He grins, gap-toothed and delighted. "The one where it ate your apron."
"That's the one," I confirm, solemn as a confession. "Right off my waist. Didn't even ask permission."
His eyes go wide, round as the eggs sizzling behind me. "Did you fight it?"
I shake my head slowly, gravely. "Nope. I surrendered immediately. Goats don't negotiate, kid. They take what they want and they don't look back."
He giggles, and I plate him a small portion, eggs and a single piece of chorizo, no hot sauce. His mom looks over, startled, and I wave her off.
"On the house. Opening soon. Bring your appetite."
She smiles, hesitant but warming, and hands the kid a napkin.
I'm cracking another egg when I feel it. The shift in the air that means someone's watching, not browsing. I glance up.
Ivy Hale stands three feet from my table, clipboard in hand, braid over one shoulder, her expression hovering somewhere between curiosity and professional skepticism.
She looks like she's about to audit me.
"Morning," I say, keeping my voice light. "Here for the show or the food?"
"Neither. I'm here to ask where you sourced your eggs."
Of course she is.
I gesture to the carton beside the burner, the farm name stamped on the side in faded ink. "Hillcrest Farm. Two miles south. The chickens have names and a better retirement plan than I do."
She steps closer, checks the carton, makes a note on her clipboard.
"And the chorizo?"
"Martin's butcher shop. He makes it in-house. Uses heritage-breed pork from a farm in the next county. Want his number?"
"I have it."
"Then you already know it's good."
She taps her pen against the clipboard, her gaze flicking to the skillet, the line of people, the banner. "You're making quite a spectacle."
"That's kind of the point."
"The point of a farmers market is to support local agriculture, not to perform."
I flip an egg, catch it neatly, plate it with a flourish. "Who says I'm not doing both?"
The couple at the front of the line chuckles. Ivy's mouth tightens, but I catch the faintest twitch at the corner, like she's fighting a smile and losing.
"Your burner's too close to the tent frame," she says, her tone crisp. "If the wind shifts, you'll set the banner on fire."
"Noted."
I nudge the burner back an inch with my boot, never taking my eyes off the skillet.
"And you're supposed to have a ServSafe certificate displayed," she continues, pen poised over her clipboard like she's about to write me up for some health code violation.
I reach into my apron pocket—the one not stuffed with recipe scraps and a half-crushed sprig of rosemary—and pull out the laminated card, holding it up between two fingers like a backstage pass.
She blinks, her pen freezing mid-air. "Oh."
