Page 141 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

Sawyer Devereaux has one of those laughs that seems to cost him something to give — I noticed it the very first night I met him, the way it gets surprised out of him rather than offered. I've made a small, private study of collecting them since, the way I collect anything rare and worth the keeping.

A dangerous hobby, that. I'd do well to remember which side of this whole thing I'm meant to be standing on.

I study the engine a moment. It isn't complicated — I can see the trouble from here, a corroded connection and a couple of wires shaken loose from years of exactly this stubbornness. My father's voice surfaces, unwelcome, in the back of my skull:a man ought to be able to fix his own things.One of the very few useful things he ever handed me.

"I can fix this," I say. "Give me ten minutes." I start on my shirt buttons. "But you have to swear you won't tell a living soul."

Sawyer's eyebrows climb.

"Why's that, exactly?"

I shrug out of my shirt and drape it over his side mirror, careful, because it's a good shirt and I'm not about to sacrifice it to his truck's bad habits.

When I glance back, Sawyer is looking at me.

Not at the engine.

Atme—a slow, unhurried pass from my shoulders down, the kind of look a man doesn't quite intend to let show.

His scent shifts, subtle, a warm thread moving through the magnolia and black pepper and aged bourbon of him.Well. Isn't that interesting.I file it away with the pollen and the light and all the other things I notice and don't mention.

"Because I'm a florist," I say, leaning into the engine. "I have a reputation to protect. If it gets around that I'm any good with an engine, Hollis down at the garage will never leave me in peace. He's been trying to recruit me for years."

I work the corroded bolt loose.

"He tried the same thing with Cade. Cornered him at the Driftglass, wouldn't quit, but Cade's spoken for, one way or another, so I'm the next target. I like my flowers. I'd like to keep my quiet Tuesdays."

The wildflowers have taken over the ditch behind us — chicory gone that impossible blue, Queen Anne's lace nodding on its stems, a few late black-eyed Susans still holding on. Nobody planted them. Nobody tends them. They are the most honest garden in the county, and they'll outlast every arrangement I've ever charged three hundred dollars for.

I let that thought settle while I work another wire loose, the warm asphalt ticking as it cools, Sawyer's bourbon-and-pepper scent drifting over to me on the evening air.

"Fair enough." Sawyer leans a hip against the truck, crossing his arms over that bare chest, entirely too comfortable with himself. "Still doesn't explain whyyoutook your shirt off, though."

"It's a good shirt. I'm not grinding engine grease into good cotton for a truck that doesn't deserve me." I twist a wire free. "The better question, Devereaux, is whyyou'rethe one standing shirtless on the side of a state highway. You didn't know I was coming. You've just been out here, half-dressed, waving at traffic like a very handsome cautionary tale."

He has the grace to look briefly caught out.

"I've got a date," he admits. "With Amber. Tonight, at the Driftglass." He rubs the back of his neck. "I'm meeting her there. She's driving in from that vendor thing over in Cutter's Bay, already had the work truck, so it made more sense than doubling back. I didn't want to walk in smelling like an engine and looking like I lost a fight with one. So." He gestures down at his own bare torso. "Preventative measures."

Something goes tight and quiet in the middle of my chest.

So this is what I'm doing with my evening. Kneeling in the roadside dirt, fixing the truck that will carry another man to the woman I love, so that he won't be late to her.

I let the feeling move all the way through me. I look at it honestly.

Then I set it down, because it's mine to carry, and I earned every ounce of it.

"Well," I say, and I'm proud of how even it comes out. "Good on you. For taking the initiative."

Sawyer studies me a long moment, head tilted, wearing that unnervingly perceptive look of his.

"You're something else, you know that? Most Alphas in your shoes would've driven right on past and let me rust out here for the crows." A beat. "You're really not jealous."

I think about it, because he's earned a real answer instead of a reflexive one.

I sit back on my heels and wipe my hands on the rag from his toolbox.

"I want Amber happy," I say finally. "That's the whole of it, once you strip away everything else. That's my priority — her, happy — whether or not I'm the man who gets to make her that way." I turn back to the wires. "Do I hate that you're already standing where I'm still trying to get to? That you can walk into a bar tonight and simplybewith her, easy as breathing, while I'm out here relearning how to earn the right to buy her a coffee?" A dry breath. "God, yes. I hate it. It sits in me like a swallowed stone."