Page 9 of Autumn With The Grumpy Mountain Man

“Bring Shepherd if you can.” She laughed before I could even answer. “I’m kidding. Nobody’s gotten him to one of those in years.”

I asked him anyway. He was planing a board when I got back. I told him about the meeting and how much the committee would love to hear what he thought.

“No.”

“It’s only an hour.”

“No.”

“There will be cookies. Harper’s making them.”

He ran the plane down the board one more time. “Have one for me.”

I went to the meeting without him. There were folding chairs and a coffee urn and twelve people who had very strong feelings about hay bales. Harper’s cookies were gone in ten minutes. At least twenty minutes of the next two hours were spent complaining about the string lights on the courthouse lawn. Half the bulbs had been out for a week, nobody could find the problem, and nobody wanted to climb up and look.

Somebody said they should ask Shepherd. Somebody else said good luck with that. Everybody laughed. I laughed too, but I felt a little protective of him and didn’t know why.

It was dusk when I walked back to my car. The courthouse lawn was quiet, and the maples were just starting to go gold at the edges.

There was a truck parked on the grass. I recognized it.

Shepherd was up a ladder at the far end of the row of lights with a coil of wire over his shoulder and a pair of pliers in his teeth. He didn’t see me coming.

I walked over and put both hands on the ladder.

He glanced down. He took the pliers out of his mouth, and for just a second he looked guilty.

“How was the meeting?” he asked.

“Long. They spent twenty minutes talking about these lights.”

“Figured they would.”

“You could have just told them you’d fix it.”

“Then they’d want me at meetings.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Hold still,” I said. “I’ve got you.”

He looked at me a moment longer than he needed to. Then he went back to the wire.

I held the ladder while he worked. Neither of us said anything. It was the most comfortable silence I’d ever been in with anyone, which made no sense at all, because my heart wouldn’t slow down.

He twisted the last connection. The whole row of lights came on at once, warm and gold against the dark, all the way down the lawn.

“Oh,” I breathed.

He came down the ladder slowly. I’d stepped up onto the curb to hold it, and when he reached the ground, we were almost eye to eye for the first time. He was close. Close enough that I could see the gray in his eyes under the lights.

His gaze dropped to my mouth. It was only for a second. Then it came back up to mine, and he looked away.

I wanted him to look again. I wanted it so much it scared me.

“Don’t tell anybody,” he said.

“Your secret’s safe.”

He folded the ladder, put it in the truck bed, and drove off without another word.