Page 10 of Consumed By The Forbidden Mountain Man

We walk through the festival. Food vendors lining the street. A corn hole tournament on the green. Patty Cole's booth selling apple butter and cinnamon muffins. The hayride pickup at the end of Main where Wade Sutton runs the orchard wagon with his tractor.

Everyone in town is here. And everyone in town has an opinion about Reid Castellano walking through the festival with a woman.

Patty spots us first.

"Reid! And who's this?"

"Tony's sister. Ivy."

Patty's eyes light up with the specific joy of a sixty-seven-year-old matchmaker encountering fresh material. "Tony's sister! Oh, honey. Are you staying for the whole festival?"

"Two weeks," Ivy says. "Tony's lending me his cabin."

"Two weeks! Right next to Reid. Isn't that nice." Patty's gaze slides to me with surgical precision. "Isn't that nice, Reid?"

"Patty."

"I'm just saying. It's nice. Here, honey, try a muffin." She shoves a blueberry muffin into Ivy's hands. "Reid, you want one?"

"No."

"I'll wrap one for you."

She wraps one for me. Ivy bites into hers and makes a sound that I file away in a compartment of my brain I'm not supposed to have open.

"These are incredible," Ivy tells Patty. "Do you sell online?"

"Online? Honey, I can barely work the register."

"You should. I used to do marketing. These would sell out on social media."

And just like that, Ivy Caruso has befriended the most powerful woman in Whisper Vale. Patty is glowing. Already writing Ivy's name in her mental rolodex. By tomorrow, half the town will know Tony's sister thinks her muffins should be sold online.

We keep walking. Ivy talks to everyone. Every single person we pass. She asks the kettle corn guy about his recipe. She tells the woman at the candle booth that the cedar one smells amazing. She crouches down to pet a stranger's golden retriever and somehow knows the dog's name within thirty seconds.

This woman makes friends the way most people breathe. Effortless. Genuine. She remembers names after one introduction. When someone tells her something, she listens with her whole body, leaning in, nodding, asking the follow-up question nobody else thinks to ask.

I watch her work the festival and something unsettles in my gut. She's good at this. Really good. The marketing, the people skills, the instinct for what makes someone feel seen. She told me she wasn't qualified to work for herself.

Bullshit. She's the most qualified person here.

By eight o'clock, the bonfire is lit in the field behind the general store. Hay bales arranged in a wide circle. Somebody brought a guitar. Somebody else brought a cooler of cider from Wade Sutton's operation. The air smells like woodsmoke.

Ivy grabs two ciders from the cooler, hands me one, and sits on a hay bale. I sit next to her because sitting somewhere else would require walking away, and walking away from Ivy Caruso is getting harder by the hour.

"This is incredible," she says, tipping her head back to look at the stars. "I can't believe Tony grew up here. No wonder he never left."

"He almost did. Talked about moving to Sacramento after your parents. But the job kept him."

She takes a drink. "He's in Sacramento right now helping Marco move into a new apartment. Marco's third apartment this year."

"Your brother Marco is a disaster."

"Marco is a beautiful disaster. Tony's the responsible one. Then there's me, the baby, currently homeless and drinking cider at a bonfire with her brother's extremely tolerant best friend."

Extremely tolerant. If she knew what I was tolerating right now, she'd be back in her cabin with the door locked.

The firelight catches her face. Warm skin, dark eyes reflecting the flames. That dimple in her left cheek when she smiles. Her sweater has ridden up where she's sitting, showing a sliver of hip above her jeans. Brown skin, soft curve.