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“Stolyarov Woodworking.”

“Nico? This is Jake Sullivan. I hope I’m not bothering you.”

The sound of his voice made my pulse quicken. “Of course not. What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to confirm our meeting this afternoon. I’ve got a game tonight, so I’ll probably be in a suit when I stop by. Hope that’s okay.”

A hockey player in a suit, coming to my workshop to discuss grain direction and dovetails. The contrast should have been absurd, but Jake made it seem perfectly natural. I supposed it was good that I’d swept up.

“That’s fine. I’ve got the sketches ready, and I pulled some samples for you to look at.”

“Looking forward to it. See you around three?”

“Perfect.”

After he hung up, I stood in the middle of my workshop with my phone in my hand. And what probably qualified as a stupid grin on my face. Nadya was right, because of course she was. I was acting like a teenager with a crush.

Which was ridiculous. Professional consultation, nothing more.

I spent the next two hours putting finishing touches on my sketches and arranging wood samples in the best light. By two-thirty, I was ready to impress.

That’s when I smelled the first hint of smoke.

Initially, I didn’t pay attention. The restaurant used a wood-fired pizza oven. Smoke was normal. But this was wrong—acrid and chemical, not the smell I’d come to love from their oven.

I walked to the windows overlooking the alley and saw wisps of gray smoke curling from the restaurant’s kitchen exhaust vent. Still not necessarily cause for alarm, but something about the color was wrong. It was too dark, too thick.

Then I saw flames.

“Shit.” I grabbed my phone and dialed 911, watching the orange glow spread through the restaurant’s kitchen windows. “I need to report a fire at 147 Dartmouth Street. The restaurant on the ground floor. I can see flames from the kitchen.”

“Nadya!” I shouted across the hall, the phone still at my ear. “There’s a fire in the restaurant. Grab what matters. We’ve got to go!”

Her head appeared around her doorframe, ready with a comeback. Whatever she saw in my face killed it. She disappeared back inside, and all I heard was her swearing.

By the time I gave the operator all the necessary information, smoke was pouring out of the restaurant’s back door.

I started moving. Grabbing my grandfather’s tools from their wall display, I wrapped them in canvas. If the fire spread up here, if the building filled with smoke, these were the things I couldn’t replace. Everything else was equipment and lumber, valuable but not irreplaceable.

I got all the tools into the tool chest, along with my sketches. I stacked the box of client files on top. Then I started covering my larger equipment, commissions, and the lumber with tarps, trying to protect what I could from smoke damage.

Within minutes, the fire department arrived in a chaos of sirens and flashing lights. Police cars and an ambulance followed quickly. Shouting came from the street, breaking glass, the mechanical whirr of fire truck equipment.

But it wasn’t until the first firefighter appeared in my workshop doorway that the reality of the situation hit me.

“Sir, you need to evacuate the building immediately. We’ve got an active fire on the ground floor.”

“Is it spreading upstairs?”

“Smoke is. And we don’t know the condition of the electrical system. You need to leave now.” He was gone before I could say more.

I grabbed my jacket and the box of client files. The tool chest was too heavy to take out on my own. I threw a tarp over it and hoped that would be enough.

I took one last look around the workshop that represented everything I’d built over the past four years. Nadya came out of her studio with another firefighter. They both carried boxes.

“This was not on my bingo card for the afternoon,” she said as we headed downstairs.

All I could do was shake my head.