Page 19 of Brewing Up My Fresh Start

The words slam into me. My smile falters before I can glue it back into place. “I’m not hiding. I’m being?—”

“Professional,” he finishes, the word flat. Then softer—almost reluctant—“Is that what you call the way you keep looking at me?”

My heart stutters. “I look at all community partners with the same level of appropriate?—”

“Appropriate what?” His brow lifts, his voice rough. “Because the way you go breathless every time I walk through that door doesn’t read very… appropriate.”

Heat crawls up my neck. He’s been watching. Cataloguing. Noticing things I didn’t even admit to myself.

“That’s—I don’t—” The sunshine slips.

“You felt it yesterday.” His tone is quiet but unshakable, like he’s stating a fact. “When we argued preservation versus development. The air changed.”

“We were talking about zoning,” I whisper.

“We were circling each other,” he corrects. His jaw tightens. “Like two people too stubborn to admit what’s happening.”

“Don’t.” My voice cracks, raw.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make this complicated.”

Silence stretches. His eyes pin me, unreadable. Then, rougher than before: “It’s already complicated. Has been since you walked into that first meeting, all sunshine and certainty, making me rethink things I didn’t want to rethink.”

The confession knocks the air out of me. My composure scatters like spilled sugar.

“Grayson—”

“Tell me I’m wrong.” His voice drops, unsteady now. “Tell me I’m imagining the way you light up and then hide behind that fake smile the second you see me.”

I should retreat, armor back up. Instead, I lean closer, pulled into his orbit.

“You’re impossible to work with,” I breathe.

“And you’re so relentlessly cheerful it’s borderline criminal.”

“You argue with every idea I have.”

“Your ideas make me want to break rules I shouldn’t even be thinking about.”

The honesty steals my breath. We’re too close now, heat sparking between us.

“This is such a terrible idea,” I whisper.

“The worst,” he agrees gruffly—but he doesn’t move back. Neither do I.

A knock on the door explodes through the moment like a grenade.

“Michelle?” Caroline’s voice carries through the wood with cheerful destruction. “Amber and Brett are researching wedding venues, and Grandma Hensley is asking if you’re planning to attend tonight’s town council session!”

I jerk back, the spell shattered, reality crashing over me like arctic water.

“Tell them I’ll be right out!” I call, but my voice is shaky and unconvincing.

“And she wants to know if Mr. Reed will be there too!” comes Grandma Hensley’s pointed addition.

Grayson lets out a laugh—low, rough, and so unexpected it sends my pulse skittering. He pushes to his feet, straightening his shirt with sharp, efficient movements. “Figures,” he mutters, almost to himself.