She didn’t belong here. She belonged anywhere but here—somewhere I couldn’t see her, couldn’t smell that vanilla-and-wildflower scent drifting across the cramped trailer every time she shifted in her chair.
Gemma Ellis. Mayor’s office. Here to ruin my Valentine’s Day, apparently, though I hadn’t planned on celebrating anyway.
I forced my eyes back to the blueprints. Drainage. Right. The southeast corner needed additional grading before we could pour the next section of foundation. Important stuff. Stuff I should be thinking about instead of the way her sweater clung to curves that had no business being in my line of sight.
Six months. I’d been in Wildwood Valley for six months, and I’d done just fine keeping to myself. Took the job because itwas steady work and the town was small enough to disappear in. Rented a cabin up the mountain where nobody bothered me. Kept my head down, did my work, went home to silence and solitude.
It was a good system. A safe system.
Then she walked through my door with her warm brown eyes and her professional smile, and my heart did a thing I didn’t like. A recognition. A pull. Like my body knew something my brain refused to accept.
I’d felt it before—exactly once. When I was nineteen and stupid and thought I understood what love was. That had ended badly. Everything involving feelings ended badly. I had more than a decade of evidence to prove it.
“Question about the timeline.”
Her voice cut through my thoughts. I looked up, schooling my expression into something neutral.
“What about it?”
“The foundation work was supposed to be complete by the end of January.” She tapped her pen against the spreadsheet in front of her. “We’re halfway through February and you’re still pouring.”
“Weather delays.” I leaned back in my chair, putting distance between us. “We lost a week in January to that ice storm. Then the concrete supplier had a backlog. I sent updated projections to the mayor’s office two weeks ago.”
“I didn’t see them.”
“Not my problem if your office doesn’t read its emails.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn’t take the bait. She just made a note on her paper and moved on to the next question. Professional. Controlled. Not rising to my rudeness.
That annoyed me more than it should have.
We worked through the morning in fits and starts. She’d ask a question, I’d answer it, and then we’d lapse back intosilence while she reviewed documents and I pretended to care about drainage specs. The space heater rattled in the corner. The coffeemaker gurgled occasionally, keeping the sludge inside warm. Outside, the February wind picked up, buffeting the trailer walls.
I should have been grateful for the quiet. Instead, I found myself overly aware of every sound she made. The scratch of her pen. The soft rustle of pages turning. The way she hummed under her breath sometimes, so quietly I almost missed it.
“So walk me through what’s left,” she said around eleven, setting down her pen and stretching her neck.
The movement pulled her sweater tight across her chest. I jerked my gaze back to the blueprints so fast I probably gave myself whiplash.
“What do you mean?”
“The project. What’s the sequence from here to completion?”
I studied her for a moment, looking for the trap. Most people from the mayor’s office didn’t actually care about the details. They wanted numbers and timelines—checkboxes they could mark complete. They didn’t want to understand the work itself. But Gemma was watching me with genuine curiosity, pen poised over her notepad, waiting.
“Foundation’s about sixty percent done,” I heard myself say. “Another two weeks if the weather holds. After that, framing goes up—that’s a different crew, but I’ll be on-site to coordinate. Then roofing, electrical, plumbing, interior finishing. If everything stays on schedule, Dr. Hanson should be able to move in by late summer.”
“That fast?”
“It’s not a big building. And Wildwood Valley’s motivated. Seems like half the town wants to help with that rescue operation she’s planning.”
Gemma nodded, making notes. “I heard about that. Some kind of puppy mill bust?”
“Hoarding situation, I think. Neighboring county. Dozens of animals that’ll need care.” I shrugged. “The clinic can’t open soon enough.”
“Is that why you took this job? To help with that?”
The question caught me off guard. I wasn’t used to people asking about my motivations. Wasn’t used to people asking about me at all.