Page 9 of Fall Into Love

“Okay,” I murmur, laying down a card. “Worst part of the job. Go.”

“The job’s great.”

“Everybody says that. That’s the business owner answer.” I grin. “Give me the real one.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “Being the only one. There’s nobody to hand it to. I’m sick; the shop’s closed. I want a day off; there is no day off. It’s all mine—which is the whole point—and also, it’s all mine.” She flips a card. “Your turn. Worst part of being mayor.”

And here’s where I should give the customer-facing answer—the potholes, the leash-law guy who corners me at the hardware store. Instead, I sit in the dark next to a woman who has never once wanted a thing from me, and the truth comes out.

“Everybody knows me,” I admit. “But nobody really does.”

She goes still. In the dark, she’s just an outline, but somehow I can still feel her reaction and imagine her curious brow as I continue, “I didn’t even run, you know. Not really. Somebody stuck my name on the ballot as a joke, and I won. Then I never got around to losing even after six years. The whole town’s got a version of me they love—Mayor Caleb, good ol’ Caleb, dunk tank Caleb, gutter guy Caleb, life of the party Caleb.” I turn a card without playing it. “I put that guy on every morning like one of my favorite T-shirts. But the thing about being everybody’s friend is, you’re nobody’s. They want the story of ‘knowing’ the mayor of the town, but they don’t.” I shrug. “You wear the face long enough, you stop being able to find your own underneath it.”

She hums, quiet in the low light. “I know that one. The face. I wore one for years. Smiled and shrank and called it keeping the peace.”

“Yeah,” I say heavily. “I got the sense you might.”

And then she tells me about herself, and I can tell she didn’t plan to, that it just came out, the way things do at midnight in the dark to somebody who wants to listen. She tells me she grew up here. That she’s from Hemlock Point, that her dad ran the hardware store two doors down from where we’re sitting, that she spent her whole childhood on this street and couldn’t wait to leave it. And when she did leave, she met Derek in the city, made herself fit into his life, and lost the thread of who she was. Then her dad got sick, and she came home.

“After, I couldn’t go back to Derek’s version of me. I just couldn’t.” Her voice is low. “The old stationery shop had a FOR LEASE sign in the window. Right there on my dad’s street. And something in me just…reached for it.” She sighs. “I took the money I’d promised Derek’s startup and I signed a lease I couldn’t afford, forty feet from where my dad taught me to count change. And I hung up my name. Marigold was my mom’s favorite flower. She passed when I was little. So, it’s both of them, kind of. The most me thing I’ve ever done. The first thing that was ever only mine.”

The shop is quiet as a car cruises past outside. I sit here in the dark with my chest cracked wide open, because now I get it. All of it. Why the break-in leveled her. Why I’ve got four pairs of wool socks I’ll never wear. Why a woman would sit alone in a dark building at night rather than admit out loud that she’s scared.

“It’s not just a shop for you.”

She shakes her head. “No.” Her voice cracks slightly, forcing her to laugh to cover it. “Gosh, listen to us. Two sad sacks in the dark playing gin rummy about our feelings.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m winning the gin rummy.”

She scoffs. “You are absolutely not winning.”

I grin from ear to ear. “Darlin’, I’m up forty points and you know it.”

I feel her turn, ready to argue, and she stops. Because I’m already looking at her. Closer than she thought. Close enough that even in the dark, I can see the shape of her mouth, the shine of her eyes, and whatever she was going to say dies right there.

Neither of us moves and I hold my breath.

“Emma…” I say, and it’s not her name so much as a question.

She leans in.

And I’m done for.

I bring my hand up to the side of her jaw, firm and sure as I close the space between us and kiss her. She makes a soft, startled sound against my mouth and then she’s kissing me back. And fuck, there’s a roar of finally going off somewhere behind my ribs. My heart thundering in my chest.

Her hand fists in my collar as I slide mine into her hair. She tastes like pumpkin and sugar underneath something that’s decidedly her. My cock thickens, straining against my jeans. She presses into me like she’s been holding this back as long as I have, and for one perfect blown-open second there’s no mask—there’s just her mouth and my hands and the two of us finally, finally—

A hard, violent rattle of glass and metal echoes around us.

We break apart, startled. I stand, cards scattering to the floor. Emma follows, reaching for me. Her hands fist the side of my shirt as I throw an arm across her, pinning her behind me, protecting her as the latch shakes on the window in the back.

“Stay here,” I growl. “Do not move.”

I go down the hall fast and quiet, flashlight up. I get to the back door in seconds, throwing it open into the dark of the alley—

Empty.

A trash can lid spins lazy circles on the concrete. No man. No car. Nothing.