5. Harper
The lantern vendor had delivered three hundred real candles to an event specifically approved for battery-operated candles.
Three hundred.
Harper stood in the middle of Maple Peak Community Hall, staring at the open boxes like they contained crucial evidence in a serial killer case.
Tiny ivory candles stared back at her. Innocent-looking. Flammable. Mocking.
Tim stood beside her with the expression of a man who had accidentally uncovered a conspiracy.
“I checked the order form,” he said. “It says LED candles.”
Harper smiled unhappily.
“Tim, I know.”
“And the boxes say wax.”
“Yes.”
“Wax is not LED.”
“Excellent, Tim.”
Logan Pierce crouched beside one of the boxes, lifted a candle, and turned it over in his hand.
He did not look surprised.
Of course he did not.
Fire captains probably expected betrayal from all objects.
“This doesn’t get used,” he said.
Harper folded her arms. “Thank you for clarifying that we should not hand open flames to children and tourists in the wind.”
His eyes lifted to hers. “You’re getting sarcastic.”
“I’m getting festive.”
“You’re getting stressed.”
“I multitask.”
A volunteer near the stage cleared his throat. “Should we unload the rest?”
“No,” Harper said.
Logan said, “Absolutely not.”
They looked at each other.
Harper sighed. “I hate when we agree. It feels like losing.”
“It feels like safety.”
“Same emotional family.”
Logan’s mouth twitched, but he looked back at the boxes before the smile could fully form. He had been doing that all morning—almost smiling, almost softening, almost stepping close enough for Harper to forget he was the man currently threatening half her festival layout.
Almost was becoming a dangerous word.
She turned to the volunteers. “Okay. New plan. These candles go back into the delivery van. Nobody opens another box. Nobody lights anything. Nobody says, ‘But just one.’ There is no just one. Fire spreads because people believe in just one.”
Logan looked at her.
“What?” she asked.
“That was good.”
“Don’t sound proud. It makes me itchy.”
“I’m allowed to approve public-safety messaging.”
“I’m allowed to find it unsettling.”
Tim raised his hand.
Harper closed her eyes. “Please don’t.”
“I found two boxes of battery candles in the storage room.”
Her eyes opened.
Logan looked at Tim like he had just risen from deep professional disappointment into a sudden usefulness.
“How many?” Logan asked.
“Maybe eighty? I think they were from last year’s Founder’s Day thing.”
Harper pointed at Tim. “You beautiful, chaotic woodland creature.”
Tim blinked. “Thank you?”
“Go get them. Check for batteries. Do not lick anything.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Past performance has made me cautious.”
Tim ran off.
Logan stood, candle still in his hand. “Eighty won’t cover the whole lantern walk.”
“No. but it covers the entrance path and photo arch. We move the lantern walk to reflective markers and string lights. Less magical, but still pretty and substantially less likely to become a news headline.”
“Good adjustment.”
There it was again.
Good.
From Logan Pierce that single word had the emotional effect of a hand pressed between her shoulder blades. Steadying. Warm. Deeply inconvenient.
Harper looked down at her clipboard. “I do occasionally know things.”
“I noticed.”
She did not know what to do with that, so she did what she always did. She made it ridiculous.
“Careful, Captain. Compliment me twice in one day and I’ll start billing you for encouragement.”
“You invoice by the hour?”
“By the emotional impact.”
“Then I’ll keep it brief.”
“Coward.”
This time the smile escaped him.
Small. Quick. Still devastating.
The community hall doors opened behind them, and a gust of snow blew across the floor. One of the older volunteers, Mrs. Bell, shuffled in with her coat hood pulled tight.
“Roads are getting ugly,” she announced. “Ethan says the west bend is icing fast.”
Harper glanced toward the windows.
Snow fell hard now, thick and slanted, blurring the pine trees beyond the parking lot. The soft morning dusting had turned serious while they were inside solving Candle-Gate.
Of course it had.
The festival was two days away. There were vendor placements to finalize, signage to sort, emergency routes to mark, battery candles to revive, and apparently weather had decided to enter its villain era.
Harper clapped once. “All right. Everyone local, head home before the roads get worse. Leave the candle boxes here by the door. I’ll call the vendor and practice using calm language in a threatening way.”
Mrs. Bell frowned. “You need help, honey?”
“I always need help. But right now, I need all of you not sliding into ditches.”
Logan’s gaze moved to her.
She felt it immediately.
“You too,” he said.
Harper smiled at the volunteers as they began gathering coats and bags. “I live five minutes away.”
“Seven in good weather.”
“You timed it?”
“I know the roads.”
“Creepy and useful.”
“The west bend freezes before the rest. You’re not driving it if it gets worse.”
Harper turned fully toward him. “That sounded suspiciously like an order.”
“It was a recommendation with experience behind it.”
“Ah. A command in a cardigan.”
“I’m not wearing a cardigan.”
“Emotionally, you are.”
Mrs. Bell made a noise that might have been a laugh and escaped with the others before Logan could defend himself.
Within fifteen minutes, the community hall emptied.
The sudden quiet felt too large.
Outside, snow hissed against the windows. Inside, half the festival lived in organized piles: lantern frames, tablecloths, extension-cord covers, ropes, signage, folding chairs, crates of paper cups, and one ceramic fox watching from a supply table with judgmental patience.
Harper stood in the middle of it and checked her list.
Then checked it again.
Then flipped to the weather contingency plan.
Then to the vendor list.
Then back to the safety map.
Logan watched from near the stage.
She felt that too.
“You can stop looking at me like I’m going to climb into the candle boxes with a lighter,” she said.
“I wasn’t.”
“What were you doing?”
“Watching you pretend you’re not overwhelmed.”
Harper’s fingers tightened on the clipboard.
She hated that he saw it.
She hated even more that he said it gently.
“I am not overwhelmed.”
“Harper.”
“No.” She lifted a hand. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say my name like you’re pulling a chair out for my nervous breakdown.”
His expression did not change, but something in his eyes softened.
That was worse than irritation.
She could volley back irritation, but softness slipped right past her defenses.
“I’m not breaking down,” she said, quieter now. “I’m recalculating.”
“Controlled urgency?”
“Yes.”
“I’m starting to think that means panic with office supplies.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
It came out too sharp.
Too close to something else.
She set the clipboard on a table and pressed both palms flat beside it.
“I had this planned,” she said. “I checked everything. Twice. Three times, actually, because Tim exists. The vendor confirmed LED candles. The map works. The volunteers are briefed. The weather plan is annoying but manageable. And still—”
She stopped.
Logan waited.
He had a way of doing that. Not filling the silence. Not rushing her. Just standing steady enough that words felt less likely to fall apart if she let them go.
Harper stared at the map.
“And still one wrong box shows up and suddenly I’m right back there,” she said.
Logan’s voice was low. “Back where?”
Her throat tightened.
She could have joked.
She almost did.
There were a dozen lines ready. Something about candle trauma. Something about suing wax. Something about requiring all future vendors to sign blood oaths.
But Logan was not smiling now.
And for once, Harper was tired of being funny before she was honest.
“The city,” she said.
He stepped closer, but not too close.
“The event that went wrong?”
She nodded.
“A charity gala. Big hotel. Bigger donors. My boss wanted perfect, expensive, dramatic. There was a lighting vendor I didn’t trust. Their equipment looked old, and one of their extension runs was wrong. I flagged it.”
She swallowed.
“Twice in writing. Once in person. I have a beautiful little email chain where I sound deeply irritating and completely correct.”
Logan’s jaw tightened.
“The vendor said it was fine. My boss said I was being anxious. Then during the main speech, one of the rigs sparked. It wasn’t a huge fire.
Nobody died. But there was smoke, panic, water damage from sprinklers, two minor injuries, a room full of donors filming everything, and a lot of people needing someone to blame. ”
“You.”
Harper smiled faintly. “Gold star, Captain.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I don’t need to be there to know a flagged hazard ignored by a vendor and supervisor isn’t your failure.”
The words hit too fast.
Too cleanly.
Harper looked away.
If he had been comforting in a vague way, she could have dismissed it. If he had said everything happens for a reason, she could have thrown a lighted candle at him.
But he had gone straight to the truth.
And the truth was dangerous because some part of her had been waiting a long time to hear it from someone who understood risk.
“My boss said I was responsible for vendor oversight,” she said. “She said I should have pushed harder.”
“Did she have authority over the vendor?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“Not final authority.”
“Then she left you holding someone else’s match.”
Harper closed her eyes.
There it was.
The thing she had not known she needed.
Not soft. Not sweet. Not wrapped in pity.
Just precise truth.
A clean cut through the lie she had been carrying.
When she opened her eyes, Logan was closer.
Still not touching her.
Still letting her have space.
Which somehow made her want to close it.
Not good.
“You really are good at this,” she said.
“Fire code?”
“Making emotional devastation sound like an incident report.”
His mouth softened. “I can stop.”
“Don’t.”
The word came out before she could protect herself from it.
Logan’s gaze dropped to her mouth.
Only for a second.
But Harper saw it.
Felt it.