Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Wren had spent forty minutes color-coding her planning folder the night before she was due at town hall.
She shifted it under her arm now — coral for decorations, sage for logistics, butter-yellow for the vendor list — and pushed open the door to the committee room with her shoulder, already composing her opening remarks to the Chamber of Commerce President.
Organized. Professional. The kind of woman who had things under control.
The kind of woman who did not stop dead in the doorway because the coffee cart man was already there.
He sat at the far end of the conference table; a battered navy notebook lay open in front of him, covered in small, precise handwriting that she couldn't read from here and found herself wanting to.
He wasn't looking at the door. He was reading back over whatever he'd written, one hand wrapped around a can of root beer, and her pen in his right hand.
He looked up, and for a moment he just stopped. His mouth opened. Nothing came out. He closed his mouth. Swallowed. Tried again.
"Hello," he said.
It came out roughly, like a word retrieved from somewhere it had been sitting unused. Like he had found it at the back of a drawer.
"Hello," Wren said. And then, because he was looking at her with those gray eyes in a way that suggested he might not have all the relevant information: "Wren Banks."
Something shifted in his expression. Not surprise, exactly. "I know who you are."
"Right," she said. "You've been camped out under my window every day since I got here."
The pen — her pen, the one he'd borrowed from the shop three days ago— slipped from his fingers and hit the table with a small clatter.
He reached for it. His notebook, balanced at the table's edge, chose this moment to disagree with gravity entirely and went to the floor.
He collected it back in silence. Straightened it.
Set the pen beside it with excessive precision.
"It's a good intersection," he said. "The bookstore. For the cart."
"I'm not complaining. You make the best cup of coffee I've ever had. And that's coming from a tea drinker, so that's not a compliment I give lightly."
"I hate coffee."
Wren blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Can't stand it. I'm a root beer man."
"You run a coffee cart."
"I do."
"And you hate coffee."
"Profoundly."
A silence opened up between them. The radiator began its tentative tick. She was also aware of the fact that she was still standing in the doorway.
She stepped in, let the door close behind her, and set her folder down two chairs from him with slightly more composure than she felt.
"A root beer man who doesn't like his own product," she said, pulling out the coral tab. "That should probably be on the menu board."
"It would be bad for business."
"It would be extraordinary for business. People would come from miles."
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. The shadow of one, brief and reluctant, and then it was gone, and he was looking at his notebook again.
The door swung open and Mrs. Patel arrived in a floral wrap dress, carrying a tin of shortbread and radiating the satisfied energy of a woman who had just solved a problem she hadn't told anyone else about.
"Wren. You look lovely. Freddie, you made it all right. Good, good. Right, let me explain what we're doing here."
Wren opened her folder. Freddie's pen hovered.
"The Valor Autumn Market is the town's largest community event of the year.
Four hundred attendees last year. Thirty-two vendor booths.
The brass band, the children's corner, the mulled cider, the harvest raffle — all of it requires coordination, and coordination requires a committee, and a committee requires leadership.
" She looked between them with equal and impartial satisfaction. "That's the two of you."
"I didn't sign up for this," Freddie said.
"No," she agreed pleasantly. "You didn't."
A brief silence.
"And yet," Freddie said.
"And yet." Mrs. Patel opened her own folder — smaller than Wren's, a single manila sleeve.
"It is a longstanding custom in Valor that the two newest business owners on the main street take on a committee role in their first full calendar year.
It helps you learn how the town works: who to call when the marquee supplier cancels, why you don't schedule anything during the Hendersons' anniversary weekend, which vendors need to be placed next to each other and which absolutely cannot be. We find it orients people.
"As co-chairs, the two of you are responsible for the decoration scheme, vendor coordination, logistics planning, and on-the-day management.
You'll have four committee meetings between now and the market weekend.
Mrs. Hendricks is handling the catering liaison; Mr. Osei has the music stage, and Dot Fairweather is managing the harvest raffle, which she does every year and which always ends in at least one small controversy that resolves itself by Sunday evening. "
"What kind of controversy?" Wren asked.
"The prize categories," Mrs. Patel said, in a tone that foreclosed further inquiry.
"The point is that the two of you are the center of it.
Decorations set the tone for the whole event.
If the market looks beautiful, people feel generous, and if people feel generous, the vendors do well, and if the vendors do well, they come back next year, and that is how a town like this stays a town like this.
" She looked between them again, and there was something underneath the pleasantness now.
"It matters. That's why I wanted people who would take it seriously. "
Wren glanced involuntarily at Freddie. He was looking at the table. His jaw had the quality of a man recalibrating something.
"Any questions?" Mrs. Patel asked. But she rose from her chair without waiting for either Wren or Freddie to speak up. "I'll leave you to it."
She left the shortbread tin. This, Wren suspected, was deliberate.
The door swung shut behind her with a soft, settled click. Wren looked at the whiteboard. Freddie looked at his notebook. The radiator ticked.
"Right," Wren said. "I've put together a full scheme.
Warm lighting, seasonal florals, a cohesive color palette across all the booths.
I've broken it into zones: entrance, main walkway, the stage area, and the food vendors.
I've also accounted for the weather contingency, because I heard last year the Hendersons' bunting situation was a crisis that this committee is not going to repeat. "
Freddie had not moved. He was looking at her words on the paper. For a moment, Wren felt self-conscious about her penmanship.
"The lighting's good," he said. "The Edison bulbs. Good call."
She looked at him for a moment. "Oh."
"The florals," he continued, "are going to be a problem near the stage."
Wren capped the marker. "Why?"
"Stage needs clear sight lines from the main walkway. You put potted arrangements at the entrance to that zone, you're blocking the view for anyone under five foot six from the moment they come around the corner. And you'll have spent money on florals that half the attendees never actually see."
Wren opened her mouth. Closed it. Because he was right. "The entrance arrangements can be lower. I hadn't specified height."
"Hmmm." He pointed to something in her notebook with her pen. "What about the chalkboard sign?"
"Hand-lettered. Near the main gate."
"I was going to suggest two. One at each entrance."
Wren looked at her notes. She had written one chalkboard; main gate only in the margin and underlined it, because she had thought two would be excessive. But he was right.
"Two is better," she said, in a tone that communicated she had been about to come to this conclusion independently.
Wren pulled out the sage-tabbed section with perhaps slightly too much precision and flattened it on the table between them.
He leaned forward to look — not far, because his default posture appeared to involve taking up more space than was strictly necessary — and she caught, briefly, the scent of espresso and cedarwood, warm and inconveniently familiar, and forced her attention back to the page where it belonged.
"I've got the food trucks here," she said, pointing, "along the east side. It should keep foot traffic moving in one direction and will help with the culinary judging."
"Hmmm."
Wren was starting to realize that was Freddie-speak for agreement.
"Except for the mulled cider booth."
"What about it?"
"It's downwind of the cheese vendor."
Wren stared at the page. She had not considered wind direction. This was an oversight so obvious in retrospect that she felt it somewhere behind her sternum.
"Children's corner," she said, turning to the next page. "I had it here, at the back left. Away from the stage noise."
Freddie leaned forward. Looked at the placement. Looked at the overall map. "Hmmm," he said.
But there was a hesitation this time. He took a breath. Bit his lower lip.
It was a full lower lip, Wren noticed. And then blinked as though she could wipe the noticing from her eyes.
"Tell me," she demanded.
He looked up. For the first time that night, for the first time in their acquaintance, their gazes met. And held.
Freddie's jaw tightened slightly. It was a strong jaw, angles showing despite being covered by a well-trimmed beard. His throat moved as he swallowed. She watched that. She hadn't meant to watch that.
Her mouth had gone a little dry. She ran her tongue along her lower lip without thinking. His eyes dropped to her mouth. Just briefly. Then back up.
"What were you going to say?" she asked.
"I was…" he swallowed and began again. "If you moved the children's space one row forward, you'd get the afternoon light on it. Between two and four. The whole thing would look like… " He paused, seemed to consider whether to finish the sentence.
"Like what?" Wren said.
"Like a picture," he said simply.
She looked at where he was pointing. He was right. He hadn't chosen the right word, but she understood what he meant. If she moved the children's corner forward, the whole scene would be picturesque. Like something out of Wonderland. The kids would love it.
This was, she was keeping a private tally, the fourth time in an hour she had moved something because Freddie Gallagher had looked at a page for ten seconds and seen what she had missed.
What she had expected from tonight — from the grumpy man outside her window, the one who received her eleven o'clock order with the energy of someone for whom human interaction was a tax — was friction. Obstruction.
What she was getting was a man who made a note when she gave him information instead of dismissing it.
Who disagreed with her in four specific places, and was right in all four, and offered the correction without architecture.
No preamble, no softening, no performance of being reasonable.
Just the correct thing, plainly said, and then he moved on.
It was, she thought, with some reluctance, an extremely efficient way to work with someone.