Page 64 of Tessa and Nash

His hand is warm. Annoyingly calming.

“Comfortable,” I murmur. “Good choice.”

“I’m learning,” he says. “Slowly.”

We stand there, hand in hand, watching Buckhorn watch us.

This is working.

And that realization is far more dangerous than I want to admit.

“Ready?” he asks.

“For what?”

He smiles, easy and unguarded. “For whatever comes next.”

I squeeze his hand once.

“Don’t get sentimental,” I say. “This is just the first date.”

His thumb brushes my knuckle.

“Sure,” he says. “Whatever you say, Tessa.”

And somehow, against all logic and planning, I believe him.

Which is a problem I will deal with later.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Nash

January 10th

Founders’ Day in Buckhorn is the kind of event that makes you forget you live in a town where everyone knows your business, because for one afternoon, they’re too busy celebrating their grandparents’ business.

Main Street is dressed up, trying to impress a newspaper photographer. Garlands loop around the gazebo rails. Strings of warm white lights crisscross the square even though it’s broad daylight, because Buckhorn has never let practicality ruin a tradition. There’s a banner stretched between two lampposts that reads FOUNDERS’ DAY: HONOR THE PAST, and underneath it someone’s added a smaller sign that reads EAT THE CHILI.

The chili smells of cumin and smoke. A fiddle is going somewhere near the church steps, the notes bright and fast as if the musician is trying to outrun winter. Kids dart between booths and tables holding paper cups of cocoa. Old men lean on the fence line near the stage, hands wrapped around coffee cups.

And I’m standing at the edge of the town square with Tessa Long tucked against my side, where I guess she belongs.

Which is… a sentence my brain still refuses to process without short-circuiting.

She’s wearing a tailored dark coat, and her hair is in that tight braid she does when she’s planning to win. The Long heirloom ring flashes when she adjusts her scarf, catching the weak January sun.

People notice. Heads turn. Smiles spread. The quiet buzz of oh wow, it’s them ripples across the square, and I do my best not to react as a man walking into a firing squad with a ribbon on his chest.

Tessa, of course, was born for public scrutiny.

“Relax,” she murmurs, barely moving her mouth.

“I am relaxed,” I mutter back through a smile that’s made of duct tape.

She glances up at me, eyes sharp. “You’re blinking like crazy.”

“I’m blinking like a man who can feel Virgil Tucker staring into my soul.”