12. Tessa
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tessa
By morning, Buckhorn knows.
I can tell the second I step onto Main Street and feel the collective attention swing toward me like a weather vane catching a hard gust. Heads turn. Smiles bloom. Whispers scatter and then reform behind steaming coffee cups.
Engaged.
The word hangs over the town as fresh snow. Bright, disruptive, impossible to ignore.
My stomach flips, not with regret, exactly, but with the sharp awareness that this is no longer contained. This isn’t a private strategy between me and Nash anymore.
And I still haven’t told my uncle.
I adjust my scarf and keep walking, posture straight, steps measured. Control first. Panic later.
If I’m going to play this role, I’m going to play it well.
Buttercup Bakery is my first stop, mostly because Clara Jenkins has a sixth sense for personal upheaval and baked goods that borders on supernatural. The bell over the door jingles as I step inside, warmth and sugar wrapping around me as an embrace.
Clara looks up from behind the counter, and her eyes drop immediately to my left hand.
Then she gasps.
“Oh,” she breathes, pressing a hand to her chest like she’s just witnessed a small miracle. “Well. Would you look at that.”
I smile. “Good morning, Clara.”
She’s already moving, bustling around the counter with surprising speed for a woman in her late sixties. She takes my hand in both of hers, examining the ring.
Clara beams. “I always knew you’d settle down with someone who could handle you.”
I arch a brow. “Handle me?”
“Oh yes,” she says cheerfully. “You’ve got that look about you. Like you don’t suffer foolishness gladly.”
That’s one way to put it.
“And Nash McCoy,” she continues, “has been suffering foolishness since he was born.”
I bite back a laugh. “He has his moments.”
Clara squeezes my hand.
“I’m very happy for you, dear. Truly.” She pauses, eyes twinkling. “Wedding pies, of course. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Of course,” I say. “I wouldn’t dream of marrying without them.”
I leave with a small box of cookies I didn’t ask for and a sense of satisfaction I also didn’t expect, followed immediately by a prickle of unease.
Outside, the street hums.
Tessa Long. Engaged. To a McCoy.
Thomas has been busy with meetings and calls, always just out the door when I come home, always saying, “We’ll talk later.” I let myself believe there was time. That I could ease into it.
Now the town has beaten me to it.
I should have known this would happen.
“Tessa!”
I turn to see Millie Price marching toward me, clipboard tucked under her arm.
She stops short, eyes snapping to my hand. “Well, I’ll be—”
“Good morning, Millie.”
“You’re engaged,” she states.
“Yes.”
“To Nash McCoy.”
“Yes.”
She studies me for a long moment, expression stern, calculating.
“Hm,” she says finally. “That’ll shake things up.”
“I imagine so.”
Millie nods once. “Good. This town needs shaking.” Then, softer, “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
She marches off, already muttering about seating arrangements for the school play, and I continue down the street feeling oddly buoyant and increasingly aware that every step is carrying me closer to an inevitable confrontation.
At Grace Community Church, Pastor John Miller is locking up after a morning meeting. He smiles when he sees me, the kind of warm, open smile that makes people confess sins they weren’t planning on mentioning.
“Tessa,” he says. “I heard the news.”
“Did you,” I reply lightly.
He glances at the ring. “I did. And I wanted to say, I’m very glad.”
“For us?”
“For Buckhorn,” he says gently. “Sometimes two strong families finding common ground does more good than a dozen sermons.”
The irony almost makes me choke.
“That’s… kind of you,” I manage.
He nods. “We’ll be praying for you both.”
“I’m sure you will.”
I step back onto the sidewalk, the cold air sharp against my cheeks, and finally let the nerves fully surface.
Buckhorn knows.
Which means Thomas Long is about to know too.
At home that evening, the reckoning arrives.
Uncle Thomas is waiting in the sitting room, standing this time. His coat is still on. His jaw is locked tight enough that I can almost hear his teeth grind. My grandma sits by the window with her knitting, quiet but alert.
The door barely shuts behind me before he speaks.
“What,” he snaps, “did you do?”
“I can explain,” I say.
“Oh, you’re going to,” he snaps. “Because I hear about your engagement from Hank Lawson’s wife at the feed store, not from you.”
I draw a breath. “Uncle—”
“You were told to get close to Nash McCoy,” he cuts in. “Close enough to watch him. To listen. To find out what he’s hiding. Not to…” His gaze slashes to my hand, the ring catching the lamplight like a provocation, “turn yourself into a McCoy spectacle. Do you have any idea how this looks?”
“Yes.”
“No,” he snaps. “You don’t. This makes us look compromised. Weak. Like we’ve been bought off by a smile and a ring. A ring that did not come from nowhere.”
“No,” I say evenly. “It didn’t.”
His eyes narrow. “Explain that.”
Before I can answer, Grandma speaks from her chair by the window, needles stilling mid stitch.
“I allowed her to borrow it.”
The silence is immediate.
Thomas turns slowly. “You what?”
Grandma meets his stare without flinching. “The ring is a Long heirloom. It was meant to be worn with intention. This seemed like an appropriate one.”
His disbelief flashes hot and unfiltered. “You knew about this?”
“I knew about the plan,” Nell replies calmly. “Before the town did.”
“You went behind my back,” he snaps.
“I went ahead of you,” she corrects gently.
His gaze whips back to me. “You involved your grandmother and not me?”
“I involved the person who understands what this family loses when we hesitate,” I say. “And who remembers what happened the last time silence did the talking.”
Thomas exhales sharply through his nose. “So you staged this. With her blessing.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think,” he demands, “that I deserved to know?”
“I knew you’d stop me before I could explain,” I say quietly. “And I needed to get close enough to learn something first.”
His jaw tightens. “Learn what?”
I don’t look away.
“That there is no fiancée.”
The silence is instant.
He blinks. “What?”
“Obviously, Nash McCoy was never engaged,” I continue evenly. “He lied to the town council to keep his project alive. He panicked. Which is why I offered to… step in.”
A slow smile cuts across his face. “Then this ends tonight. We expose him. We tell the council he fabricated this to manipulate them. His project collapses before it starts.”
“No,” I say immediately.
He turns on me. “No?”
“If you expose him now, you win a moment,” I say. “And lose everything after it.”
“That lie disqualifies him.”
“It also binds him,” I counter. “Right now, he’s off balance. Desperate to keep the illusion standing. That makes him predictable.”
He steps closer, looming. “You’re protecting him.”
“I’m using him.”
That stops him cold.
I straighten in my chair. “If you expose him now, the council halts the project, yes. But someone else will come along in five years with deeper pockets and cleaner paperwork. And we’ll still be reacting instead of shaping the outcome.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it.
“You wanted leverage,” I continue. “Not noise. This gives us leverage.”
“How,” he demands, “does pretending to marry a McCoy give us anything but humiliation?”
“Because,” I say calmly, “I’m the only person in Buckhorn who knows his engagement is a lie, and I’m standing beside him while the town believes it’s real.”
The room goes very still.
“That means,” I go on, “every plan he makes has to withstand my scrutiny. Every boundary. Every document. He can’t afford to sidestep me without it looking like he’s hiding something.”
“And when the lie collapses?” he asks.
“If,” I correct. “If it collapses, it collapses on our terms.”
He drags a hand down his face, pacing again, slower now. “You’re asking me to sit on a loaded gun.”
“I’m asking you to let me hold it,” I reply.
He stops pacing.
“And you think this could give us more than stopping one project?” he asks quietly.
“Yes,” I say. “I think it could give us leverage that lasts. We’d have shared oversight, formal acknowledgment, and terms that can’t be quietly erased or ‘forgotten’ again.”
His jaw tightens. Not in anger now, but in calculation.
“This is dangerous,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And if you misstep—”
“Then I take the fall,” I say. “Not the family.”
Another long pause.
Then he exhales, sharp and controlled.
“Alright,” he says. “You proceed.”
Relief loosens a tightness in my chest, and I ruthlessly ignore the other feeling underneath it. The one that has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with a man who smiles too easily and panics under pressure.
“But you tell me everything,” he adds. “No more surprises.”
“You’ll have full reports,” I say.
He nods once. “Be careful.”
“I always am.”
“McCoys don’t play small.”
Neither do Longs, I think.
Thomas studies me for another long moment, then shifts his weight back, arms folding across his chest.
“And what’s next,” he snarls, “in this very clever plan of yours?”
“Nash is taking me out tonight.”
His brows knit. “Out where?”
“Into town,” I say. “Main Street.”
His mouth tightens. “You’re rewarding him.”
“I’m reinforcing the lie,” I correct.
Nell’s eyes flick to mine, approval glinting there.
“The town already believes we’re engaged,” I continue. “But belief needs maintenance. They expect to see us together. Comfortable. Unremarkable in a way that convinces them this didn’t just happen overnight.”
“And you think a date accomplishes that?”
“Yes,” I reply. “It tells Buckhorn this is normal.”
He considers. “And Nash knows this is part of your… strategy?”
“He knows this is part of the arrangement,” I say carefully. “Not all of the reasons behind it.”
That earns me a sharp look.
“You’re keeping him in the dark.”
“I’m keeping him manageable.”
Silence stretches. Then Thomas exhales through his nose, almost a laugh.
“Dinner and smiles,” he says. “That’s your opening move.”