Jackson arched a brow. “Farmer-glare?”
“You know what I mean.” She waved her hand vaguely at his face. “Rule two: We have to be seen. Community events, the mayor and Edith’s wedding, and hand-holding down Oak Way. Basically a hard launch.”
“Alright. I can do that. How much time do we have?”
“I don’t know, the Spring Fling is the twelfth, so what…five, six weeks?”
Jackson’s mouth curved despite himself. “Six weeks, right. That’s not so bad.” Basic training was twice as long. Now that had been hell. This was probably going to torture him too, but for very different reasons.
“It’s not that much time to convince the town we’re head over heels in love. If we’re going to pull this off, we have to go all in.Which brings me to rule three: You can’t tell anyone the truth. No one. If my mom finds out, she’ll be crushed.”
Jackson held her gaze. “No one’s going to find out.” But if they did, Jackson thought, his family and their friends would understand why they’d done this. Everyone loved Gertie.
Zoe exhaled. “Are you sure about this?”
No, he thought. But he answered the opposite. “I already agreed.”
For a moment, neither of them looked away. The air between them went still, charged. He was hyper-aware of everything from the faint arc of a smile tugging at her lips to the way the sunlight caught in her hair.
She blinked, breaking the spell. “I almost forgot—Eleanor wrote back!” she blurted, voice a little too bright. “She wants to meet us, walk the Local Blooms site and hear about the project.”
Jackson cleared his throat and gave a short nod. “That’s big, Zo.”
“I know!” She bounced on her toes. “I’ll set it up this week. Which means we’ve got a million things to do before then, including trying to find Maple Falls’s long-lost bloom. I just know Eleanor would love something like that.”
Jackson reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, lines scrawled in his neat block handwriting. “About that mystery bloom. I made a list. Locations we should check. People to talk to. Starting with your mom.”
“Of course you did,” Zoe said, rolling her eyes affectionately. “Sergeant Tidy strikes again.”
She leaned over to peek at his list, a loose strand of hair slipping forward to brush her cheek. Jackson’s gaze caught there, tracing the soft curve of her face before he forced himself to look back at the paper.
“I already tried my books—nothing. Not even a whisper of a mention. Mom swears she remembers it, though. Said folks talked about seeing them by Willow Glen,” she said.
“Alright, I’ll add it to the list.”
She smiled and glanced up. Their eyes met; the air seemed to shift. The light from the sun hit her hair just so, gilding the warm brown strands with a hint of gold.
Zoe’s eyes sparkled, and he wondered if she felt it too. Not just the thrill of discovery but something that hummed between them, quiet and unmistakable. It was in his chest, that pull he kept trying to ignore.
For a moment, it didn’t matter that the whole town thought they were Maple Falls’s newest couple.
What mattered was how close their bodies were. How the world seemed to narrow to the space between them…and how badly he wanted to close it.
FIVE
ZOE
Saturday, March 8th
“Don’t you dare droop on me,” Zoe warned, eyeing the daffodil in her hand like it could hear her. “Mr. Alders might be a grouch, but he still deserves your best effort.” The older gentleman known around town for having more bark than bite had come down with a nasty cold. Zoe figured a bright floral arrangement would cheer him up.
Zoe reached for sunny yellow daffodils, their trumpets practically shouting “get well soon,” and paired them with soft white freesias for warmth. A few stems of earthy lavender went in next, then she tucked in sprigs of lemon leaf.
Zoe told herself she was focusing on the flowers. She definitely wasn’t thinking about the whole fake dating situation. Nope. Not one bit.
It’s harmless. Just a little bit of fun. What could possibly go wrong?she told herself as she moved on to the next arrangement, snipping the stems off white daisies and tucking them into a vase between soft yellow tulips and sprigs of baby’s breath.
This wasn’t a big deal. So what if she’d been lowkey fantasizing about Jackson since middle school?
