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It had been years since I’d spent this much time thinking about a woman. Years. Hell, since I was a teenager with Jill if I was being honest. I wasn’t even sure teenage Will tried not thinking about Jill this hard. At least back then I’d been busy with extracurriculars. Basketball, Yearbook Club, and one year, Class President. All the things Dad thought were too ambitious; things I specifically involved myself in probably half because I knew it would piss him off.

“What kind of father doesn’t want his son to be class president?” I’d asked Mom after a particularly gnarly fight with him.

“He’s proud of you,” she’d assured me, “he’s just not good at showing it.”

Even back then I couldn’t help but feel like that was bullshit. How hard was it to pat me on the back and say, ‘good job’? Instead, when I brought him news about another one of my successes, he’d say things like, ‘what does a yearbook have to do with the real world?’

Now, I had a real-world job. And all my efforts in high schoolhadhelped prepare me for it, thank you very fucking much.

Not that I was doing a good job of it this week.

I ran a hand over my chin as Fred carried on, my stubble prickly under my palm. I’d shaved this morning, hadn’t I? I could swear I’d run a razor over my silvering beard in the bathroom, giving myself yet another pep talk.

You didn’t want her to call anyway. Quit being such a baby.

One of Fred’s furry caterpillar eyebrows jacked halfway up his forehead as he described a particularly grueling shot.

I pictured Michelle’s eyebrow going up as I asked her something at the park. The way her lips parted when she laughed. The way her laughter had felt like it was dancing across my skin.

I could feel it now.

Damn it.

I wrapped my hand around my phone in my pocket, gripping it so tightly I had to tell myself to let go before I cracked the screen. Why was I so goddamned glum about Michelle not calling? It wasn’t like I’d given her my number. It was Remy’s number. For babysitting services only.

Maybe she just didn’t need a babysitter.

“Will?”

“Yes?” I said. Shit, he’d asked me something.

There was a tense pause, then Fred nodded vigorously. “You’re right. You’re right, Archer, that’s precisely what I mean.”

He launched back into it.

I said a silent prayer I’d told my assistant Sheila to call me for something urgent if I wasn’t out in twenty minutes.

Mainly because I knew Fred hadn’t called me in here to talk golf. I knew he’d called me in to pitch me, once again, the idea that I ought to run for his seat next year.

There wasn’t a chance that was happening. I may have often thought about all the things I’d do differently than Fred if I were mayor, but I would never actually run for the job. I knew exactly what it entailed—I’d met enough of them over the years—and I wasn’t interested.

Fred was my least favorite of the three mayors of Barkley Falls I’d watched pass through the office since I’d been here. The first mayor I’d worked with had been a feisty Black septuagenarian named Barbara Chambers. She was all of five feet tall but had somehow had the biggest and angriest residents, developers, and business owners eating out of the palm of her hand. If she’d asked me to run, I might have actually said yes. I respected the hell out of that woman and a decade later still jumped whenever Barbara called, which was about once a year to demand to know what was happening at her beloved town hall. Of course, she always knew precisely what was happening, she just wanted someone to tussle with over what she thought should be done about it. If I ran into her on Main Street, usually with her purple-haired best friend Pearl Bradley, she’d harangue me in person. They’d tell me what they’d do, and I’d tell them what I’d do, then both women would give me a little wink or a grin and tell me they’d see me at the next quarterly Ladies’ Auxiliary rummage sale, where I did all the lifting of donations too heavy for them to handle.

But Fred? Fred did more socializing than mayoring and cared less about the people of Barkley Falls than his cronies and their development projects. He was a self-centered blowhard whose every word of correspondence I needed to edit; whose ridiculous ideas for putting Barkley Falls on the tourist map usually benefitted his real estate investment firm, and who liked to go on and on and on about golf. And then on some more.

If I suspected there was anything intentionally unethical or illegal about his actions, I’d take action. But, for all his irritations, I didn’t think there was. For now, I still worked for the guy, and I didn’t need another headache at the moment.

I generally gave Fred a five-minute limit on golf talk, but today I’d been distracted by the scent of caramel and vanilla. By long, thick lashes and a sultry voice. By a woman whose flashes of pain I saw when she thought I wasn’t looking. But a glance at the clock told me he’d been going on for fifteen minutes.

“Fred,” I said, during a brief pause, “If you don’t mind I should be getting back to it.” I started getting up.

“Right you are,” he said. Then, “Have you given any more thought to my offer?”

There it was.

“You know I’m flattered,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. I knew Fred getting me in the mayor’s seat wasn’t because he loved my stickhandling of every single issue in this town. It was strictly for his own interests—he was planning on taking his real estate firm into private development after his term was up, and he wanted the ear of someone he knew in the mayor’s seat. “But I’m perfectly happy where I am.” It wasn’t quite true, but Fred didn’t need to know that. Besides, what else was I going to do? Starting a business wasn’t really my jam, I liked the giving-back-ness of the public sector, and I’d reached the top where I was. Unless, of course, I accepted Fred’s offer.

“Fine where you are, huh,” Fred said. “Even the weddings?”