Page 6 of Booked Up with the Mountain Man Firefighter

“He’s not wrong.”

“He’s not wrong. But then I wouldn’t have learned about the cartographer.”

“Okay.” He picks up a book and holds it up so I can see the cover. “This one.”

“What about it?”

He reads the first line, once again getting the tone wrong on purpose. I know he’s doing it on purpose now because he pauses afterward and looks at me with that expression—the one that’s half dare and half invitation. Go ahead. Tell me why I’m wrong.

“The narrator is unreliable,” I say. “You’re reading it straight and it’s meant to be read sideways.”

“Sideways.”

“The first line is a lie. That’s the point. You’re supposed to believe her, and then the book takes it apart.”

He sets the book down. Picks up another one. Reads the first line. I correct him. He picks up another one. I correct him again. We both know he’s not here for the books, and we both know I’m not correcting him because I care whether he understands the opening of a novel he’s never going to read.

He puts the last book back and leans against the shelf. “Can I ask you something?”

“You’ve been asking me things for two days.”

“It’s an important question.”

I straighten a stack of bookmarks on the counter that doesn’t need straightening. “Okay.”

“Why here?”

“Why here what?”

“Copper Peak. The bookstore. This.” He gestures at the shelves, the window, the courtyard beyond it. “You could open a bookstore anywhere. Why a mining town in Colorado where the nearest airport is an hour and a half away?”

The surface answer comes easily. I’ve given it a hundred times, to customers, to vendors, to the other business owners in the Trading Post.

“I wanted something of my own. Small town, low overhead, foot traffic from the ski resort in winter and the hiking trails in summer. It made sense.”

“That’s the business plan answer.”

“It’s the true answer.”

“It’s an answer.”

He crosses his arms. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t fill the silence with a joke or a redirect or any of the things I’ve watched him do when a conversation gets close to something real.

He just waits.

I don’t know what to do with the quiet. It’s my territory, not his. He’s the loud one. He’s the one who fills rooms. But right now he’s leaning against my shelf with his arms crossed and his mouth shut, and the silence is doing something I didn’t give it permission to do.

“I have two sisters,” I say. “Margot and Tess.”

He doesn’t move.

“Margot is a travel photographer. She’s been to thirty-something countries, and she has this social media feed that looks like a magazine. Tess is a trauma nurse in Denver. She works overnight shifts in the ER and has stories that would make your crew look tame.”

“And you’re the bookstore sister.”

“I’m the quiet one.” I say it without weight, like a fact. Like saying my hair is brown or I’m left-handed. “I was always the quiet one. Growing up, Margot and Tess took up all the air, and I didn’t mind, but at some point I stopped caring about it altogether. I was the easy kid. The one who didn’t need anything. My parents used to tell their friends, ‘Ellie’s no trouble at all.’ I’m sure they meant it as a compliment.”

The words are out before I can pull them back. I’ve never said this to anyone in Copper Peak. I’ve barely said it to myself in this much detail.