Chapter 3
THREE
POWELL
And in the center of the table: my offering.
A stack of pancakes warm enough to steam up the inside of the Tupperware, plus a small glass bottle of maple syrup.
The real stuff. The fancy stuff. The stuff I didn’t even take to the firehouse because the guys would dump the whole thing out and inhale it in thirty seconds, missing the whole point.
I told myself this was only hospitality.
Moose had told me it was “thirst, buddy, pure thirst.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I’d barely finished arranging the plates and napkins in a way that made me look like a man trying too hard when I heard footsteps approaching.
I had just enough time to straighten before Jess walked in, freezing in the doorway.
Her eyes went straight to the container in front of me. Then to the plates. Then, with slow suspicion, to my face.
“What is this?”
“Breakfast,” I said.
“For who?”
I blinked. “Us…?” I hated that it sounded like a question.
She looked between me and the food like she was assessing whether this was some kind of hostage negotiation. “Why?”
I popped the lid before I over thought it. Warm, fresh pancakes—light, fluffy, golden—filled the room with the scents of butter and vanilla. I wasn’t bragging, but the mayor’s wife once said my pancakes could heal a broken marriage. I needed it to heal whatever was broken between us.
Jess’s expression did something tiny and traitorous before she caught herself. Her inhale was audible. She made a sound that was half-scoff, half-sigh. “I’m not bribable.”
“It’s not a bribe.”
“It looks like a bribe.”
“I promise, it’s not.”
“It’s definitely a bribe.”
“It’s… fuel. For the planning. And also maybe an apology for the horror of the town meeting.”
Her gaze dropped to the pancakes before coming back to me. “Apology accepted. Partial credit only.”
Good enough.
She sat, professional and prickly as a porcupine, flipping open a notebook already color-coded with tabs. I slid a plate toward her. She hesitated before pulling it the rest of the way with two fingers like she was waiting for it to blow up in her face.
With surgical precision, she cut the tiniest, most cautious square of pancake I’d ever seen and dipped it in syrup.
After only a moment’s hesitation, she brought it to her mouth.
Her eyes fluttered. Only a little. A barely there flutter that might’ve been nothing if I hadn’t been studying her face like my life depended on it.
Her lips parted as the flavors hit her tongue, and the transformation was instant. The careful control she’d been wearing like armor cracked enough for something softer to slip through.
She let out the smallest hum, barely audible over the rumble of the community center’s heater, but unmistakably the sound of someone enjoying herself more than she intended.
The sound hit me like a physical force, starting somewhere in my chest and shooting straight down to places that had no business responding to a woman eating breakfast.
Her tongue darted out, quick and reflexive, to catch a tiny bead of syrup that had gathered at the corner of her mouth. The gesture was so unconscious, so instinctive, that it felt like witnessing something private.
I looked away so fast I almost gave myself whiplash, focusing hard on the steam rising from my coffee mug.
Do not stare at her mouth.
Do not stare at her mouth.
DO NOT—
“These are fine.” Her tone was neutral, as if she hadn’t just made a sound that belonged in a bedroom instead of a community center meeting room.
“Fine.” I held onto my coffee with both hands to keep them occupied and away from any stupid impulses. The ceramic was warm against my palms. “My heart is shattered. Crushed. I may never recover.”
She narrowed those sharp green eyes at me, but I caught the tiniest twitch at the corner of her mouth before she wrestled it back under control. “Don’t get cocky.”
“I’m not cocky.”
“You’re extremely cocky.” She took another bite—bigger this time, like she was proving a point about her self-control.
“I’m not cocky,” I repeated, fighting the urge to grin like an idiot. “I’m delightful. Ask anyone at the station.”
“The jury’s still out.” But her tone had lost some of its sharp edge.
She reached for the syrup bottle and drizzled more on top of her remaining pancakes in slow, looping circles that had no right being as mesmerizing as they were. The golden brown liquid caught the morning light streaming through the windows, and I found myself tracking every lazy spiral she made.
I failed spectacularly at not watching.
Her nails were painted holly-berry red—a deep, rich color that made her hands look elegant despite the practical shortness of her nails.
Tiny white snowflakes dotted each thumbnail.
She held her fork as if she were trying to maintain dignity even as she obviously wanted to abandon all pretense and inhale the entire plate.
The thought hit me out of nowhere: I wanted to offer the whole stack served on my abs, so she could lick off every crumb and sticky drop with that same unconscious thoroughness.
This was absolute torture, but what a way to go.
“So.” She flipped through her color-coded notebook and pretended she wasn’t having what looked like a near-spiritual experience with carbohydrates.
“I think we should divide the Twelve Stops efficiently. I take locations one through six. You handle seven through twelve. We meet again only if absolutely necessary for coordination.”
I blinked at her, processing what she’d said. “That’s… not how this works.”
“It’s efficient,” she insisted, not looking up from her notebook as she started making neat little bullet points.
“It’s avoiding me.”
“It’s efficient resource allocation.”
“It’s avoidance wrapped in efficiency-speak, but okay.” I leaned back in my chair, studying her profile as she refused to meet my eyes.
She stabbed another bite of pancake hard enough that the fork squeaked against the ceramic plate.
“Look, Powell. If we split the workload, everything gets accomplished cleaner and faster.
No miscommunication. No overlap. No unnecessary complications.
No need for us to—“ She waved between us with her syrup-sticky fork. “—collaborate beyond the bare minimum.”
“Jess, this isn’t some school group project where you end up doing all the work because your teammates would tank your GPA.” I kept my voice gentle, but firm.
She froze, her fork halfway to her mouth. Her eyes flicked up to mine, sharp as broken glass and twice as dangerous.
I kept going, sensing I’d hit something. “This event is about community. About bringing people together, not keeping them apart. About collaboration and shared effort. And yes, that includes us working together, whether you like it or not.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line. “I don’t avoid people.”
“You avoid me.”
“Because you’re—” The words came out in a rush, like she’d been holding them back.
Here we go. I braced myself.
“—a complete and utter jackass.”
I nodded, letting the accusation hang in the air between us. “Actually, it’s Donkey.”
She blinked, thrown by the non sequitur. “What?”
“My nickname. At the station. It’s Donkey, not jackass.” I took a sip of coffee as she processed this information.
“Why?” She frowned in suspicion, like she thought this might be some elaborate setup for a joke at her expense.
I hesitated, which was apparently blood in the water because she leaned forward a little, those green eyes narrowing with the focus of a predator who’d just spotted prey.
“Seriously.” Her voice took on that demanding tone I was beginning to recognize. “Why Donkey?”
“I’ll tell you at our next meeting.”
Her jaw dropped open in what looked like genuine outrage.
Then it snapped shut with an audible click.
She pointed her fork at me like it was a weapon, a piece of pancake still speared on the end.
“No. Absolutely not. You don’t get to dangle information like some kind of—of—holiday carrot to manipulate me into more meetings. ”
“You’re curious.”
“I am not curious.”
“You are.” I couldn’t help the grin that tugged at my lips.
“I’m strategizing,” she insisted, her cheeks flushing pink. “I am gathering intelligence on my co-chair so I can anticipate and minimize potential disasters.”
“I like the version where you’re curious about me better.”
She glared at me with enough heat to melt snow. “Next meeting. Wednesday morning. Same time. Bring a real schedule with actual timelines and vendor contacts. Not… this.” She gestured at the pancakes like they had betrayed her.
“You liked the pancakes.”
“That was a purely biological response to sugar and carbohydrates,” she snapped, pushing her plate away like she couldn’t risk being in proximity to another bite. “Not enjoyment. Certainly not appreciation.”
She stood too fast, her chair scraping against the truck’s floor.
In her haste, she almost knocked her messenger bag off the counter.
She crouched to rescue it, muttering what sounded like creative curse words under her breath, and when she rose again, she had another perfect little smear of syrup on her thumb.
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t have to.
She noticed it herself, lifting her hand to examine the sticky sweetness. She paused—
—glanced at me—
—then back at her thumb—
With a tiny, defeated sigh that sounded like surrender, she lifted her thumb to her mouth and licked it clean.
My brain short-circuited. Every coherent thought I’d ever had just evaporated.
She straightened, grabbed her bag with more force than necessary, and headed for the door. “Next meeting,” she said, her voice too bright and too tight, like she was desperately trying to pretend the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened. “Same time. Bring actual notes.”
“Bring an appetite,” I murmured before my brain could engage the filter between my thoughts and my mouth.
She froze for half a second—long enough for me to see her shoulders tense—then practically fled through the door like she needed to physically escape the confined space before she did something we’d both regret.
Or maybe something we’d both enjoy too much.
When the door clicked shut behind her, leaving me alone with the lingering scent of vanilla and her faint perfume, I dropped my head into my hands and groaned loud enough to wake half the neighborhood.
This woman was going to absolutely, completely, thoroughly ruin me.
And the worst part? I was pretty sure I was going to let her.