Page 3
"It's a job," I tell the steering wheel.
The steering wheel, to its credit, doesn't call me a liar.
My phone buzzes. Reyes: heard you pulled candle duty. send pictures of the tiny candles. Then, before I can pocket it: for real tho — you good? you've been weird since Alden said Woodbridge. I type Fine, delete it, type All good, delete that too, and finally send a thumbs up, the emoji equivalent of a dial tone, because Reyes has worked scenes with me for nine years and reads pauses the way I read char, and the less material I give him, the better for everyone.
I go through the folder one more time, because paper is calming. Assessment scope: structure, electrical, heat sources, egress, storage of combustibles, event plan for one (1) "Autumn Glow Launch Night," anticipated attendance 150-200, proposed outdoor features including — I read it again, hoping I hallucinated — six wood-burning fire pits, a live wax-pouring demonstration, and a "candle bar."
A candle bar. Two hundred people, alcohol implied, unlimited access to open flame. In a barn. In a county where something has been setting fires for practice.
For the first time all day, I feel the ground firm up under me. This — this exact disaster in progress — is something I know how to do. I can't be trusted to stand near Sloane Mercer at a wedding, but I can absolutely be trusted to find every single thing wrong with her death-trap dream barn, document it in triplicate, and be professionally unlikeable about it until the place is safe. That, I can do for her. It might be the only thing I've ever been allowed to do for her.
I gather the folder, the clipboard, the tablet, the laser thermometer — the full armor of a man with a legitimate professional reason to be here — and I'm halfway out of the truck when I make my first mistake in ten years.
I look at the window.
The barn has a row of them along the south side, warm gold against the gray afternoon, and framed in the second one like somebody planned it: Sloane. She's mid-laugh at something I can't hear, head tipped back, hair coming loose from whatever was supposed to hold it, wearing an apron smeared in wax. She gestures with both hands when she talks. She always has. Ten years and she still talks like she's conducting an orchestra only she can hear, and the afternoon sun is coming through that window like it bought a ticket.
Three seconds. That's all it takes. A decade of distance, of skipped barbecues and dodged holidays and standing at the far ends of reception tents — undone in three seconds through a pane of glass that, I notice with the last professional fragment of my brain, is single-glazed and non-tempered within eighteen inches of an open flame display.
I write that down.
It's going to be a long two weeks.
Two weeks. One assessment. Forty-one preliminary line items and a decade of practice.
I've walked into buildings that were still on fire. This is just a barn.
I check my reflection in the truck window like a man checking his equipment, find the same face that's held for ten years, and go knock on the door of the only structure in the county I was never supposed to enter.
Chapter 2
Sloane
"Brianna, honey, we do not double-wick a container that size unless we want to explain to your insurance company why the reception hall smells like a tire fire."
The bachelorette in question — sash, tiara, third mimosa — giggles and surrenders the extra wick, and I sweep down the candle bar like a wax-scented air traffic controller, adjusting a pour here, rescuing a fragrance blend there. Eleven women, eleven custom candles in progress, and only one minor tiara-related incident so far. By bachelorette party standards, this is a triumph of public safety.
"Okay, everyone, your pours need to set for at least two hours, which is exactly enough time for you to go have lunch at the Tap & Barrel and come back for pickup. Tell Georgie I sent you and she'll pretend the first round is a secret discount."
They file out in a cloud of perfume and shrieking, and Brianna hugs me like we've survived a war together, and then it's quiet, and it's mine again. The barn. The long oak candle bar I sanded myself. The wall of amber jars, the drying racks, the fragrance organ in the corner with its hundred little bottles. The autumn collection stacked and ready by the register — Flannel & Firelight, Orchard Bonfire, First Frost, and the top seller I named as a joke and now cannot discontinue because tourists lose their minds over it: Mountain Man Musk.
Three weeks until the Autumn Glow launch. Two hundred RSVPs. My whole ridiculous, hand-poured, wax-spattered dream, finally big enough that the people who said "so when are you getting a real job" have started saying "so I saw the barn on Instagram."
"We're going to pull it off, Wick," I tell the cat.
Wick, draped across the WELCOME mat like a spilled bag of flour, opens one eye, evaluates my optimism, and closes it again.
"Great talk."
I'm running pour-count math for the weekend orders — if I do two batches tonight I can clear the wholesale order for the bookshop and still have melter time tomorrow — when tires crunch on the gravel outside. Which would be the insurance guy. Wes texted this morning: someone from EPG's coming to do the assessment, be nice, he's doing me a favor.
Be nice. I'm delightful. I am a professional businesswoman prepared to charm the clipboard off some poor risk-assessment man who probably drew the short straw at the office. I'll walk him through my setup, show him my extinguisher placements, ply him with the good coffee and a free candle, and have him out the door by four with a passing grade and a lingering appreciation for artisan fragrance.
"Watch this," I tell Wick. "Textbook charm offensive. They'll study it."
Two knocks land on the frame, brisk and official, and then the barn door slides open, and the afternoon light dumps a silhouette on my floor — tall, broad, absolutely no clipboard energy whatsoever, more like load-bearing energy — and I've got my hand out and my customer-service smile at full wattage before my brain finishes processing the face.
Brady Callahan.
