous, or riptides, or all those things that looked perfectly safe until you were already in too deep to escape.
She had spent her whole life learning to recognize the warning signs.
She wasn't going to ignore them now.
CHAPTER 2
The florist was running away from him.
