Page 2 of Tangled Up with the Firefighter

He leans over the counter to look, and I catch the smell of him. Soap, maybe. Something clean underneath something that smells like the station—diesel and metal—faint, but there.

“She’ll like that,” he says.

“Tell me about the card.”

“Card?”

“The message card. What do you want it to say?”

He straightens. The collar adjustment from the doorway makes sense now. He’s not uncomfortable in my shop. He’s uncomfortable with the soft parts of what he’s doing. Buying flowers, writing a card, doing something that requires tenderness.

“Happy birthday, Mom,” he says. “From Dean.”

“That’s it?”

“What else would I say?”

I write it down. I don’t push. But I notice the way his jaw tightens after he says it, like there’s more behind those words than he’s going to give me across a counter.

“Is anyone else sending flowers?” I ask. “Sometimes families coordinate, and I can make sure the arrangements don’t overlap.”

“My sisters will call her. They always call. But nobody thinks to—” He stops. Looks at the order form on the counter between us. “I just want her to have something she can hold.”

The words hang in the air between us. He says them casually, but I hear what’s underneath. His sisters will call. They’ll say the right things. But Dean is the one standing in a flower shop with an order form he printed and filled out in neat, square handwriting, because love without action isn’t enough for him.

“Friday pickup,” I say. “I’ll have it ready by noon. You can come in anytime after that.”

“I’ll be here at noon.”

“I believe you.”

It comes out warmer than I planned. He looks at me, and for a second the steady, squared-off composure shifts. Not a lot. A fraction. Like a door opened an inch and the light changed on his face.

Then he nods. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Dean.”

He turns and walks out. The bell rings behind him. Through the window, I watch him cross the courtyard, and his stride is different than it was coming in. Looser. Like something he was holding got set down, even if it was just a flower order.

I pick up the rose I was stripping and get back to work. Thorn, thorn, thorn, clean stem. Drop it in the bucket. Reach for the next one.

My hands know this. My hands have always known this. Soil, stems, water, light. The rhythm of tending things that need me and can’t leave.

I’ve built my whole life around it. The shop, the courtyard, the small bright world inside these stone walls where everything I touch has roots. Lea has her coffee shop, Kendall has the outfitter, Ellie has her books, Neve has her candles, Millie has her candy. We all chose Copper Peak, and Copper Peak chose us back, and the Trading Post holds us the way I hold a stem. Firmly, carefully, in exactly the right spot.

But Dean Corbin just stood at my counter and told me nobody else is sending his mother flowers on her birthday, and he said it the same way he’d tell me the weather. Like being the one who shows up is so ordinary it doesn’t even register.

I strip another thorn. My hands are steady. The rest of me isn’t sure.

2

DEAN

The courtyard is wide and bright after the close walls of the floral shop.

I cross the cobblestones with the receipt folded in my pocket and my hands empty. The whole thing took fifteen minutes. I told her what I needed, she asked questions I didn’t expect, and I answered them honestly because something about the way she listened made lying feel like effort.

Her name is Laurelle. I already knew that. I’ve walked past the shop a hundred times cutting through the courtyard for Lea’s coffee, and I’ve seen her through the window arranging stems in buckets, talking to the flowers when she thinks nobody’s watching. I know her the way I know all the Trading Post women. From a distance. A nod through the glass if our eyes meet, nothing more.