“What do you propose instead?” she asked after a moment. Her voice was steadier now, less defensive, and the question landed differently because of it.
I took a beat to think. I was so used to having to shout my opinion that being asked outright threw me. “Showing the past makes sense. It’s an event about the town’s history, after all. But, if we’re going to teach people, we need to teach how things should be done going forward. Selective harvesting. Regeneration. Show that cutting a tree, and preserving a tree aren’t opposites.”
She tapped her pen against her notebook, thinking. My anger dulled at the realization that she was actually considering what I’d said. Not waiting to rebut. Not looking for a flaw. Just thinking.
“We can’t pretend that damage hasn’t been done.”
I nodded. “We also can’t pretend our economy can survive if we stop logging entirely.”
She studied me for a moment, her light blue eyes taking me in. The tension didn’t vanish, but it shifted—less like a standoff, more like a shared problem sitting between us on the table. “Deal.”
She reached her hand across the table, and I shook it. Her grip was firm, her hand soft in mine. “This is going to be interesting.”
She snorted. “That’s one word for it.”
Chapter Two
Rachel
Itapped my pen against the side of my notebook at my kitchen table later that night. The blank page stared back at me. I had come up with a detailed plan for the display before my meeting with Brody, but annoyingly, he had brought up some good points. The information mattered, but so did how the public interpreted it. And the entire discussion was a lot more nuanced than people knew.
Cutting a tree and preserving a tree aren’t opposites.
That’s what he’d said. It was a very insightful line, so much so that I wrote it on the top of my blank page.
Brody Brosseau.
Just thinking his name made my stomach do a stupid little flip-flop.
I’d seen him around before. He was always in plaid, always covered in sawdust. He wore his hair in one long dark braid down his back, a hazard for a tree faller, I imagined, butcommon enough for people with indigenous heritage around here. His eyes were dark enough to get lost in, even more so when he was arguing his point, which seemed to be always.
We had argued; I’d expected that. What I hadn’t expected was that we’d agreed on things too. He was passionate about his work. Intelligent and well-versed in the big picture. He wasn’t too stubborn to see another side, and I’d always loved looking at problems from every angle.
If we had more time, I bet we could learn a lot from each other.
I flipped back through my notebook, reviewing what I’d planned for the presentation before we’d met. My information wasn’t wrong, but it was missing the prospective Brody provided. Sighing, I tore the pages from my notebook and set them aside.
I tried to focus on what needed to be done, but my mind kept skipping back to the café. The veins and scars that marked the back of Brody’s strong hands. The tension in his square jaw when he thought he was being wronged.
This was going to be a disaster if I couldn’t focus. I didn’t have time for a crush, or whatever this was. I was an academic. I’d earned a bachelor’s, then a master’s, before doing fieldwork all over the country. Despite how soft my hands were compared to his, I had spent plenty of time outside my lab. Granted, it had been a few years, but that was all the more reason this project should be easy. Research. Presentations. This was my bread and butter now.
Poising my pen over the page, I wrote:Logging: A Necessary Evil?
I immediately crossed it out. Brody would hate the wordevil. Besides, this would be a busy event. I needed to catch the eye.Trying again, I wrote:Past Practices, Future Forests: The History of Logging and Conservation in Springwood.
It was a little wordy, but it was something Brody and I could both agree on. I thought so, anyway. I would find out when we met next.
******
Brody and I had planned to meet up again the next day, this time at the library. Honestly, I could’ve used another day of distance between the two of us before we were shoulder to shoulder again, but this all had to come together fast. I would just have to shove down whatever confusing feelings I had for the man.
The air conditioning hit me as I walked through the doors, and I waved to my friend Joy, who was working behind the desk.
“Here for the key to the meeting room?” she asked, digging around under the counter before placing the key in front of me.
I nodded. “Meeting with Brody for that lumber industry heritage project I told you about.”
A grin split her face. She was a happy person to begin with, but over Christmas she’d finally gotten together with her lifelong crush, Alden. Now she was convinced everyone’s life could be a romance novel if they just tried hard enough. “And how’s that going?”
