Page 2 of Fall Into Love

“You left your back window open.” He nods at it, and my stomach drops, because…yeah, okay. I did. The little window over the utility sink in the back, the one I crack every time I run the steamer because that room turns into a sauna and the steamer’s been running overtime with all the fall inventory. It’s open now, not broken. Just open, the way I left it, because I am apparently the world’s most helpful victim.

“I…leave it open for the steam,” I admit. “But it’s tiny. No one could possibly fit through there, right?”

“Mm.” Dale peers at the windowsill, and for one hopeful second, I think he’s found something. Then he says, “You got some dirt tracked here.” He straightens up with a knee-crack that echoes in the small storage space. “I reckon they got in through there and made your mess and got back out. I’ll write it up. Kids.” He says kids the way crime shows say case closed.

I look at the little dark smudges along my windowsill. They do look like they could be from a shoe. A small shoe. A very small, very determined burglar who came all this way to knock over sweaters and leave forty dollars in the drawer.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I mutter.

Yet Dale is already capping his pen. “You’ll want to tidy up before you can say for certain what’s gone,” he offers, which is the single most useful thing he’s said, and also makes me want to cry. “Give a holler if you find something worth a fuss.”

The bell over the door jingles, and a voice I’d know anywhere cuts through the gloom of my morning. “Emma? Oh my god.” Molly comes through the door in her flour-dusted apron, blond ponytail high on her head. She takes one look at the disaster and crosses the room and hugs me. She smells like her bakery, The Village Bakery, next door, where she was probably elbow-deep in pumpkin scones when she saw Dale’s cruiser out front.

“What happened?” she demands, pulling back, hands on my shoulders, scanning my face for injury. “Are you okay?”

My shoulders sag under the weight of everything, including her hold on me. “I’m fine. It happened overnight. I just found it like this.”

Dale tips his hat. “Morning, Molly. Mind telling that fiancé of yours the porch light’s flickering again.”

“I’ll send Luke by, Sheriff,” Molly says sweetly. Dale lets me know to swing by later to grab a copy of his report and to let him know once I’ve taken a full inventory. Molly waits exactly until the door shuts behind him before she turns back to me and mouths, is he actually doing anything?

“He thinks it was kids,” I say. “Or the wind.”

“The wind? Really?”

I sigh heavily. “That’s what I said.”

Molly surveys the space again. “Em. Do you think it could have been…?”

She doesn’t say his name. She doesn’t have to. She was there for the whole ugly unraveling; she’s the one who sat on my apartment floor and helped me demolish an entire carton of Panda Paws and told me I was allowed to follow my dreams, no matter the size of them.

“I don’t know,” I say, and my voice cracks right down the middle. “That’s the horrible part. I don’t know.” Derek and I didn’t date long, but it was a rough end, that’s for sure. And not being one for confrontation, I let him control a lot of my life. But when a gorgeous space on Main Street opened up for rent, my heart was sold. I used the money I’d previously promised to invest in Derek’s start-up and instead followed my silly, little boutique dreams.

It was nothing but misery with him from then on out.

I was selfish in his eyes, and the things he said to me, called me… Somehow I still waited for him to end it between us. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell him to kick rocks. I had to wait patiently and hope he’d leave on his own. And boy, did he.

With my car, of course.

A small price to pay for peace, I suppose. At least, that’s how I justify it to myself.

Molly squeezes my hand, and I’m about to fall apart over sweaters and candy and a crappy ex three hours away who somehow still gets to ruin my mornings, when I hear it.

The low, unmistakable rumble of a motorcycle slowing outside. The engine cuts and Molly’s whole face changes as she stares behind me at the street. She goes very still, and then, to my absolute confusion, a slow, delighted smile spreads across it. “Oh,” she breathes. “Oh, yes, this is good.”

“What’s good? Nothing about this is—”

The bell chimes once again. I turn, and there, filling up my shop doorway with broad shoulders and the autumn morning shining behind him, is Caleb Foster. Mayor of our small town and resident goofy golden retriever in human form.

Caleb, who I have successfully avoided having a single meaningful conversation with for months, because every time he comes within ten feet of me, my brain stutters alongside my tongue. He’s in a leather jacket over a black T-shirt that says, I’M HERE FOR THE BOOS, with a cartoon ghost holding a beer. He should look ridiculous; he does look ridiculous, and he also looks like something I’d very much like to hide behind for the rest of my natural life.

His eyes go straight past me to the tipped racks, the scattered mess. And his whole easy, small-town-good-guy expression drops away into something I’ve never once seen on his face.

“Emma.” He steps inside, and his voice comes out low and rough and nothing like the guy who plays guitar and volunteers to be the one sitting in the dunk tank for charity every summer festival. “What happened here? Are you all right?”

And god help me, after the morning I’ve had…

I can’t help but burst into tears.