Page 3 of Fall Into Love

Talk of the Town

Caleb

I get four waves before I even hit Main Street, and I know every single one of their names.

That’s the problem.

Miss Anne outside the post office. The Peterson twins on their bikes. Old Hank raising his coffee at me from the bench outside the diner like we’re old war buddies instead of two guys who once spent an entire town hall meeting arguing about a damn stop sign. I lift a hand back to all of them, the easy two-finger wave I don’t even think about anymore, and they all grin like I’ve made their morning.

Mayor Caleb Foster. Good guy. Great guy. Sits in the dunk tank every summer, plays a mean acoustic set at Danny Vino’s holiday parties, remembers your kid’s and your dog’s name, cleans a gutter or two for the older residents of Hemlock Point.

Nobody remembers to ask how I’m doing, though, because that’s not how it works.

I stopped expecting it a long time ago.

I never planned to be this—I want that on the record somewhere. Six years ago, I was just some single guy with a machine shop in his garage and too many opinions at council meetings, and then Mayor Hutchins retired, and somebody put my name on the ballot as a joke that nobody bothered to tell me about. And then I won, and I kept winning, and now here I am. Thirty-four years old with grease under my nails from a ‘69 Camaro fender I was cutting at five this morning, riding a Harley to a job I fell into and can’t seem to back out of.

Some days I love it. But some days I genuinely can’t tell where the ‘Mayor of Hemlock Point’ stops and I start anymore, or if there’s even a difference left to find.

I’m chewing on the less than cheerful thought when I round the corner onto Main and see Dale’s cruiser parked crooked at the curb with his blinker on, about to pull away.

Something in my chest pulls tight before my brain even catches up. Dale doesn’t rush anywhere anymore. Him getting the cruiser out before ten in the morning means something happened, and my eyes are already tracking down the row of storefronts—the diner, the bakery, and…

Marigold’s.

I don’t remember deciding to pull over. I’m just suddenly at the curb, kickstand down, helmet off, crossing the sidewalk with my heart hammering and an urgency in my step.

Because it’s her shop.

I’ve got no business feeling the way I feel when it comes to her. I know that. Emma Jones and I have exchanged maybe forty sentences total in the year since she opened this place, and I bought half of those sentences with wool socks I didn’t need. I own four pairs now. Four. I keep walking into her little shop with every intention of saying something smooth and flirty even. Yet instead, I lose my nerve and buy whatever’s closest to the register and walk out.

My mother has never once questioned why she’s gotten three scarves from me in the last year alone.

Emma’s never gushed at me, either. Never called me Mayor, never asked me to take a photo or settle a bet or fix her cousin’s parking ticket. She just looks at me sweetly, gives me short, polite answers, rings up my ridiculous purchases, giggles at my shirts, and lets me leave like I’m nobody special.

She has no idea how I feel about her.

How the very sight of her has my pulse racing, how badly I want to lift her up by the dip of her waist and set her down on that rustic butcher block counter, kiss her lush painted lips, bury myself deep inside her, and claim her from the inside out…

I push through the door and the little bell chimes overhead. The place is wrecked—racks down, sweaters everywhere, a basket of scarves spilled across the floor. Molly, the bakery owner next door is here, and with her, in the middle of it all, is Emma.

She turns to look at me. Her eyes are worried and glassy as her chin starts to wobble.

My heart clenches alongside my fist.

“Emma,” I say, low and firm, forcing aside my fear now turning into anger. “What happened here? Are you all right?”

She bursts into tears.

For one horrible second, I have absolutely no idea what to do. I know what I want to do—crush her petite, curvy frame to my chest and declare war on whoever made her cry. But I don’t know if I’m allowed to touch her, we’re barely more than strangers. She tolerates me and my scarf habit, sure, but she’s crying in the middle of her ruined shop, and every decent instinct I have is screaming at me to move. I close the distance, but I don’t hug her like I crave to, I just…stand there, close. Close enough to inhale her intoxicating perfume. My hand hovers near her shoulder as I try to reassure her, “Hey. Hey, okay. It’s all right. Whatever this is, we’ll sort it out.”

We. Like I have any right to that word.

She doesn’t step away, though. She leans a couple inches in my direction, just enough that my hand finally lands on her shoulder, and she takes a shaky breath. “I’m s-sorry. Gosh, I don’t… I don’t usually do this.” She wipes weakly under her eyes.

“I know you don’t, darlin’.” That’s the problem with Emma Jones; she never lets anybody see a single crack. She’s quiet and kind, talkative when she needs to be, beautiful all the time. “But what the hell happened?”

“There was a break-in overnight,” Molly answers as Emma sniffles. “She found it like this.”