The Perfect Shot Problem (Love in Laurel Creek #2)

CHAPTER 1

Mae

The morning of the Laurel Creek Market launch, I had a clipboard, a headset I didn't technically need, and forty-one vendors who all believed their booth assignment was a personal insult.

I had it handled. I want that on the record.

The dahlia arch was the centerpiece — nine feet of blooms and balloons over the market entrance, rented from a woman in Millbrook who'd made me initial a damage waiver like I was adopting it.

People would walk under the arch, feel charmed, and spend money in my town at my event.

That was the entire business plan, and it was working.

At 9:04, four minutes after opening, Banjo happened.

Banjo is the Hendersons' labrador, and he was tied — loosely, optimistically — to the leg of the welcome table, which sat beside the arch, which was anchored by sandbags, which were apparently decorative.

Banjo saw a squirrel. Banjo went for the squirrel.

The table went with Banjo, the tablecloth went with the table, the anchor strap went with the tablecloth, and nine feet of festive architecture pivoted toward the crowd like it had chosen a victim.

I got there first. Crossed fifteen feet of grass in two seconds and caught the arch on my shoulder like Atlas, if Atlas wore a name badge that said ASK ME ANYTHING!

"Nobody panic," I announced.

Nobody was panicking. They were thrilled.

"Mae, honey, it's leaning," called Doris Pickett from the jam table, in her church-announcement voice.

"It's supposed to lean. It's whimsical."

The arch groaned. A balloon bumped my head, twice, like it was checking if anyone was home. I planted my feet, recalculated my grip, and heard it — a shutter. Soft. Professional. Unhurried.

Click. Click-click.

I knew before I turned. There is exactly one person in the Laurel Creek orbit who sounds that calm while pointing a lens at a disaster, and I have been successfully not-looking at him since Nora's wedding, where he photographed two hundred guests and somehow caught the only four seconds I spent crying by the dessert table.

"Theo Hart," I said, to the dahlias.

"Mae Lane," he said, pleased, like I'd confirmed a booking.

I turned my head as far as the arch allowed. There he was. Tall. Forearms. Press lanyard. Hair doing something in the wind that should have required a permit. Camera up, completely at ease. Nobody should be that comfortable at somebody else's disaster.

"Why are you here."

"Tourism board. Faces of Laurel Creek — they're featuring the market launch." He lowered the camera just enough to look at me over it, which was somehow worse. "You're on my shot list."

"I approved that list. I'm not on it."

"Added Tuesday. 'Mae Lane, market coordinator.'" Click. "The board called you the engine of the whole launch."

"The engine is currently load-bearing, so—"

"I noticed. It's a great frame."

"It is not a frame. It is an incident. Incidents get resolved, not framed."

"At a public market you built so people would photograph it," he said, and moved three steps left to improve his angle.

That's the thing about Theo Hart, established at one wedding and confirmed now: everything he says is accurate, and accuracy from a man with a telephoto lens is the single most annoying force on earth.

And here's what one professional camera does at a small-town market: it tells everyone something is worth looking at.

The kettle corn line drifted over. Phones came out, because if the official photographer was shooting it, it must be content.

Someone's kid asked if I was part of the entertainment. Someone's mother said probably.

"You could help," I said through balloons.

"I'm working."

"I'm working."

"I know." Click. "You're running an event through a headset while holding up a structure and arguing with me. Hold still."

"Do not tell me to hold still."

"You're right. Keep doing exactly what you're doing."

The arch lurched. I lurched with it. And then Earl Whitford arrived at a jog, carrying — I cannot stress this enough — one roll of duct tape and no plan.

"I got you, Mae!" Earl began taping the arch's leg to the welcome table. The table attached to Banjo. The dog that was the problem.

"Earl. You're taping the structure to the problem."

"Reinforcement," Earl said solemnly, and kept taping.

Theo laughed — short, involuntary, like it escaped before he approved it — and I hated how much I noticed.

Then he finally moved. Not to the arch. He crouched, untied Banjo, walked him three feet, and handed the leash to Earl. The table stopped pulling. The arch settled back onto its base — steady, fine, fully self-supporting.

Which left me alone under a stable arch in front of half of Laurel Creek, arms raised overhead, holding up absolutely nothing, in the exact pose of a woman who has just stuck a landing no one asked for.

"There," Theo said. "Now it's whimsical."

Doris cackled. An actual cackle. Someone applauded. One person. A toddler pointed at me and said "ta-da." That ta-da was going to stay with me longer than it should have.

I lowered my arms with all the dignity available to a woman wearing balloon ribbon in her hair. "You solved the dog."

"You had everything else." He said it plainly. Not flirting. Worse — meaning it.

"Fine. Which of those are you keeping?"

"Not my call. Everything from today goes to my editor Monday — she picks the feature." He turned the camera around. "But it'll be this one."

I leaned in before I'd decided to — close enough to register coffee, cedar, the warmth coming off his arm.

When he tilted the screen, our shoulders touched, and my entire nervous system filed a report I did not authorize.

I stepped back half an inch. He noticed.

He notices everything; that's his whole horrible job.

The photo: me under the arch, arms up, one dahlia petal falling, jaw set, mid-command. The light had done something unreasonable. I looked unhinged. I looked magnificent. I could not tell which, and that was the problem.

Something in my chest went tight and stupid. The woman in that photo wasn't pretending to have it handled. I didn't remember giving anyone permission to know that.

"That's the feature," he said. "That's the whole town in one frame. The woman holding the place up."

"That is a woman having a workplace incident."

"That's the same thing. That's why it's good."

"The feature should be the market. The vendors. The arch, upright, doing its job."

"Then make that case. I'm at the inn all week — come see the set, flag what you'd send instead." Crooked smile. Not smooth — pleased, like he'd found something he wasn't assigned to find. "But you'll need a better argument than 'bury the best photograph of the day.'"

He walked toward the cider tent. Banjo followed him. Traitor.

Doris materialized at my elbow, holding jam and looking like Christmas had come early.

She held up her phone: the market's community page, posted six minutes ago by Earl, mid-crisis.

OUR MAE, HOLDING IT TOGETHER AS USUAL!!!

Forty-three likes. My aunt had commented a heart. My dentist had commented two.

"It's already a thing," Doris said happily. "You're just the last to know."

I picked a petal off my shoulder and went back to work. Mostly.

By ten thirty the arch had a line, because the toddler's ta-da had gone into syndication.

Kids ran under it, threw their arms up, screamed "ta-da," and exited to applause.

A girl in a tutu did it nine consecutive times with escalating drama.

Doris kept a tally on a napkin. Somewhere in Millbrook, a woman holding my damage waiver was growing more powerful and didn't know why.

I let it run. Lines make a market look successful, even lines for nothing.

Then, at eleven, the kettle corn machine declared war.

It jammed mid-batch — drum seized, burner still lit, kernels still going off inside, lid jumping with every pop. Gus stood beside it making the face men make at machinery. The line was twelve deep and filming.

"Kill the burner," I said, already there.

"Killed. She's still going."

She was. The crowd oohed. A kernel escaped at speed and hit a tourist's sunhat, and the tourist looked delighted, because everything at my market was entertainment now. We were that kind of town as of 9:04 a.m.

Earl arrived at a jog with the toolbox. And the duct tape, worn on his wrist like a bracelet. Ready.

"Earl, hand me the hex key and keep the tape holstered."

"Tape is a hex key," Earl said, "if you believe."

"Earl."

The drum was hot. The bolt was hotter. I had a clipboard, a headset, and no third hand — and then a shadow fell across the machine, smelling like coffee and cedar.

"Don't," I said.

"I'm not." Theo planted one boot against the cart's wheel, braced the frame steady with his forearm, and kept shooting one-handed over my head. Helping, technically, in the most annoying way he could have picked.

"You're photographing this."

"It's the assignment. You're fixing a popcorn machine in front of an audience. That's a Face of Laurel Creek."

"It's a workplace—"

"—incident, I know. Hold the lid when you release it." A kernel popped. He didn't flinch. "Three, two—"

I cracked the bolt, the drum spun free, and the machine surrendered its entire backlog at once — a soft golden geyser, all over the cart, the grass, me, and the front of Theo Hart's press lanyard.

Silence. Then the line burst into applause, the tutu girl yelled "ta-da," and the toddler began eating evidence directly off the ground.

Theo looked down at himself, lanyard dusted in popcorn, camera saved at the last instant by reflex alone. For one second the composure was gone — not the smile, the certainty under it.

"You knew that would blow," he said.

"I suspected. You were standing in the splash zone with a camera. I made a choice."

"That's fair," he said slowly, like he was re-shooting his entire read on me. He picked a kernel off his lanyard and ate it. "You run a violent market."

"I run an effective market." I handed Gus the hex key, restarted the line, and reassigned Earl to napkins before the tape could achieve anything. "Eleven years of Laurel Creek events and nothing on this green has ever popped, leaned, or trended. One morning with you and I'm a genre."

"That's not me. That's you. I just frame it."

And there it was again — accurate, casual, like a receipt. So I gave him one back.

"You know what I think? The camera's load-bearing too. You point it at people so nobody points anything at you."

He missed a beat. A full one — I counted; counting is my job. The smile stayed, but it had to be re-hung, like a picture after a door slams. His thumb found the lens cap and turned it over. Twice.

For a second he looked like he might actually answer.

"Kettle corn?" he offered instead. One beat too late, and he knew it.

"You're rattled."

"Recalibrating," he said, which wasn't a denial. He lowered the camera when he walked away, and he didn't take a single shot until he was past the cider tent. I noticed. I notice things too — he's not the only one.

Doris appeared with jam I hadn't ordered. "Your mother's events never had this much excitement."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day.

" And it nearly was. This market was the first event in Laurel Creek history with my name alone on the permit — not my mother's guest list, not Lane-family goodwill humming underneath.

Mine. If it became a legend, it was going to be my legend, and I wanted approval over the final cut.

I worked the rest of the day like I could outrun the photograph. It mostly worked. Honey sold out. Soap sold out. The tutu girl retired at thirty-one ta-das to a standing ovation.

By seven, the market was bones and bunting, golden light and trampled grass, that specific exhausted hum of a thing that worked.

I was stacking sandbags at the arch — straps clipped, the way civilization intended — when my phone buzzed. Then buzzed again. Then it just kept going.

Earl's post had escaped.

Four hundred likes. Shared to the county events page.

Shared by the Millbrook Garden Society, with commentary.

And at 7:52, reposted by Northland Weekender — the regional tourism feed, the faceless eighty-thousand-follower one — Earl's blurry photo of me under the arch, arms up, jaw set, mid-command:

Laurel Creek's market launch had a Moment. We're told the arch is fine. The coordinator is a different story. One to watch. ??

One to watch.

Three comments down, an account with a blue check and an official little seal — Small Town of the Year — had written one line:

"Laurel Creek just made our radar. Lovely energy here."

A committee. With a seal. Had a radar. And my market was on it.

Directly beneath it, an account called Maple Falls Events had replied: "Cute. ??"

Cute. Smiley face. I felt my spine do something territorial.

The phone buzzed again. My mother: DIANE JUST CALLED. Emergency town hall, 9 a.m. The mayor keeps saying "opportunity" in capital letters. Wear the blazer. Leave the headset.

Then a voicemail from the mayor himself, forty seconds long, containing the words "regional," "momentum," "destiny," and — ominously — "you."

I sat down on a sandbag.

Across the green, the arch stood in the dark — upright, stable, whimsical, completely innocent, like it hadn't started any of this. And the worst part, the part I kept circling: Earl's photo was blurry, sideways, and amateur, and it had reached eighty thousand people by dinner.

Theo's wasn't blurry. Theo's had the light, the petal, the jaw. Theo's was true. And it went to an editor Monday.

Town hall at nine. A committee with Laurel Creek on its radar. A rival town with a smiley face. And one infuriating man at the inn holding the most dangerous version of me on a memory card.

I put the headset in my bag. Then I took it back out, because let's be honest — tomorrow was going to need both ears.