“It’s Jon,” she said, looking up from her device to Will, her eyebrows up.

  He flipped the truck into gear, his male protective streak rearing its jealous head. “Answer it,” he said. “I’ll be right around.” He unbuckled and slid from the truck as she slid on the call and said, “Hey, Jon.”

  Will took his time, making his steps slow and measured, because he didn’t want Gretchen to feel like she couldn’t talk to her assistant. Jon meant a great deal to her, and she simply didn’t see the man the way Will did.

  He paused near the front of the truck and looked toward the entrance of the restaurant. It didn’t seem too busy tonight, which was good. Though Will hadn’t worked the farm today, nor had he run any miles at all, the same level of exhaustion ran through his system.

  He turned when Gretchen opened her door. “Hey, I would’ve⁠—”

  “We have to go,” she said, her voice loud and panicked. She dropped from the truck and ran toward him. Tears streamed down her face. “We have to go right now. Taffy is on fire.”

  “What?” Will received her into his arms and held her tight while she sobbed. That only lasted three seconds, and then she jerked back.

  “Come on,” she said. “We have to go.” She ran back toward the passenger door, and Will didn’t even try to play gentleman. He hurried to get behind the wheel, and he’d pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street before he asked, “Did he call the fire department?”

  The sound of sirens suddenly met his ears, and that was all the answer Will needed. Pure helplessness filled him as Gretchen continued to cry in the passenger seat, and no amount of pressure from his hand to hers could calm her.

  All Will could do was drive, so he did that a little faster, hoping to get her where she wanted to be and praying that Taffy wouldn’t be completely crispy by the time the fire engines arrived.

  19

  “The horizon is orange,” Gretchen said, unable to stop herself.

  “The trucks are ahead of us,” Will said beside her. She couldn’t see him, though the glow from the dashboard illuminated his features. All Gretchen could feel or see was darkness. Darkness everywhere—except where the horizon glowed orange.

  She’d never get Jon’s frantic voice out of her head, and she’d never forgive herself for taking a day off if she lost the candy shop completely.

  Will pushed the truck faster, and the orange on the skyline decreased. When they finally arrived, the fire engines had the whole building illuminated with strong spotlights, and smoke rose from the back of it.

  Will turned, seemingly on two wheels, and he’d barely stopped in front of the shop before she jumped from the truck.

  Jon stood on the front sidewalk with Jewel-Li, the woman who’d been working the front of the shop that afternoon.

  Evening, Gretchen thought, surprised she had room for the thought in her mind.

  “Jon,” she said, and he turned. His eyes widened, and he released Jewel-Li and grabbed onto her.

  “I called as soon as I hung up with nine-one-one,” he said. “It was a sugar fire. I’m so sorry, Gretchen.”

  “It’s fine,” she said automatically. “Were there any customers in the shop?”

  “Just one,” Jewel-Li said, and Gretchen stepped away from Jon. “They left already. We’ve been out here maybe fifteen minutes. They got here really fast.”

  Will came up beside Gretchen, and she moved further from Jon to take his hand.

  “The fire is out,” Jon said. “But it’s still smoking.”

  “Will someone come talk to me?” Gretchen asked. She’d never been involved in a fire.

  “We should go around back,” Will suggested, and Gretchen stepped with him, because she didn’t have the gumption or strength to resist.

  Thankfully, Will possessed the courage and ability to get her around to the back of the building, where the candy kitchen looked like someone had smeared dusty tar all over the clawed-out walls and roof.

  She gasped, and her feet froze.

  “Come on,” Will said, tugging on her hand. “We have to talk to someone.”

  Gretchen let herself cry, because she’d only been at the helm of Sweet Water Taffy for eight months, and it had caught fire on the one day she hadn’t come into work.

  What would she tell Aunt Patty? How could she reclaim this and start over? It felt impossible and utterly overwhelming and like the very universe itself was pressing down on her with all of its galactic weight.

  She let Will lead her toward a woman standing near the fire engine, barking commands at a couple of firefighters.

  She let him ask her if the fire was out now. Yes, it seemed to be, but they were still checking for hot spots.

  If they could go inside yet.

  No, not yet.

  What to do once the fire was out and the sun rose tomorrow.

  The fire chief looked at Gretchen then, but she could only grip Will’s hand and wait for the answer.

  “I’d call a restoration company,” she said. “Your landlord, if you don’t own the building. Find out what’s still structurally sound, and what is lost. Then, you can decide from there.” She turned as someone yelled, and Will backed Gretchen out of the way.

  They stayed until the last of the smoke wisped into the sky, until the fire engines left, and until Gretchen felt sure she couldn’t cry another tear. Will never left her side, and he took care of Jon and Jewel-Li too.

  He put her in the passenger seat, and Gretchen stared out her window and into darkness as he drove back to her house. They hadn’t gotten dinner, and her stomach felt as empty as her heart.

  Will helped her down from the truck and he took her all the way inside the house and down the hall to her bedroom. Elvis streaked out, but Gretchen just shook her head.

  “I’ll go feed him,” Will whispered in her ear, his lips landing on her neck for only a moment afterward. “You change and get in bed. I’ll be right back.” He removed his hands from her body, and Gretchen felt the earth sway at a million miles an hour.

  Will left, his strides long and sure, and Gretchen wished she could rewind time just a few hours and tell Jon to close the shop early. Whatever he’d been making, he didn’t need to make.

  She moved like her joints had been replaced with wood, but she managed to get out of her clothes and into pajamas before Will returned. “What did you give Elvis?” she asked as he put one arm around her waist and drew her into his chest.

  “Some chicken and those green peas in the fridge,” he whispered. “Come on, baby. In the bed.” He pulled down the comforter, and Gretchen started to cry as she climbed between the sheets.

  “I have to call my aunt,” she said.

  “Tomorrow,” he whispered, getting right into bed with her.

  “My daddy.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said again. “I’ll call them both.”

  Gretchen turned to face him and curled into his chest, already crying again. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t seem to mind as she soaked the front of his shirt with her tears.

  The next day, Gretchen woke in her bed, alone. Her mind felt fuzzy and her mouth like she’d swallowed a bag of cotton. She reached up and touched her face, which felt crusty and tight, and she couldn’t open her right eye all the way.

  “Yeowl.”

  Gretchen kept rubbing her eye as she rolled over and found Elvis stalking into her room. The cat jumped up on her bed, his tail straight up.

  “Are you hungry, buddy?” she asked. She couldn’t remember feeding him last night—and her brain suddenly switched on.

  She sucked in a breath and sat up, dislodging Elvis as she did. “The fire. Will.”

  She flung the blankets off her feet, realizing now why her eyes had been glued shut this morning. She’d fallen asleep crying. She’d probably cried all night long, and she raced into the hall and down toward the kitchen.

  She had no idea what time it was, or where she’d put her cell phone. She needed to call Aunt Patty, Daddy, and then Jon. She needed to get the official fire report from the fire department, and she needed to call a really good restoration company.

  No, she needed to call Kevin Barnett first, because he owned the building which housed Sweet Water Taffy, and he needed to know what had happened there. He’d likely have insurance, but she wondered if there’d be some fee or deductible he’d want her to pay.

  She couldn’t worry about that right now. As she entered the kitchen, Will came in through the front door, his phone at his ear. “…I’ll let her know,” he said, a half-smile on his face. “Yes, sir. I’m going to check on her right now.”

  He lifted his eyes in that moment, and their gazes met. He lowered the phone without saying goodbye.

  Gretchen didn’t know what to say to him, and he seemed frozen to the spot just inside her front door, which he hadn’t closed.

  She caught a streak of gray as Elvis saw his escape route, and she pointed and made some squeaking noise from somewhere inside her throat.

  Will kicked the door closed, thwarting Elvis in his flight. The cat meowed in disagreement, and to her great surprise, Will stooped and picked the tabby cat up.

  He cradled him in his arms, smiling down at the feline like they were the best of friends.

  “I’ve entered another reality,” Gretchen said.

  Will smiled at her and approached. “We became friends last night. Slept together on the couch and everything.”

  Gretchen’s eyebrows went up. “You didn’t go home?”

  “I couldn’t.” He arrived in front of her and with Elvis between them, he leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “How’d you sleep, sweetheart?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost seven-thirty,” he said.

  “Who were you talking to?’

  “Your Daddy,” he said, handing over her phone. “I called your aunt too, and answered all of Jon’s texts.”

  Gretchen looked at her phone and back to him. “My shop really caught on fire.” She wasn’t asking, but she needed confirmation.

  Will nodded, his lovely eyes filled with compassion and concern. “We’ll figure it out, Gretchen.”

  She wanted to ask him how, so she opened her mouth and did.

  “I don’t know, Gretchen,” he said, sighing. It wasn’t his barking tone, or his sympathetic one. It was one that said he’d slept on the couch with her cat. “But we will, okay?” He set Elvis down and faced her. “I’m right here, and I’m not going to leave your side today. We’ll figure everything out.”

  She nodded, because she wanted to believe him. Her mind misfired at her, and then she pulled back on her panic. “I need to call my landlord.”

  “Okay,” Will said, trying to take the phone from her. “Tell me who it is, and I’ll do it.”

  Gretchen didn’t release the phone. “No, I’ll do it.” She took a deep breath, and then another one. “I can do it.”

  He’d called her aunt and her father, and she could do this. “What did Daddy say to you?”

  “He said he’d call and cancel his appointments this week,” Will said. “I told him I’d be there this afternoon to help with his oxygen tank.”

  Gretchen’s eyes filled with tears again. She wanted to say thank you, but instead, she simply nodded and looked down at her phone. The letters on it blurred, but she blinked, and everything came into focus.

  “I’ll call Kevin right now.” She headed for the front door, realizing why Will had gone outside to make the call. She needed more air than the house currently held, and she tapped to make the call as she stepped from living room to porch.

  “Gretchen,” he said, relief in his voice. “How are you? Are you okay?”

  Instant tears filled her eyes, but she channeled her inner Will and said, “Yes, Kevin. I’m okay, and all of my employees made it out safely.” She took a big breath, not even sure how she should start.

  Thankfully, Kevin said, “I’m going through the damage with the fire marshal at ten o’clock this morning, Gretchen,” he said. “If you want to come down, we can talk more then. Get a better picture of what might happen.”

  “Sure,” she said as brightly as she could. She had no idea how the sun rose each day, when something so terrible had happened in the night. “I’ll be there at ten.”

  Gretchen pulled into the parking lot where her candy shop still sat. The front of the building didn’t look much different, besides the fact that she hadn’t moved her candy apple truck in over two weeks.

  The exhaustion she carried from dawn until dusk was the same. The worry about whether she could reopen continued day after day. The bad news just kept coming.

  Or it had, in the beginning. The only employee she’d retained was Jon, and only because she’d begged him to please, please not quit, and then promised to keep paying him. She couldn’t do that for any of her other employees, and all of them had quit.

  They had to, and Gretchen understood why. They needed their jobs, and she couldn’t pay them while the back of the unit on the end of the building got cleaned, dried, and then rebuilt.

  Well, the rebuilding was still to come. Gretchen drove around the back of the building, which had been draped in plastic. The fire marshal had deemed the building stable enough to enter when she’d been there with Kevin and Will a couple of weeks ago. She’d been able to go inside with the marshal and collect the things she deemed valuable from her office, which included the computer, her recipe books, and all of her personal belongings.

  Then, Kevin had called a fire restoration specialist, and they’d come in with their Dumpsters, shovels, and wheelbarrows. They cleaned out the south kitchen, where Jon had been making sugar art for the tops of the miniature cupcakes they’d needed for a birthday party. He’d gotten distracted when he’d dropped a tray of said cupcakes, and the sugar had burned.

  He’d taken it from the flame in frustration, and when he’d dumped it in the trash can, the heat from it had ignited some brittle paper he’d put there earlier. Gretchen had asked him to stop there, because he’d then said, “You wouldn’t believe how fast the flames kicked up,” and she didn’t want to imagine him in that kitchen, trying to put them out. Panicking. Breathing in the smoke.

  The whole back corner of the building had been soaked with gallons and gallons of water, and that took a very, very long time to dry out. Wood, plaster, and anything that could mold got ripped out. That was basically everything down to the foundation. The wall separating the kitchen from the retail space in the shop had been torn back to the studs, and then the fans had blown and blown and blown.

  Gretchen had barely gotten out of her car when the rumble of Will’s truck came around the corner. She smiled at him, but she wasn’t sure how she had the energy. She’d seen him every single day since the disaster, and if she’d known that was all it would take, she might’ve lit her candy kitchen on fire much earlier.

  Not really, and she hated thinking that.

  He pulled in next to her and got out of his vehicle. A paper bag rustled as he came around the hood, signaling that he’d been to town already. He lifted the pastry bag and said, “The cream cheese scone.”

  She took the bag from him and leaned into his kiss. “Thank you,” she said.

  They faced the building together. “They’re not making much progress,” he said, his voice tart to her ears.

  “They have to dry everything out,” she said.

  “They’ve been drying it for over two weeks.”

  “I don’t work for the restoration company,” Gretchen said.

  “Once it’s dry, then what?” Will asked, taking a step toward the door. It was metal and hadn’t been torn out. The kitchen where Gretchen created her truffles and caramels hadn’t been burned, but it had been covered in water, so it too had been stripped, sprayed with mold preventative, and monitored for mildew growth.

  She and Jon and Will had removed everything from the front of the shop as the professionals came in to deal with any smoke damage. They’d thrown away anything edible, because Gretchen anticipated the shop being closed for at least a month, and she wouldn’t serve chocolates that were more than two days old, let alone thirty.

  As she watched Will open the door and go inside the building, Gretchen knew the shop would be closed longer than a month. Frustration, annoyance, and a keen sense of being out of her league enveloped her, and she ignored Will as he asked something through the open back wall of the building.

  Thankfully, the weather had been cooperative, and there had been no rain in the past couple of weeks. The restoration company had said rebuilding should begin this week, and Gretchen’s disappointment cut through her sharply when she realized it was Friday morning and there had been no rebuilding begun this week.

  Will came back outside. “Did you hear what I asked?”

  She just shook her head, ready to go home and go back to bed. She was making a few treats out of her kitchen and fulfilling online orders only. It was enough to keep her and Jon busy during the day, and Gretchen had work to do today.

  “I asked why they haven’t even done the electrical yet,” he said.

  Gretchen rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know, Will. I’m not a contractor or whatever.” She turned toward her car.

  “Have you asked them?”

  “No,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Gretchen,” he said, plenty of irritation in his tone.

  The emotion fired through her too, and she spun back to him. “What, Will? You don’t have to be here. I don’t ask you to come here every morning, and I certainly don’t need you to criticize me or what’s being done.”

  He blinked, the frown between his eyes disappearing as he did. Gretchen pulled back on the lion roaring through her chest, but he couldn’t be tamed completely. “You stress me out,” she said. “Coming here and asking me questions I can’t answer. Or insinuating I should’ve done something different.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “If you can’t just put your arm around me and ask me how I’m doing, then don’t come anymore.”

  Will simply stared at her, and Gretchen turned to get in her van.