Burned by Love

by Erin Wright

  “What pattern?” Uncle Horvath had replied, straight-faced. The man had worked at the mill his entire adult life, and had never noticed a thing.

  His uncle wasn’t exactly the sentimental type, other than in his belief that if the Horvath men had wanted a mill in town, then by God, there should be a mill in town. The aesthetics were the last thing on his uncle’s mind.

  As Troy looked – really looked – at the old girl, he knew that neat patterns in the bricks or not, the city council was right to push his uncle to do something about it. Boarded-up windows, a crack running up one wall, blackened bricks, broken glass crunching under foot…

  It was no longer the crowning jewel in the Horvath family legacy that it used to be.

  He shoved at one of the sliding doors, cringing at the screech of ungreased metal, and slipped inside, Sparky padding along behind him, her nose glued to the ground as she took in every smell. Troy took a hard look around, comparing what he remembered to what was still standing. There were bird feathers and poop everywhere – the years of free grain meant that the mill had gathered quite a flock of fans, quite literally – but he tried to look past that.

  What could it be used for, other than milling grain? It was such a big space – tall, long, wide, there was no dimension where it felt cramped for room. They could hoist semis up on lifts to do repair work on them, and still have loads of room to spare. Maybe his uncle could use this as the repair shop for the mill and their own fleet of semis.

  But even as he conceived of the idea, he began to poke holes in it. There towards the end of using the old mill, the city had been getting grumpy with his uncle because of the semi traffic in and out of the place. It was only a block from the high school, and even his uncle had to begrudgingly admit that semis loaded down with grain didn’t mix well with teenagers in a rush to get to school so they wouldn’t be tardy for class. It only got worse during the summer break, with the loads of tourists coming through on their way to the lake or over to Franklin. Franklin was definitely the tourist destination that Sawyer simply wasn’t, but on the other hand, you couldn’t get from Boise to Franklin without driving straight through Sawyer. The more the tourist industry grew in Franklin, the worse the traffic grew in Sawyer.

  All of the pains in the asses of dealing with tourists, with very little of the benefits.

  That was its lot in life for Sawyer, no doubt about it.

  So maybe pulling in semis and working on them wasn’t a good idea. Troy scrambled for another one. They could…

  They could…

  They could…

  He had nothing.

  Penny would probably have a great idea, or seven.

  The thought popped into his mind, unbidden. Ever since their fantastic date a week ago, Troy had found himself thinking about the gorgeous blonde a lot more often than he’d meant to. It was hard not to think about her, though. Who could spend an evening with someone like Penny and not then dream about her? He knew she wasn’t right for him; he knew she was temptation wrapped up in a bundle of seduction and topped with a big ol’ bow of enticement. He knew that the smart choice was to walk away from her.

  But that kiss…Good Lord, that kiss. He’d go to his grave, remembering that kiss. He’d told himself that he could have one kiss to remember her by – that there was no harm in that, right? – and then…

  Well, he’d wanted more. A whole lot more. He’d wanted every inch of her and he’d known that she was his for the asking. If he’d wanted to go up to her apartment that night, she would’ve said yes. It was all there, in the way that she’d wrapped herself around him, the way that she’d moaned with lust.

  He squeezed his eyes shut against the onslaught of vivid memories washing over him.

  Did he really want to walk away already? Maybe he could be one of those people who had sex without any attachments. He could make her beg in bed, and then walk away. He could do that, right? He’d never tried to before, but there was no law etched in stone that said he couldn’t. People did things all the time that they hadn’t done before.

  And while they were on their date together, he could ask her for her ideas on what to do with the mill, if she had any. Getting an outside perspective was a good thing, and her perspective – a woman from Franklin with a degree in graphic arts – would definitely be a lot more outside than his.

  Feeling better already, Troy headed back to his truck, Sparky trotting happily alongside him, a spring in his step as he went. He decided to stop at Happy Petals on the way out to the new mill. What girl could say no to a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, and in yet another winning twofer combination, it also meant he could impress her without having to actually speak. A girl like Penny should be courted; he’d start out by sending her a bouquet of flowers, and then ask her out after that.

  He whistled along happily to the newest Brad Paisley song on the way to Happy Petals, only a few blocks over. Carla could help him find just the right bouquet to impress Penny; she’d know what Penny would love.

  A little loving, a little companionship, a little fun, and then Penny could get on with her life and he could get on with his.

  This was totally a good idea.

  Chapter 8

  Penny

  Penny stumbled into her kitchen, her jaw-cracking yawn causing her eyes to tear up so much, it was only an intimate knowledge of her tiny apartment that kept her from walking straight into the golden oak cupboards. Blinking through the yawn-induced tears, she riffled through her kitchen cabinets, finally finding the last Caramel Mocha Keurig cup to slide into place in her coffee maker. God bless Keurig – no more having to mete out coffee grounds and hot water while still 98% asleep.

  She slumped against the kitchen counter, eyes closed, waiting not-so-patiently for the machine to finish conjuring up its magic brew. She really needed to stop staying up so late but she had a new client – which meant she had a whole two clients now – who wanted a mock-up for a new logo, and Penny wanted to impress the hell out of her.

  The only way to grow her minuscule freelance graphic arts company was by word of mouth, and that meant giving 110% to each project she actually managed to snag. Penny didn’t mind the hustle part of freelance work, but she also knew that realistically, it’d be a long time until she’d built up a stable of clients large enough to actually live off.

  Her mind wandered down a well-trodden path, to the same answer she always came to when musing about her career choices: The most practical solution was to go to work for a large company where they’d already done all of that hustling, and focus on just the creative side of things. She had a metric shit ton of student loans that she needed to start paying on at some point; she’d kept putting them into forbearance because of taking care of her mom. But she couldn’t ignore them forever, and they sure as hell weren’t going to get paid with piddling, one-off freelance jobs, no matter how much the freelance world appealed to her.

  No, what she really needed to do was spend some time looking at corporate jobs up in Seattle—

  The Keurig beeped at the exact moment that someone knocked on the front door, scaring the shit out of her. Penny bolted upright, tugging instinctively at the front of her ratty bathrobe that she’d gotten for Christmas in the tenth grade, and had refused to give up even when it got so holey, it began to resemble a block of Swiss cheese more than a bathrobe.

  She scowled at the front door, just a few steps away from the kitchen in her tiny apartment. Who on earth was at her door before nine in the morning? Anyone who knew her knew she wasn’t a morning person, and to knock this early was practically guaranteed to get a Very Grumpy Penny answering the door.

  She stomped over to the front door where she peeked through the peephole to see a distorted view of a heavy-set woman dressed in turquoise from head to toe, lots of makeup, pleasant face.

  Penny had no idea who she was.

  She considered not opening the door; considered pretending to not be home. It was probably someone wanting her to attend their chu
rch that Sunday, and that was a discussion Penny wasn’t about to have with a stranger.

  But in the end, it was the turquoise that got to her. What missionary wore such a happy color?

  She tugged the bathrobe tighter around her and pulled the door open. “Yes?” she said, squinting into the bright, way-too-early-morning sunlight. Who ordered the sun to be up at such an hour, anyway? Certainly not her.

  “Hi!” the turquoise woman said cheerfully. “I have a surprise for you!”

  Before Penny could tell the painfully happy woman that she didn’t want or need her “surprise,” whatever the hell it was, the woman pulled a stunning bouquet out from behind her back and thrust them into Penny’s arms. “I love the ta-da moment,” the woman said conspiratorially, leaning forward to whisper the information like it was some super secret she didn’t share with just anyone. “It’s one of my favorite parts of my job. Anyway!” She straightened up and pointed at the oversized bouquet that Penny was holding on to, more out of instinct than anything else. “There’s a card in the bouquet – quite a handsome man was in my shop ordering these for you.” The woman winked, a broad grin on her face. “Enjoy, and have a great rest of your week!”

  The woman started back down the sidewalk before Penny could get a word in edgewise – a new one for her – and so she could only watch, open mouthed, as the bright, gregarious woman climbed into a turquoise van with Happy Petals emblazoned on the side, and drove off down the street.

  Now there is a business name that perfectly matches the owner.

  Before Penny’s non-caffeinated brain could get sidetracked into imagining the perfect logo for Happy Petals, she looked back down at the huge bouquet in her hands. And “huge” was the operative word here – certainly the largest one she’d ever been given, and probably the largest one she’d ever seen in real life. This had to have cost someone an arm and a leg to send.

  Troy?

  He certainly fit the “handsome man” description but it’d been a week, and there’d been no sign of him. Not a phone call, not a Facebook message, not even a smoke signal on the horizon. She’d thrown herself at him once already – twice, if you counted the night she’d been sent to interview Moose and had instead interviewed Troy – and had made herself the very strict promise that she absolutely, positively wasn’t going to do it a third time. If he wanted to go on another date with her, he could damn well make that clear.

  Welp, it didn’t get much more clear than this.

  With shaking hands, she closed the front door behind her and carried the bouquet over to the kitchen counter, pulling the envelope out from amidst the blooms. Penny Roth was written on the front of the envelope in a spiky, small script, and she instinctually knew that it was Troy who wrote it. The turquoise-loving woman who’d handed this bouquet over probably used hearts instead of O’s.

  Heart going into overtime, Penny pulled the card out of the envelope. The same spiky, bold handwriting was on the card, confirming her suspicions about Troy being the one to write it.

  Thanks for the amazing evening; I look forward to many more. Troy

  Penny read it another three times, each time her brain refusing to believe this was really happening. Why the week wait between their date and this card?

  He thought they had an amazing evening? She thought they’d had an amazing evening, of course, but when he hadn’t contacted her…

  Dammit all, she’d convinced herself that she’d moved on. It was a good idea for them to walk away from each other. They were going in different directions. And maybe she’d daydreamed about him asking her out on another date, but it hadn’t been anything more than that. It wasn’t actually going to happen. Second dates were like sliced mushrooms – if you waited too long to dig into them, they weren’t worth going after anyway.

  In Penny’s experience, a week was well past that expiration date.

  But these flowers! She picked up the huge bouquet from the countertop, seeing every kind of bloom and color under the sun represented in it. It was cheerful and lovely and all-encompassing – way more impressive than just a bouquet of red roses.

  It was when she was staring at the card, laying on the kitchen counter next to her patiently waiting mug of Keurig coffee, that she realized that she didn’t know what she was supposed to do next. He didn’t give her his phone number. He didn’t say to stop by the mill. There was no “next step” – just the idea that she was supposed to enjoy the flowers, and he’d get in touch with her later so they could go on more of these “amazing” dates together.

  Not gonna lie, that felt a little weird to her. She was a take-charge kind of gal. If she wanted something, she went after it. In Troy’s case, she went after him twice. But now, he was going after her…kinda.

  Or, more like that he was telling her that he was going to go after her at a future date.

  Gah. Sawyer men. Why did they have to make this so confusing?

  She picked up the bouquet and breathed in deep, the smell rushing through her senses, setting her nerve-endings on fire. These flowers were magnificent, exactly the ones she would’ve picked out if she’d been in the flower shop with Miss Turquoise.

  Huh. Sawyer men. All right, so maybe they weren’t so bad after all.

  With a face-splitting grin, she grabbed her mug of life-giving liquid, and hurried to her bedroom. She had to step on it or she was going to be late for work.

  Amazing evening…

  Maybe at least one Sawyer man was worth keeping around.

  Chapter 9

  Troy

  Stupidity in the flesh. That’s me.

  Somehow, some way, Troy had forgotten to actually ask for Penny’s number. He had her address – home and work – but that meant driving over and asking her out.

  In person.

  By talking.

  Out loud.

  There were, as he saw it, many, many flaws to this plan.

  He had an hour lunch break every day; he normally only took 20 minutes and would use it to duck into the employee breakroom to scarf down a sandwich, but today, he was gonna use every moment of that break and then some. Luckily, early summer wasn’t the busy part of the year for the mill – there was the winter wheat coming in but it was otherwise quiet. Maybe he’d tell Uncle Horvath that he was gonna take an extended lunch. After all of the years of only taking 20 to eat and then getting back to work, his uncle wouldn’t mind.

  Probably.

  He drove the 25 minutes to Franklin – the mill was on the far side of Sawyer out towards Franklin, so it wasn’t the full half hour to get there, thankfully – breaking every rule in the book by texting while driving to tell his uncle that he’d be late coming back from lunch. He’d probably hear about it later, but this was worth it.

  Hopefully.

  He grabbed a box of chocolates from Once Upon A Trinket – adding hand-dipped chocolates to his arsenal couldn’t hurt, right? – and then drove over to the newspaper building, hands shaking. Both the Sawyer Times and the Franklin Gazette were run out of this same office; Troy had a vague recollection of going on a field trip here during elementary school but at the time, all he’d focused on was the loud thunking of the print machines running in the back. To an eight year old, they seemed like they were hungry – about to jump out and suck him in alive – so he’d spent most of the tour doing his best to stay behind the fat kid in his class, figuring that if the machine was gonna suck someone up, it’d go after the easy prey first.

  Happily, everyone had survived the field trip, even the fat kid. He actually grew up to be a really nice guy, so Troy would take that as a positive.

  He walked into the cool of the newspaper office, the dim lighting making it hard to see for a moment as his eyes adjusted. A bored-looking woman was sitting at the front desk, flipping through a magazine. “How can I help you?” she asked, but the polite, business-like inquiry didn’t match her tone at all. She looked like she’d rather be doing almost anything but helping him. Filing her fingernails, chewing gum, se
tting her hair on fire…

  Anything at all.

  Just as he opened up his mouth to speak, she spotted the gaudily decorated box underneath his arm and instantly sized it up as a box of high-end chocolates from Once Upon A Trinket. She bolted upright and slapped the magazine closed, her face quite interested in whatever he was about to say.

  The transformation was stunning, really, and it took Troy a second to regain his footing. Just talk slowly. You’ll be fine. “Is Penny here?” he asked.

  “No, she’s out doing some interviews. I’m Shayla. Do you want me to take those for her?” She nodded eagerly towards the box.

  Troy had to fight the impulse to hide the chocolates behind his back. “I’d like to write her a note and leave them both on her desk. Is,” breathe in, “that okay?”

  That was close. ‘St’ sounds – they’ll get you every time.

  “Sure, sure!” said the young girl – she couldn’t have been more than twenty or so – enthusiastically. “Let me show you where it’s at.” She scooted off her chair and hurried deeper into the office, leaving Troy to play catch-up behind her. “How long have you known Penny?” Shayla asked over her shoulder, casual as could be.

  He wasn’t fooled one bit. He recognized a younger version of Glenda when he saw one. As soon as Troy walked out the front door, Shayla would be gossiping with every other employee about him and Penny, inside of sixty seconds.

  Inside of thirty seconds if she was really on her game.

  “Not long,” he said.

  That was not nearly enough information for Shayla, and she quickly moved to her next question. “You work out at the Horvath Mill?” she asked. She was at least observant enough to notice his work shirt with the company logo embroidered on it.