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She bent at the waist to examine a typewriter. “I was going to say magical . Don’t you agree?”

Beneath the sweep of her dark lashes, Harper’s eyes were the color of an impending storm, a sapphire flecked with gray. Freckles dusted the bridge of her nose. And I hadn’t noticed the tiny golden hoop in her septum earlier.

“I do,” I said. “This place is brimming with magic.”

A taut energy hung in the space between our bodies. Those red lips curved up, her eyes flashing playfully.

“Sooo…how much nineteenth-century erotica do you think was written on this?” she asked, pointing at the typewriter.

I laughed, surprised. “What do you think’s inside those books you were browsing?”

“My, how scandalous . Peddling vintage smut under the guise of being an innocent antiques dealer.”

“Sorry if I gave you that impression.”

She clicked her tongue. “This isn’t a warehouse filled with antique erotica?”

“No, I meant…” I kept my gaze locked on hers. “I’ve never been that innocent.”

Another graceful arch of her brow. “My apologies for being so boldly presumptuous.”

Harper spun in a half circle, meandering forward while her fingers fidgeted with the pencils stuck in her hair. I followed as if we were leashed together, pulled along by the sway of her hips.

“Do you ever find anything interesting hidden inside any of the antiques?”

“All kinds of things,” I admitted, thinking about our new bar. “You’d be surprised at what random bits of personal history end up stored inside the pieces we come across. I once found a love letter stuck in the book jacket of a poetry collection by Audre Lorde.”

Harper’s face brightened. “She’s one of my favorite writers.”

“Same.” My stomach did that slow, deliberate flip again. “I got in trouble in high school for writing an op-ed in our school newspaper, calling out my English teachers for not including her in their discussion of modern American poets.”

“That’s a disgrace,” she said. “What was their reasoning?”

“Too niche.”

Which I’d learned, after years of existing within my parents’ elite and insular academic community, was code for too disruptive, too angry, too Black, too queer. An insult tucked neatly inside their pretentious literary criticism.

Harper hummed beneath her breath and continued walking. “What made you get involved in architectural salvage?”

I gave a half smile. “Proud PhD dropout. I was studying history and completely burned out. But I never lost my obsession with it.” I cocked my chin toward the items surrounding us. “Now I just direct that passion to restoring forgotten artifacts.”

“That’s so interesting.” She traced the shape of her bottom lip, pulling all my focus to the slide of her finger along that deep scarlet color. “It’s almost like modern-day treasure hunting.”

I stilled. The alarm in my head was back, louder. “You could say that.”

She turned to face me. “Do you do a lot of treasure hunting? I hear it’s quite popular in the Southwest.”

Unease flared through the center of my chest. “Not really. Why?”

“I’m a reporter from New York,” she said lightly, as if those words weren’t a kick to my gut. “And currently on deadline, though that’s my usual state of being. It’s why I’m in Santa Fe.”

Her tone was sweet, polite. Her body language friendly, eyes warm.

But that feeling of unease tripled in size, growing unruly and ugly. “What are you investigating?”

“I’m profiling a well-known treasure hunter named Monty Montana.

Or I’m supposed to be.” Harper’s head tilted to the side.

“She’s famously hard to find, and I’m at my wits’ end.

I’ve spent the past few weeks wading through internet discourse, and apparently some people are attempting a hunt for this local urban legend.

The Blackburn Diamonds. The last person who made a public attempt to find those diamonds was Monty.

I’ve been hoping she’ll come out of hiding and try again—”

Cleo walked past us, carrying a few cans of paint. But she stopped at Harper’s words.

“Sorry, are you here about Monty?” Cleo shot me a concerned look. “What happened? Is she okay?”

Harper swiveled her head back to face me, that friendly smile turning smug. “Wouldn’t you know…that’s exactly why I’m here. Where is she, Eve?”

My stomach pitched to the floor as a nervous fear for my aunt flooded my body.

Followed by anger at the reporter in front of me.

Every bit of flirtatious interest I’d had in this woman vanished beneath my irritation. I turned on my heel, stalking back to the cash register, eager to ignore her so she would get the hell out.

Eager to warn Monty that people were looking for her again. Though…maybe Harper Hendrix wasn’t the first reporter to come out here. Maybe Monty had been forced to disappear recently for this exact reason. Which made me even angrier.

I reached beneath the cash register to haul out a stray pile of paperwork, needing to give my hands something to do.

Harper appeared almost instantly, leaning across the glass table and propping her chin in her hands. “You know Monty Montana, don’t you?”

I kept my eyes down, fingers busy. “Yep.”

“Then can you tell me why every person I talk to acts as if this woman is a national secret they would die to protect? The story I’m working on about Monty isn’t even remotely nefarious, and neither am I.”

I scoffed under my breath. “I’m not buying this little act of yours. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it before.”

“It’s not an act. It’s my job,” she argued. “And whatever you need me to do to prove my intentions are pure, I’ll do it. Say the word.”

Frustration finally got the better of me. My gaze rose, tangled with hers, and I just barely managed to ignore her parted red lips, the flash of teeth.

“I’ll save you some time. Monty is my aunt, my dad’s younger sister. She legally changed her last name decades ago.”

Harper’s blue eyes widened behind her glasses.

“She’s difficult to track down on purpose . The people in this town will always protect her from reporters, regardless of their intentions . She’s been burned too many times by journalists making the same claims who then invade her privacy and write something insulting afterward.”

A heavy silence lingered. Harper’s nostrils flared. “But that’s not me, obviously . I’m not the enemy here. I’m actually trying to help.”

“Any reporter looking for Monty is the enemy. Now get out.”

Her eyebrows twitched together. “Are you being serious?”

“I’d never joke about something like this.”

After a moment, her spine straightened, shoulders rolling back. “You’re underestimating how persistent I can be, Eve.”

I smirked in response. “And you’re overestimating how much I care.”

She made a soft, strangled sound of annoyance. “You haven’t seen the last of me,” she said, then whirled around and marched out of the store.

I tore my eyes away from those swaying hips and the nape of her neck, bare and vulnerable. I didn’t fuck with reporters, and I certainly didn’t flirt with them.

No matter how lovely.

I did, however, need to find Monty—and fast.

Before reporters like Harper could ruin her life for the second time.