Satyrday Night Fever (Harmony Glen #14)

Chapter 1

"—and for the position of Summer Dance Festival Chair, I'd like to nominate Marigold Bloom."

Marigold's pen slipped across her notebook, leaving a jagged line through her carefully organized list of agenda items. Her head snapped up from the corner seat she'd strategically chosen—third row from the back, partially obscured by a potted fern that desperately needed repotting.

*No. Absolutely not.*

The Harmony Glen Chamber of Commerce meeting had been progressing exactly as she'd expected: predictably, efficiently, and without requiring her participation beyond an occasional nod.

She'd shown up because business owners were expected to show up, and because Ellie Sanderson had cornered her at the bakery last week and extracted a promise.

Now Ellie stood at the front of the community center's meeting room, her white curls gleaming under the fluorescent lights, wearing a smile that tried—and failed—to appear innocent.

"She's been a wonderful addition to our business community," Ellie continued cheerfully, carefully avoiding Marigold's eyes. "Bloom & Vine has really revitalized that corner of Main Street."

She opened her mouth to object. *I've only been here eighteen months. I'm not qualified. I don't even know what the Summer Dance Festival involves.*

"I second the nomination!"

Doris Malcolm from her knitting circle raised her hand enthusiastically from the front row. Of course she did. Doris had been trying to set Marigold up with her nephew since February.

"Wonderful." Ellie's gavel came down with a decisive crack. "All in favor?"

A chorus of "ayes" rose from the assembled business owners. She counted at least fifteen hands going up around her. The peacock woman who owned the coffee shop gave her an encouraging thumbs-up. The centaur from the blacksmith forge nodded sagely.

"Motion carries. Congratulations, Marigold!"

*This isn't happening.*

The applause felt surreal, like it was happening to some other Marigold who actually volunteered for things and didn't have heart palpitations at the thought of organizing a town-wide event. Her cheeks burned as faces turned toward her, some curious, others warmly approving.

She managed a weak smile and a small wave, her notebook clutched against her chest like a shield.

The rest of the meeting blurred past in a haze of budget discussions and parking ordinance debates.

Her pen remained frozen over the same page, her mind racing through increasingly elaborate escape plans.

*I could say I have a family emergency. A standing appointment.

A deeply personal allergy to festivals.*

But she knew, with the resigned certainty that came from twenty-six years of being herself, that she would do no such thing. She would accept this unwanted responsibility because the alternative—making a scene, disappointing people, drawing even more attention to herself—was infinitely worse.

The moment Ellie adjourned the meeting, Marigold was on her feet.

She wove through the clusters of chatting business owners, sidestepping a conversation about property taxes and ducking past a heated debate over the new bike lane proposal.

Ellie had already collected her things and was heading toward the refreshment table at the back of the room, where someone had arranged cookies and a thermal carafe of coffee that smelled like it had been brewing since dawn.

"Ellie." Marigold caught up to her near the sugar packets. "I think there's been a misunderstanding."

"Marigold! There you are." Ellie turned with that same knowing smile, reaching out to squeeze her arm. "I knew you'd be perfect for this."

"I really don't think—"

"Nonsense. You're exactly what the festival committee needs. Fresh perspective, a creative eye." Ellie waved a hand dismissively. "And you did such lovely work on the window displays for the Spring Flower Walk."

"That was just… I arrange flowers. That's literally my job."

"Exactly! The Summer Dance Festival has always had the most uninspired decorations. All those sad paper streamers and those horrible plastic tablecloths. You'll bring some actual artistry to it."

Her careful objections crumbled under the force of Ellie's certainty. This was how it always went. Someone needed something, and she found herself agreeing because saying no felt like causing a fuss, and causing a fuss was the absolute last thing she ever wanted to do.

*You need to stop being such a doormat,* she told herself. It was the same thing she'd been telling herself for years.

"I don't have any experience with event planning," she tried again, though she could hear the defeat already creeping into her voice. "I wouldn't know where to start."

"That's why we've given you a co-chair."

Something in the old woman's tone made Marigold's stomach tighten.

"A co-chair?"

"Mm-hmm. He's around here somewhere—ah!" Ellie's face brightened as she looked past Marigold's shoulder. "There he is. Thallos! Over here!"

She turned.

The satyr crossing the room toward them moved like music made flesh.

Broad shoulders beneath a white linen shirt tucked into a wide belt, sleeves rolled to reveal powerful forearms that spoke of physical labor.

Light brown hair, slightly wavy, fell just past his ears, small curling horns rising from his temples.

Below the waist, powerful digitigrade legs covered in coarse fur the same warm brown as his hair, ended in cloven hooves.

But it was his face that made her breath catch.

Angular and striking, with a strong jaw and a mouth that seemed permanently curved toward amusement. Golden-brown, warm as aged whiskey, found hers across the room, and something in them sparked with interest.

He smiled.

*Oh no.*

She knew that smile. She'd grown up watching her mother use that exact same smile. The confident charm, the easy magnetism, the unspoken promise that you were suddenly the most fascinating person in any room.

It was a con artist's smile. A heartbreaker's smile.

A smile that said I know exactly how attractive I am, and I know you've noticed.

"Ellie." He reached them, his voice a warm rumble that seemed to resonate somewhere in her chest despite her best defenses. "Perfect timing. I was about to escape before someone tried to rope me into another pothole discussion."

"Thallos, this is Marigold Bloom. Your co-chair for the Summer Dance Festival."

Those golden eyes turned fully toward her, and she forced herself to meet them. She would not be flustered. She would not be charmed. She had spent her entire adult life cleaning up the messes left behind when charm stopped being charming.

"Marigold." He said her name like he was tasting it, rolling the syllables across his tongue. "The florist. I've seen your shop."

"Have you."

The flatness of her tone seemed to amuse rather than deter him. His smile widened, revealing a hint of slightly pointed canines.

"Hard to miss. You've got quite an eye for color. That display you did last month—the one with the blue delphiniums and the copper watering cans? I walked past it three times just to look at it."

*Don't let him flatter you. That's how it starts.*

"Thank you," she said, keeping her voice carefully neutral. "It was a collaboration with the antique shop next door."

"Modest too." He glanced at Ellie with an exaggerated look of approval. "Where did you find her?"

"She found us," Ellie said. "She's really turned the florist shop around since she took over. Quite the entrepreneurial spirit."

She suppressed a wince. The "entrepreneurial spirit" had been more like desperate necessity after her mother had abandoned both the shop and the lease payments.

She'd scraped together every cent she had to keep the business from collapsing—and then discovered, to her own surprise, that she actually loved it.

But that wasn't the story she told people.

"Well." She straightened her spine, clutching her notebook a little tighter. "I should probably get back to the shop. I have arrangements to finish for the Hendricks wedding."

"Already?" Thallos raised an eyebrow. "But we haven't even discussed the festival yet."

"I'm sure we can arrange a meeting at some point—"

"We should exchange information at least." He reached into the pouch on the belt and produced a business card with the fluid grace of someone who made even mundane gestures look deliberate. "My number's on there. The shop's address too, if you'd rather stop by in person."

She took the card automatically. Heavy cream stock, embossed lettering. *Thallos Fine Wines & Vineyard.* An address on the outskirts of town, where the farmland started rolling toward the hills.

"A vineyard," she said.

"Family tradition." Something flickered behind his easy smile—there and gone before she could identify it. "We've been growing grapes in this valley for three generations."

"I didn't know there were vineyards in Harmony Glen."

"Just the one." His head tilted slightly, those golden eyes studying her with an intensity that made her want to step back. "You should come and see it soon. We've just opened a new tasting room."

*He's inviting you to his vineyard. Of course he is.*

"I'll consider it," she said, which was the politest way she could think of to say absolutely not.

"Please do." He smiled again, but this time the warmth felt less practiced and more genuine. "I suspect we're going to be spending quite a lot of time together over the next few weeks, Marigold Bloom. Might as well get to know each other."

"The festival planning meetings should be sufficient for that."

Ellie laughed, a delighted sound that Marigold was beginning to deeply distrust. "Oh, you two are going to get along wonderfully. I can tell already."

*No,* she thought, slipping his card into her notebook and turning toward the door. *We absolutely are not.*

But as she made her way through the thinning crowd, she could feel those golden-brown eyes watching her intently.

She didn't look back.

She already knew what she'd see if she did: that devastating smile, that easy confidence, that magnetic pull that her mother had never learned to resist.

Marigold was not her mother.

She shoved through the community center's double doors and out into the late afternoon sunlight, breathing in the familiar scents of her adopted town—fresh-baked bread from the bakery, exhaust from the handful of cars on Main Street, and underneath it all, the green growing smell of approaching summer.

*A co-chair,* she thought grimly, fishing her keys from her bag. *Of course they gave me a co-chair. Of course he had to be—*

She didn't finish the thought. She didn't need to.

The walk back to Bloom & Vine took her down Main Street, past the motley assortment of businesses, interspersed with houses.

Harmony Glen wasn't a large town—you could walk from one end to the other in twenty minutes if you didn't stop to chat—but it had a density of personality that still surprised her.

Humans lived here alongside satyrs and pixies, centaurs and selkies, goblins and the occasional visiting fae.

They ran businesses together, argued over zoning laws together, organized festivals together.

Festivals like the one that she was now apparently responsible for.

She unlocked the shop's front door and stepped into the familiar green sanctuary of Bloom & Vine.

The scent of fresh flowers wrapped around her like a hug—roses and eucalyptus, sweet peas and herbs from the little kitchen garden she'd started in the back room.

The vintage garden pieces scattered throughout the space gave it the comfortable feeling she'd wanted.

This was hers. All hers. The first thing she'd ever built for herself instead of for someone else.

She set her notebook on the counter and stared at the business card still tucked between its pages.

*Thallos Fine Wines & Vineyard.*

She could still see that knowing smile and those watchful golden eyes, and hear the way he'd said her name like it meant something.

*Dangerous,* she thought. *He's dangerous.*

Not in any physical sense. In the way that quicksand was dangerous, or riptides, or all those things that looked perfectly safe until you were already in too deep to escape.

She had spent her whole life learning to recognize the warning signs.

She wasn't going to ignore them now.