Page 4 of Booked Up with the Mountain Man Firefighter

“She also told me I was wrong about a chef’s memoir,” I say, which isn’t a response to what Drew said, and all three of us know it.

Drew is watching me now. That steady look he gives—the one that says he’s reading more than I’m giving him. I don’t like that look.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me, Hartley.”

“You said three sentences about the tomato argument and four about the bookstore owner.”

“I’m being thorough.”

Drew goes back to his eggs. He’s smiling, though. I can tell.

I clear my plate, rinse it, and put it in the rack. Holt is still reading the incident log. Dean is still behind the engine. Drew is still eating. Everything is normal, everything is where it should be, and I should go check the equipment inventory like I told Holt I would twenty minutes ago.

Instead, I think about the moment right before I left. She laughed, and I stopped, and something in my face must have slipped because she looked at me like she could see underneath the whole thing. For half a second, I wasn’t the funny one. I wasn’t the guy who keeps the room breathing. I was just standing there without a joke to hide behind, and she saw whatever was left.

Nobody does that. Nobody looks past the bit.

I don’t know what to do with that.

“I’ll be back,” I tell the room.

“Equipment inventory?” Holt asks without looking up.

“After.”

Drew doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

The courtyard is quiet when I get to the Trading Post. Midmorning lull. Lea has two customers at the counter, and the coffee smell hits me from ten feet away. Laurelle is inside the florist arranging something in the window. I walk past all of it and push open the bookstore door.

The bell rings. Ellie looks up from behind the counter. She has a book open in front of her, a pen behind her ear, and an expression that says she wasn’t expecting anyone.

“Tomato guy,” she says.

“Book girl.”

“Ellie.”

“I know.”

She watches me walk in. I can feel her tracking me—quiet and careful, reading the room before she says anything. She probably does this with everyone. I head straight for the display.

I pick up a different book this time. Small, dark green cover, no dust jacket. I read the first line out loud.

“’He kept the door locked because the world had taught him that open doors were invitations to ruin.’” I look at her. “Cheerful.”

She’s already shaking her head. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Judging the whole book by the first line.”

“That’s literally what first lines are for.”

“First lines are doors.” She comes around the counter. She doesn’t seem to realize she’s doing it, moving toward the conversation the way she moved toward it this morning. “They’re not the room. They’re the threshold. You don’t stand in a doorway and decide you know everything about the house.”