The scent of old paper and leather, usually Liam’s greatest comfort, did nothing to soothe the frantic hum beneath his skin. He stood behind the counter of The Last Chapter, pretending to sort a stack of order slips that had been perfectly organized since yesterday afternoon.
His gaze, however, kept drifting out the large front window, across the manicured green of the town square, to the gleaming glass facade of The Daily Grind.
Chloe was inside, a silhouette of purposeful motion as she wiped down her espresso machine. The sight sent a phantom warmth across his lips.
The kiss.
It hadn’t been a gentle, hesitant thing. It had been a collision, a sudden and undeniable convergence of weeks of simmering tension, grudging respect, and a startling, unbidden attraction.
Fueled by wine and the shared triumph of their Read-A-Thon plan, it had felt, for a moment, like the most natural thing in the world.
This morning, it felt like a grenade he’d willingly pulled the pin on.
He, Liam Caldwell, the grumpy guardian of Havenwood’s literary past, had kissed Chloe Maxwell, the vibrant, modern usurper of its future.
And he’d liked it. More than liked it.
The memory of it—the soft surprise of her lips, the faint taste of merlot, the way she had leaned into him for a split second before they both pulled back, wide-eyed and breathless—was a persistent, distracting flicker at the edge of his thoughts.
His phone buzzed on the counter. Her name flashed on the screen.
Chloe: Morning. Still on for 10am to finalize the reader schedule?
Professional. Crisp.
Not a hint of last night’s chaos. Relief warred with a strange, sharp pang of disappointment.
He typed back, his thumb hovering over the screen.
Liam: Yes. My place.
He added the last two words without thinking. His dusty, cluttered office felt like safer territory than her bright, open café, where the memory of their kiss was still hanging in the air like steam from a freshly poured latte.
At precisely ten o’clock, the bell above his door chimed. Chloe stood there, holding a cardboard tray with two cups.
She wore a simple blue sweater that made her eyes look like the summer sky, and her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. She looked devastatingly normal.
“I brought coffee,” she said, her voice a little too bright. “A peace offering. Or, you know, just… coffee.”
“Thanks,” Liam mumbled, taking the tray. His fingers brushed against hers, a spark of static electricity that felt more like a lightning strike.
He jerked his hand back, nearly sloshing the hot liquid.
They retreated to his office in the back, the silence between them thick and suffocating. The room was a fortress of his own making, walled with books from floor to ceiling, dominated by his grandfather’s massive oak desk.
It was his sanctuary. But with Chloe sitting in the worn leather chair opposite him, it suddenly felt small, intimate, and entirely unsafe.
“Right,” she said, pulling a laptop from her tote bag and setting it on the desk between them.
“The reader schedule. I’ve color-coded the spreadsheet. Green for confirmed local authors, yellow for the ‘maybes,’ and blue for the community slots—teachers, council members, and so on.”
Her efficiency was a shield, and Liam gratefully hid behind it. “Good. That’s… organized.”
For the next hour, they were a model of productivity. They were Liam and Chloe, co-chairs of the fundraising committee.
They debated the merits of scheduling the high school’s dramatic poetry teacher in a primetime evening slot versus a quieter afternoon one. They cross-referenced the list of volunteers with the timeline, assigning people to manage the donation jars and the snack table.
Their conversation was a staccato rhythm of logistics and planning, a carefully constructed wall to keep the memory of the night before at bay.
But the wall was porous.
Every time she leaned forward to point at the screen, he caught the scent of her shampoo, something clean and citrusy that was so different from the musty, comforting smell of his store.
When he passed her a pen, their hands touched again, a fleeting contact that made the pulse in his wrist hammer against his skin. He found himself watching the way her brow furrowed in concentration, the small, unconscious way she bit her lower lip when considering a problem.
He’d once seen these habits as evidence of a ruthless, city-bred ambition. Now, they just seemed… like Chloe.
For her part, Chloe felt as if she were performing on a stage. Every word was deliberate, every gesture calculated to convey a sense of unflappable professionalism she was nowhere near feeling.
Inside, her mind was a whirlwind. She kept replaying the kiss, analyzing it from every angle.
Had it been a mistake? A product of wine and shared relief? Or was it something more?
Liam was so frustratingly difficult to read. He sat across from her, his expression as impassive as ever, but she noticed the subtle tells she’d come to recognize.
The way he ran a hand through his already messy hair when he was thinking, the slight tapping of his pen against the desk blotter. She looked at his hands—strong, capable hands that could gently handle a fragile, century-old book—and remembered the brief, firm pressure of them on her back.
A blush crept up her neck, and she cleared her throat, forcing her attention back to the spreadsheet.
“So, for the midnight-to-6am slot, I was thinking we could prerecord some of the readings. It might be hard to get live volunteers for that whole stretch.”
“No,” Liam said, his voice firmer than necessary.
“It has to be live. The whole point is the continuous, 24-hour community effort. A Read-A-Thon. Not a… Listen-A-Thon.”
“Okay, fine. Live it is,” she conceded, taken aback by his sharp tone. “Just a suggestion to ease the logistical burden.”
“Some things are worth the effort,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
Chloe’s heart sank. Was he talking about the fundraiser, or them?
Was he saying this—whatever was brewing between them—wasn’t worth the effort? Her own insecurities, echoes of a past business partner who had called her “too intense” and “all business,” began to whisper in her ear.
Just then, a young man with a backpack and a confident swagger walked into the main part of the store. He was clearly a tourist, looking more suited to a hiking trail than a dusty bookstore.
He peered into the back office.
“Excuse me?” he called out.
“I saw the sign for the coffee shop across the way. The Daily Grind? The woman working there said I might find the owner of this place in here with you.”
He grinned directly at Chloe. “I was just telling her she makes the best Americano I’ve had since I left Seattle.”
Chloe offered a polite, professional smile. “That’s me. Thanks so much, I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“Enjoyed it is an understatement,” the man continued, leaning against the doorframe, his eyes fixed on her.
“A town like this is lucky to have a place with your kind of vision. Any chance the visionary herself is free to give a guy a recommendation for a good local lunch spot?”
Liam’s posture stiffened. He watched the easy, practiced charm of the tourist, and the polite, professional way Chloe was handling it, and a hot, unfamiliar feeling coiled in his gut.
It was ugly and possessive and it tasted like rust. He didn’t have any claim on her. He was her business rival, the man who had greeted her arrival in town with a scowl.
And yet, the sight of this stranger so easily flirting with her made him want to stand up and physically place himself between them.
“She’s busy,” Liam said, his voice a low growl.
The tourist’s gaze flickered to Liam, surprised by the hostility. Chloe’s head snapped toward him, her eyes wide with confusion.
“Liam,” she said softly, a note of warning in her tone.
To the tourist, she said, “The Havenwood Diner, just past the square, is your best bet. Can’t go wrong with their daily special.”
“Great. Thanks,” the man said, his charming demeanor faltering slightly under Liam’s glare.
“Maybe I’ll see you around, then.” He gave Chloe one last smile and disappeared back into the store.
The silence he left behind was a hundred times heavier than before.
Chloe stared at Liam, her expression a mixture of bewilderment and hurt. “What was that?”
Liam couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t say, The thought of someone else looking at you that way makes me irrationally angry.
He couldn’t say, I kissed you last night and my entire world has tilted on its axis and I don’t know what to do.
So, he fell back on what he knew best: retreat.
“We’re trying to work,” he said curtly, his eyes fixed on the spreadsheet as if it held the secrets to the universe. “We don’t have time for distractions.”
The word hung in the air between them. Distractions.
Chloe’s face fell. The warmth in her expression cooled to a professional frost.
He had just categorized her, her business, and the friendly interactions that were part of her job as a mere distraction. Worse, he was lumping last night into that category, too.
It was just a distraction from the important work.
“Right,” she said, her voice clipped. She snapped her laptop shut.
“Of course. The work. Well, I think we have enough to go on for now. I’ll finalize the volunteer emails and send you a draft.”
She stood up, slinging her tote bag over her shoulder. The easy camaraderie of their planning session, the fragile truce they had built, was gone.
In its place was the same chilly distance that had defined their relationship from the beginning, only now it was laced with the bitter sting of a shared, and apparently regretted, moment.
“Chloe, wait,” Liam started, the protest clumsy on his tongue. He didn’t know what he wanted to say, only that he didn’t want her to leave like this.
But she was already walking away. “I have to get back,” she said, not looking at him.
“Shelves to stock. Customers to… distract.”
The bell above the door chimed her exit, the sound echoing the final, hollow note of their morning. Liam sank back into his chair, the scent of her citrus shampoo lingering in the dusty air.
He stared at the two coffee cups on his desk. One was empty. The other, his, sat untouched, cold.
Across the square, Chloe furiously wiped down a perfectly clean counter, her movements sharp and angry. She felt foolish and exposed.
She had allowed a crack in her armor, had let herself believe that underneath the grumpy, traditionalist exterior, there was a man she could connect with. But the second things got real, he had retreated, slamming the door shut behind him.
The kiss hadn’t solved anything. It had simply taken their complicated, tangled relationship—rivals, partners, neighbors—and added one more impossible, heartbreaking layer.