“Jesus,” he mutters. “Friendly fire.”
Sela edges up another rung. “No slack. They’re drapey, not droopy.”
I want to tell her Drapey and Droopy are practically cousins, but I’ve learned that arguing just means more work for me. I pull the cord tighter and hammer it in hard enough to make it rattle.
At noon, the barn doors roll back. Red boots—stars stitched on the toes—stride in. She sweeps the barn with her gaze, lifts her sunglasses, and sets a box of muffins on the bench. “Hi,” she greets, warm as the spring day we survived finals together. “I’m Hannah. Is Willa here?”
Willa’s face lights up. “Hannah! Thanks for coming out. Those are for Sela.”
Sela peeks over her ladder: “Gluten-free ones in the pink papers?”
Hannah checks the label. “Honestly? I grabbed the happiest looking.” She winks at Sela, who sniffs a lemon muffin and turns back to her tape-marking.
Willa steps in to introduce everyone, though it’s really more like reacquainting us. “Hannah Scott, matchmaker extraordinaire. College cohort and now joining us for the wedding weekend.”
“You must be Rhett,” she says to me, holding out a hand. “Willa says you’re helping her out.”
“Mostly chasing down bolts that roll away.” I shake her hand and feel a tingle climb up my arm.
Without another word, Hannah cracks open a notebook and starts scribbling a checklist: lights, floor sweep, PA checks, fabric drapes. She finishes, looks up, and glances at my scuffed boots before asking, “Does anyone here know a soldering iron?”
“I’ll learn,” I say.
She stays calm in the middle of the chaos, never flinching when Beau barrels in with chairs and always moving so he can slide past her, steadying herself against a table as he goes. Over the next hour, she fits right in: she carries boxes from Willa’s Subaru, sorts ribbons into piles, and interrupts Sela’s micromanaging with a quiet word. She asks direct but gentle questions, like whether sagebrush pollen peaks in September, where to find the best roadside tacos, and what Beau was like in high school. She never asks about me. Still, I notice her watching my silhouette in the window now and then, not in a flirty way, just curious. When I set up the ladder for the next string of lights, she quietly puts her hand on the side to steady it.
“You and Beau go way back?” she says, bracing the leg.
“Long enough to know his secrets. Too long to spill them.”
She laughs, low and real. “Denver’s small enough for secrets, too.” “From Denver, then?”
“Grew up there. Lakewood. Then, I went to Chicago for college.”
“What do you think of our little town?”
She rolls her shoulders. “It’s scenic and the new air’s growing on me.”
As we joke about muffin quotas and dangerous carbs, Sela and Willa finish up the last details. By late afternoon, Willa steps back and declares the barn “officially magical.”
Sela snaps reference photos like a grad thesis.
After inspecting our work, Hannah returns to the bench where I’m leaning. “Need anything before I hit that taco run?”
“Nah,” I say. “You’ve already saved the day.”
She tilts her head: “You say that to every gal who brings you food?”
“Only the ones who do it twice.”
She grins, pushes back toward the door. “I’ll remember.”
In a flash of sunlight and red-starred boots, she’s gone, her laughter echoing in the dust.
Beau sidles up. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
He glances at the open door. “Nothing. Just… she’s a city girl.” “So’s Willa,” I point out.
