Page 20 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"Wear the tight shirt."

"I don't own a—"

"And you might want to bring your A game." He taps the doorframe twice, real casual. "Debbie's been taking pre-bids on you all week. Cash envelope in her locker at the hospital. Last I heard it was up to two hundred dollars, and the nurses haven't even had payday yet."

He's gone before the words finish landing.

Pre-bids.

An envelope. In her locker. At her hospital.

The flyer crumples in my fist.

A stage. A spotlight. This whole town watching a pack of nurses buy me like a heifer at the county fair. And every one of those women works the same floor as a smart mouth and a pair of eyes I've been trying to sweat out of my system all week.

I don't need to go to this auction.

I need to run the other way like the hounds of hell are on my ass.

Chapter six

The Aster File

RUE

Sunday morning does not know it is Sunday. Not on my porch.

Six days out from the auction, I have coffee, a legal pad, and a list as long as my arm, because that is how I rest. Debbie Sue calls it a problem. I call it a calling with excellent hours.

The Hall is booked, the band confirmed, the roof motor is oiled. Saturday night we raise the money for that poor tired engine or I retire in shame.

And then there's the show nobody's paying me for.

The new firefighter and the traveling nurse.

Not clients. Neither one of them has set foot in my office, and if I ever suggested it, they'd bolt in opposite directions on principle. But half of Willowbend has watched them fight at that hospital like it's a ticketed event. Twice this week somebody has called me about it. Millie called three times, but my cousin Millie calls three times about everything, including the weather she is currently standing in.

Here is what nobody understands about my job. When a client hires me, I never ask who they love. I don't ask their type, their list, their deal-breakers. Lists are testimony. People lie on lists, mostly to themselves.

Asking only gets you what a person chooses to tell you.

Watching gets you what they can't help showing you.

So I watch. I watch who they argue with. I watch who they look for when a door opens. That's the method, and the method doesn't come with an off switch. Nobody hired me to notice that Owen Peterson has been in this town nine days and has picked one person, out of all four thousand of us, to fight with. Nobody hired me to notice that Nellie Greer, who I'm told never learns a soul's name past what fits on a badge, knows his coffee order.

I noticed anyway.

Eleven couples matched out of my Hall. Zero divorces. Those two would make twelve, and they'd do most of the work themselves. All that pair needs from me is a well-timed door and somebody holding it open, looking innocent.

I'm not in a hurry. That's the other thing nobody understands. You cannot want it more than they do. You wait, and you watch, and when the moment comes you hold the door open and act surprised.

I set my mug down and stretch. My whole body says walk.

So I walk.

There's a back lane behind my cottage that runs along the fence line toward the creek, and three springs ago it went and covered itself in wild asters. Blue-purple, Gran's exact favorite, blooming in a ribbon like somebody unspooled it there on purpose. I found it a few weeks after I lost her, back when grief was still teaching me its schedule, and it has been my thinking place ever since. My secret. Mine and the asters'.

Except this morning my secret has a man in it.