CHAPTER FIVE
Wren had spent forty minutes color-coding her planning folder the night before she was due at town hall. She shifted it under her arm now — coral for decorations, sage for logistics, butter-yellow for the vendor list — and pushed open the door to the committee room with her shoulder, already composing her opening remarks to the Chamber of Commerce President. Organized. Professional. The kind of woman who had things under control.
The kind of woman who did not stop dead in the doorway because the coffee cart man was already there.
He sat at the far end of the conference table; a battered navy notebook lay open in front of him, covered in small, precise handwriting that she couldn't read from here and found herself wanting to. He wasn't looking at the door. He was reading back over whatever he'd written, one hand wrapped around a can of root beer, and her pen in his right hand.
He looked up, and for a moment he just stopped. His mouth opened. Nothing came out. He closed his mouth. Swallowed. Tried again.
"Hello," he said.
It came out roughly, like a word retrieved from somewhere it had been sitting unused. Like he had found it at the back of a drawer.
"Hello," Wren said. And then, because he was looking at her with those gray eyes in a way that suggested he might not have all the relevant information: "Wren Banks."
Something shifted in his expression. Not surprise, exactly. "I know who you are."
"Right," she said. "You've been camped out under my window every day since I got here."
The pen — her pen, the one he'd borrowed from the shop three days ago— slipped from his fingers and hit the table with a small clatter. He reached for it. His notebook, balanced at the table's edge, chose this moment to disagree with gravity entirely and went to the floor. He collected it back in silence. Straightened it. Set the pen beside it with excessive precision.
"It's a good intersection," he said. "The bookstore. For the cart."
"I'm not complaining. You make the best cup of coffee I've ever had. And that's coming from a tea drinker, so that's not a compliment I give lightly."
"I hate coffee."
Wren blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Can't stand it. I'm a root beer man."
"You run a coffee cart."
"I do."
"And you hate coffee."
"Profoundly."
A silence opened up between them. The radiator began its tentative tick. She was also aware of the fact that she was still standing in the doorway.
She stepped in, let the door close behind her, and set her folder down two chairs from him with slightly more composure than she felt.
"A root beer man who doesn't like his own product," she said, pulling out the coral tab. "That should probably be on the menu board."
"It would be bad for business."
"It would be extraordinary for business. People would come from miles."
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. The shadow of one, brief and reluctant, and then it was gone, and he was looking at his notebook again.
The door swung open and Mrs. Patel arrived in a floral wrap dress, carrying a tin of shortbread and radiating the satisfied energy of a woman who had just solved a problem she hadn't told anyone else about.
"Wren. You look lovely. Freddie, you made it all right. Good, good. Right, let me explain what we're doing here."
Wren opened her folder. Freddie's pen hovered.
"The Valor Autumn Market is the town's largest community event of the year. Four hundred attendees last year. Thirty-two vendor booths. The brass band, the children's corner, the mulled cider, the harvest raffle — all of it requires coordination, and coordination requires a committee, and a committee requires leadership." She looked between them with equal and impartial satisfaction. "That's the two of you."
