But this was definitely the guy. It was hard to tell how old he was from up here—maybe late twenties or early thirties?—but he was tall, with big shoulders and biceps that bulged inside the sleeves of his shirt. He yelled something to his friend, and I noted the deep, gruff voice.
Curious, I watched him and his buddy unload furniture off the truck. My cat, a brown and white tabby, nudged my ankle with her nose, like she wanted to see him too.
“I don’t blame you, Piglet,” I said, bending down to scratch behind her ears. “He’s hot, even if he doesn’t look too friendly.”
The guy never smiled. He moved quickly and purposefully, like he didn’t want to waste any time, and he didn’t interact much with his buddy. But something about his clenched jaw, broad chest, and surly demeanor intrigued me—along with the shirt he wore, which said TCFD.
Traverse City Fire Department?
Immediately I imagined him carrying me from the inferno formerly known as the Woodland North Townhomes, soot darkening his face, my arms looped around his sturdy neck. After gently setting me down a safe distance from the blaze, he’d rush back inside to rescue Piglet, barely making it out before our end of the building collapsed.
I was half in love with him inside five minutes.
“I bet he’s one of those guys with a hard shell and a soft center,” I rhapsodized to my cat. “Someone who acts tough but has a big heart beneath his armor. A beast just waiting for his beauty!”
Piglet meowed like she agreed—or maybe it was a warning.
Because this is the problem with me.
I think I’m good at reading people when actually what I’m good at is wishful thinking. Letting fantastical notions about guys run away with my brain rather than seeing who they really are. It’s not because I enjoy getting my heart broken—although that’s often the result—but because I’m hopelessly romantic and I don’t know how to pace myself.
There’s even a name for it—emophilia.
Sounds like a disease, right? Like something in your blood? But it’s actually a personality trait, my therapist told me, and it means you fall for people fast, easily, and often. You dish out your deepest, most vulnerable feelings for people like popcorn at the movies.
Here’s my heart, sir. Would you like butter and salt with that?
I’ve been this way as long as I can remember. In elementary school, my best friend Ellie might like a new boy, but I would announce I’d met the boy I was going to marry. In middle school, she’d write down the name of her crush in our secret notebook while I named all the children I was going to have with the cute kid who sat next to me in Life Skills. When we went to the bridal store to find prom dresses, I tried on at least six wedding gowns, because I was positive my boyfriend and I were going to be together forever—even though we’d only been dating a month.
Of course, he broke up with me right before we left for college, and I spent my first month at Michigan State pining for him.
Until I fell head over heels for Andrew from Wisconsin, who was majoring in agribusiness and planned to go home and take over his family’s dairy farm. The rest of freshman year was spent rhapsodizing about our life on the farm, where I’d milk our cows every morning and then come in to whip up waffles from scratch for all the guests staying at our B & B. The fantasy was complete with a Pinterest vision board, and my farm outfits were adorable, as were each of our six farm children and two farm dogs.
Alas, Andrew turned out to be a two-timing jerk, and my golden dreams of gingham dresses and towheaded toddlers on the prairie were crushed alongside my romantic hopes.
But my hopes were resilient, and I’d fallen wildly in love at least three more times during college. In fact, I even got engaged during my senior year—to a graduate student in finance who was heading for a job on Wall Street.
I glanced down at my left hand, where I’d worn a diamond ring for precisely six weeks, which was how long it took for Merrick to change his mind about taking me with him. Ellie and both my older sisters assured me I’d dodged a bullet, since they thought Merrick was possessive, demanding, and full of himself, and while I could see their side of it, I’d always found his confidence attractive.
His cheating, however, was not, and he flat out told me he realized he wasn’t ready to have sex with only one person for the rest of his life, especially not when he was heading for New York City, and there were bound to be a lot of hot models there.
Asshole.
So instead of moving to the Big Apple, I’d moved back home to northern Michigan, adopted a cat, and taken a job working at Cloverleigh Farms.
Which was great—I’d always loved Cloverleigh Farms, which was owned by the Sawyer family. I’d practically grown up there because my father was the CFO, and when I was just four, he’d married the youngest of the five Sawyer sisters—Frannie, my amazing stepmom, who’d raised me.
The inn was beautiful, an elegant, old-fashioned estate with twenty guest rooms, a bar and restaurant, and gorgeous lobby with cathedral ceilings, a wide central staircase, and a giant fireplace that was always ablaze in the winter months, making the place feel warm and cozy.
There was also a winery on the premises, as well as a wedding barn, all nestled among hundreds of acres of vineyards and orchards. The old red horse barn was still there too, and I recalled many a childhood summer afternoon spent playing in there with my sisters while our dad worked.
My official title was Hospitality Specialist, which meant I did a little bit of everything. Over the summer, I’d run weeklong summer camps for kids, organized live music nights on the winery patio, assisted at wine tastings both on and offsite, and helped with weddings whenever my sister Millie needed an extra pair of hands—she was the event coordinator there. I also filled in at the front desk reception quite a bit, and a few times I even tended bar.
My parents had helped me buy this condo, which was only about ten minutes away from the house where I’d grown up. They still lived there with my two youngest sisters—the twins, Audrey and Emmeline, who’d been born a few years after my dad had married Frannie and were now sixteen. I saw them all every Sunday for family dinner.
I was happy here, even if I hadn’t found my true purpose yet.
My phone buzzed on the floor where I’d been sitting, and I tore myself away from the window to answer it. Ellie calling, the screen said. I took the call and wandered back toward the window.
“Hello?”
“Hey. What are you up to?”
“Painting my nails and spying on my hot neighbor.”
She laughed. “I didn’t know you had a hot neighbor.”
“I didn’t until today. He’s moving in right now.” I watched him carry a large cardboard box down the ramp. “At least, I think he’s hot. It’s hard to tell for sure since I’m stalking from the second-floor window.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Tall, dark, and broody.”
“Ooh. Tell me more.”
“He’s wearing a shirt that says TCFD. It’s very tight.”
“A firefighter! How old, roughly?”
“Not sure. Maybe thirties?” I watched him walk back toward the truck, pause, and lift off his cap before wiping the sweat from his forehead with his inner arm. My breath caught. “He just took his hat off.”