Page 61 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

I laughed. Wiped my eyes. And walked back toward my family.

22

SAWYER

Iwoke up before the sun.

This was not unusual. I had been waking up before the sun for a decade, trained by the military and then by habit and then by the kind of restlessness that comes from sleeping alone in a cabin that was too quiet. But this morning was different. This morning I had a reason to be up early that had nothing to do with restlessness and everything to do with the woman sleeping in my bed with her hair fanned across my pillow and her breathing soft and steady beside me.

I got dressed in the dark. Eased out of the room without waking her. Pulled on my boots and my jacket and stepped into the cold morning air.

The florist in town opened at six. I knew this because I had never once in my life bought flowers and had needed to look it up on my phone the night before, sitting in the bathroom like a teenager hiding a secret. The woman behind the counter looked at me like she had seen a ghost when I walked in. Sawyer Cole. In a flower shop. At six in the morning.

“I need two bouquets,” I said.

“Two?”

“One for a six-year-old. One for her mother.”

She smiled at me the way people smile at a dog doing a trick it was not trained for. Impressed but slightly disbelieving. She put together the bouquets while I stood there with my hands in my pockets, feeling entirely out of my element, which was a feeling I was going to need to get used to because pursuing Chloe Matthews meant doing things that made me uncomfortable, and flowers were apparently the beginning of a very long list.

Emma’s bouquet was small. Bright. Sunflowers and daisies, the kind of colors that matched her personality. Chloe’s was different. White roses and soft pink peonies, delicate and elegant, the kind of flowers that reminded me of her. Beautiful without trying. Impossible to look away from.

I drove back to the cabin with the bouquets on the passenger seat and the radio off and my heart doing that thing again that I was never going to address because addressing it would mean admitting that I was nervous, and I did not get nervous. I had been to war. I had run a sawmill. I had taken a bullet and kept walking. I did not get nervous about flowers and breakfast.

I got nervous about flowers and breakfast.

The cabin was still quiet when I got back. I set the bouquets in the kitchen, out of sight, and started cooking. Pancakes. Scrambled eggs. Bacon. Coffee for Chloe, orange juice for Emma. I set the table the way I had seen Chloe set it, with napkins folded and utensils placed properly instead of thrown on the table the way I usually did. I even found candles. Two of them, in a drawer I had forgotten existed, and I lit them and set them in the center of the table and stepped back and looked at the whole thing and felt ridiculous.

Then I pulled out my phone.

Music. Slow music. I did not have much on my phone that qualified as romantic. My playlist consisted mostly of the kind of silence that comes from a man who preferred the sound of his own thoughts over anything else. But I found something. A slow, quiet song with a guitar and a voice that was low and warm, and I set the phone on the counter and let it play.

The music filled the kitchen. Soft and warm, wrapping around the candlelight and the food and the flowers hidden behind the counter, and for one long moment I stood in the middle of my kitchen and wondered what the hell had happened to me. A year ago I was eating cold eggs at this table in silence. Now I was lighting candles and playing music and buying flowers at six in the morning.

Chloe Matthews happened to me. That was what.

The bedroom door opened.

Chloe came out first, holding Emma’s hand. They were both still in pajamas, Emma’s hair a wild tangle of curls and Chloe’s pulled back in a messy bun that made her look younger, softer, like the girl I had fallen for seven years ago. They stepped into the kitchen and stopped.

Chloe’s eyes moved across the table. The pancakes. The eggs. The bacon. The candles. The folded napkins. The music playing softly from the counter. Her lips parted and she looked at me standing beside the table with my hands at my sides, feeling exposed in a way that had nothing to do with clothing and everything to do with the fact that I had just revealed a part of myself that I had not known existed until she came back.

“What is this?” she said.

I did not answer her. Instead, I walked to where the bouquets were hidden behind the counter and picked up the small one first. The sunflowers and daisies. I crouched down in front of Emma.

“Can we dance?” I asked.

Emma’s whole face transformed. She looked from me to the flowers to the music playing in the background and her eyes went so wide they took up half her face.

“Really, Papa?”

“Really.”

She took my hand. I stood up, and she stepped onto my feet the way kids do when they dance with their parents, her tiny boots on top of mine, her hands gripping my fingers. I held her steady and we moved. Slow and clumsy and completely off-rhythm, swaying in the kitchen while the song played and the candles flickered, and Emma laughed the kind of laugh that sounded like everything good in the world condensed into a single sound.

I spun her. Carefully. She squealed and tipped her head back and her curls flew out around her face, and when I pulled her back she was breathless and grinning.