Booked Up with the Mountain Man Firefighter (Copper Peak Sparks #2)

1. Ellie

ELLIE

The courtyard wakes up the same way every morning.

Kendall is next. She backs her truck up to the outfitter’s side entrance and starts hauling boxes before the sun clears the ridge. She doesn’t wait for help. She doesn’t need it. Every box is labeled, stacked, and inventoried before any of the rest of us have turned our signs to open.

Laurelle brings a bucket of wildflowers to the florist doorway. Neve props her workshop door open, and the courtyard catches the scent of cedar and vanilla. Millie wipes down the candy shop window with a cloth and arranges the taffy display.

I watch all of it from behind the glass.

It’s where I’m comfortable. In the bookstore, between the shelves, where it’s quiet enough to think and safe enough to observe without being observed.

I know all of them. I know Lea takes her own coffee black but adds cinnamon when she thinks nobody’s looking. I know Kendall rebraids her hair before any customer interaction—a quick tug and twist that takes three seconds. I know Laurelle talks to her flowers.

I know all of it because I watch. Because watching is what I’m good at.

The firehouse crew starts filtering through around six.

They come for Lea’s coffee, cutting through the courtyard in boots and station tees, filling the quiet space with low voices and the smell of smoke that never fully washes out.

I know them the way I know the women. From a distance. Through the glass.

Holt comes through first. Steady, direct, coffee and gone.

Drew is usually behind him, big enough to block the light in the doorway when he passes the bookstore window.

He has a full sleeve on one arm and a phoenix on the other shoulder, and he always nods at me through the glass. I always nod back.

Then Mack.

Mack Dunne doesn’t just walk through the courtyard.

He fills it. He’s talking before he’s through the archway—loud enough that I can hear him through the window even when it’s closed.

Today, he’s arguing with someone about whether protein powder counts as cooking if you put it in a blender with fruit.

He’s gesturing with both hands. He’s grinning. He’s always grinning.

I’ve watched him cross this courtyard a hundred mornings.

He’s the kind of person I read about in books and recognize instantly.

The charmer. The one the author writes as magnetic and effortless—the guy who makes a room feel smaller just by being in it.

In a book, he’d be the best friend’s love interest. The comic relief.

The one everyone loves but nobody looks at closely.

I watch him head toward Lea’s the way I always do. Safe behind the glass.

But today, he doesn’t walk past.

He slows. Looks toward the bookstore. Changes direction.

My hand tightens on my coffee mug. He’s crossing the courtyard, heading straight for my door. I rush behind the counter to make it look like I wasn’t standing at the window, gawking like a teenager with a crush.

“Morning, book girl.”

He fills the shop the way he fills everything. The air changes. The quiet I’ve built between these shelves doesn’t stand a chance against him. He’s looking around like he’s never been in here before. I’m fairly certain he hasn’t.

“Ellie,” I say.

“I know your name.” He grins. “Book girl’s better.”

I set my coffee mug under the counter where he can’t see it and fold my hands on the counter. “Can I help you with something?”

“I need a book.”

“You’re in the right place.”

“Specifically, I need a book that proves that tomatoes are a fruit. Because Dean just told me they’re a vegetable, and I told him I’d bring receipts.”

I stare at him. “You came into a bookstore to win an argument about tomatoes?”

“I came into a bookstore to win an argument about tomatoes with documented evidence.” He leans both forearms on the counter. He takes up more space than it was built for. “Receipts, Ellie. I need receipts.”

“Tomatoes are botanically a fruit. Everyone knows that.”

“Dean doesn’t know that. Dean thinks if it goes in a salad, it’s a vegetable.”

“That’s…not how it works.”

“That’s what I said.” He pushes off the counter and starts walking the aisles like he owns the place, running his fingers along the spines, reading titles at random, picking up a paperback and putting it back in the wrong spot. I resist the urge to fix it. “You got a gardening section?”

“Second shelf, far wall.”

He doesn’t go to the second shelf. He stops at the display near the front window. My display. The books I’ve hand-selected because they matter to me.

He picks up the top book and reads the first line out loud. “’The morning I decided to disappear, the sky was the color of old paper.’” He turns to me. “So it’s a sad one.”

“It’s not sad.”

“First line is about disappearing. Sounds sad.”

“It’s about reinvention.” The words come out before I can stop them. “She’s not disappearing. She’s shedding a version of herself that everyone else built for her. The whole book is about the difference between being invisible and choosing to be unseen.”

He’s looking at me. Not at the book. At me.

“That sounds like two very different things,” he says.

“They are.”

He holds my gaze for a beat longer than makes sense. Then he grins again, sets the book back on the display, and picks up another one. He reads the first line with exaggerated drama, voice pitched low and serious, getting the tone completely wrong.

“That’s not a thriller,” I say.

“The cover has a knife on it.”

“It’s a chef’s memoir.”

“A chef with a knife.”

“All chefs have knives. That doesn’t make it a thriller.”

He laughs, full and loud, and it carries to the ceiling. Something about the sound catches me off guard.

I laugh.

Out loud. Not a polite smile, not the quiet exhale I give customers when they make a joke about judging books by covers. An actual laugh. It surprises me more than it surprises him.

He stops.

The grin fades. Like someone turned the volume down on his whole face.

For half a second, he’s standing in my bookstore without the performance, without the noise, and I can see something behind his eyes that isn’t smiling at all.

Something that looks like a person who doesn’t know what to do when someone actually sees him.

Then it’s gone. The grin is back, bright and practiced, and he sets the chef’s memoir on the wrong shelf and heads for the door.

“I’ll come back for the tomato thing,” he says. “Tell Dean I’m building my case.”

The bell rings. He’s gone.

I’m standing behind the counter in a room that feels different than it did ten minutes ago. The quiet is the same quiet. The shelves are the same shelves. But something shifted, and I can’t put it back where it was.

I walk to the display and straighten the book he moved.

My heart is racing.