Page 5 of Booked Up with the Mountain Man Firefighter

“I might. If the doorway’s that grim, I’m not sure I want to see the house.”

“He locks the door because he’s protecting something. The whole book is about what he’s guarding and whether he’ll let someone in. The first line isn’t the story. It’s the question.”

She’s standing closer now. Close enough that I can see the pen behind her ear is green and chewed at the cap. Close enough that I can see her eyes aren’t just brown—there’s amber in them when the light from the front window catches right.

“What are you reading?” I ask. “Right now. What’s the book on the counter?”

She hesitates. That careful look comes back, the one where she’s deciding how much to give.

“It’s about a cartographer,” she says. “A woman in the 1800s who mapped rivers nobody believed existed. She drew coastlines that contradicted every chart the navy had, and she was right every time, and nobody published her work until after she died.”

“That’s not boring.”

“I didn’t say it was boring.”

“You almost did. You hesitated before you told me, like you thought I wouldn’t care.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. She looks at me with that same expression from this morning. The one that says she sees more than I meant to show.

“Most people don’t ask,” she says quietly.

“Most people aren’t paying attention.”

The shop is silent. The courtyard is silent. Somewhere outside, Lea’s espresso machine hisses, and the sound barely reaches us through the glass.

Ellie holds my gaze for a beat. Then she looks away, touches the pen behind her ear, and drifts back behind the counter. By the time I take a breath, she has her book open again, eyes down, reading like I’m already gone.

“Same time tomorrow?” I say.

“I’m here every day.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a statement of fact.”

I grin. She doesn’t look up from her book, but the corner of her mouth moves. Just barely.

I walk back into the courtyard knowing two things. The first is that I’m going back tomorrow. The second is that Ellie Byrne is the least boring person I’ve ever met, and she has no idea.

3

ELLIE

He’s back.

I see Mack coming through the courtyard before he reaches the door. Same grin. Same energy. Same walk that makes the cobblestones feel too small for him.

Lea waves from the coffee shop window as he passes, and he points at her like they’re mid-conversation even though they’re not. He does that. Treats the whole world like it’s already talking to him.

The bell rings. He heads straight for the display without stopping at the counter.

“Did you win the tomato argument?” I ask.

“Decisively.” He grins. “Pulled it up on my phone, showed him the USDA classification, the botanical definition. He stared at the screen for about ten seconds and then said, ‘I don’t care what the government thinks. If it goes in a salad, it’s a vegetable.’”

“So he didn’t accept it.”

“He accepted it. He just didn’t like it. There’s a difference. For the record, Drew pointed out I could have looked it up online instead of coming in here.”