Chapter 1
The chalk line Parker snapped across the center stage lay less than two inches from the rusted iron anchors Talia’s father had sunk thirty years ago. Parker knelt down, his fingers brushing over the heavy timber, studying the odd pattern of modern concrete poured beneath the vintage heart pine. “Your father was an artistic director,” Parker remarked, his voice quiet in the hollow auditorium. “Why did he pour industrial-grade reinforcement under a prop room?” Talia swallowed the iron taste of panic, keeping her chin lifted. “He was thorough.” Parker looked up, his gaze holding hers. “No. Thorough is bracing the roof. This looks like sealing a tomb.”
Talia forced a dry, melodic laugh that she hoped didn’t sound like glass cracking under a boot heel.
“You’ve clearly spent too much time reading gothic plays in the green room, Mr. Cole.” She took two measured steps forward, her low-heeled vintage boots clicking against the tongue-and-groove pine. The sound echoed into the five-hundred-seat darkness of the Starlight Civic Theatre, vast and hollow. “Arthur Vance didn’t do halfway measures. If the state building code in 1994 required twenty-five-hundred PSI for load-bearing footings, my father poured four thousand. He believed this stage would outlive us all.”
“He poured marine-grade quick-set with crushed basalt aggregate,” Parker said. He didn’t stand up. He remained down on one knee, his canvas work pants pulled taut over solid thighs, a heavy brass folding rule flicking open in his fingers with practiced, rhythmic snaps. “I ran a density scratch on the exposed footer down by the orchestra pit stairs five minutes ago. That’s five thousand PSI. You don’t pour that for an amateur production of *Oklahoma!*. You pour that when you’re building a missile silo or trying to anchor an offshore pier against a storm surge.”
He looked up at her then.
His eyes were an unreadable, stormy gray beneath thick, dark brows, framed by the pale, cold glare of the halogen work lamp he’d dragged across the stage. A faint smudge of carbon dust marked the edge of his square jaw. Parker Cole had arrived in Briar Glen seventy-two hours ago with a municipal work order from the regional safety board, a navy canvas duffel, and a silence so dense it felt deliberate. He didn’t look like the paper-pushing building inspectors the town council usually sent to complain about exit signs and fire extinguishers. His shoulders filled out his flannel-lined duck jacket with an athletic, grounded broadness; his hands were large, scarred at the knuckles, and entirely too steady.
Talia tucked a stray curl of dark auburn hair behind her ear, leaning down just enough to invade his perimeter. If charm couldn't buy her time, sheer proximity might. She was twenty-eight years old, had run this community theatre since her father’s heart gave out three winters ago, and knew every trick in the book when it came to disarming men who thought they owned the room.
“Briar Glen sits on a subterranean limestone shelf, Parker,” she said, her voice dropping into the soft, conspiratorial lilt that usually had the town selectmen stammering over their own agendas. “The river is less than four hundred yards away. When the spring thaw comes, the ground shifts. My father was protecting his life’s work. Is thoroughness suddenly a municipal violation?”
Parker’s gaze didn’t flicker toward her mouth, though she felt the sudden, electric stillness in the air between them—a taut wire pulled one notch tighter. Instead, his eyes traveled from her boots up to the tailored lapels of her wool coat, lingering for just half a second on the pale curve of her throat where her pulse was jumping like a trapped sparrow.
“Thoroughness isn’t a crime, Miss Vance,” he said softly. “Ignoring structural shear stress is.”
He stood up in one fluid, economical motion. He had a good six inches on her, his presence instantly shrinking the cavernous stage. He smelled of cold November air, machine grease, and a faint hint of roasted hazelnut coffee from the diner down on Main Street.
“The city received three separate citizen reports regarding ceiling plaster falling into the dress circle during the fall festival choir performance,” he continued, walking over to his battered aluminum gear case. He flipped the latches with two sharp *clacks*. “The south load-bearing wall is bowing outward by three-eighths of an inch. That bowing originates right here, where this slab meets the old timber foundation. The timber rotted because the concrete trapped the moisture. If I don’t core-drill this section and map the subterranean anchor bolts today, I revoke the Starlight’s occupancy permit by five o’clock.”
The room seemed to drop ten degrees. The breath locked in Talia’s lungs.
*A core drill.*
A two-inch diamond-tipped cylinder eating down through the heart pine, through the subfloor, and biting straight into the five-foot block of gray basalt Arthur Vance had poured by hand during the freezing rains of November 1994. The block he had sworn to her, on his deathbed with his fingers digging into her wrist, must never be broken.
*‘You keep the stage whole, Talia,’* her father’s voice scraped through her memory, thin and reeking of oxygen tubes and fear. *‘Promise me. No matter what the town council votes. No matter what developers offer. If they break that floor, they bury your name alongside mine.’*
“You can’t drill today,” she said, her voice bright, firm, and entirely devoid of the nausea twisting her gut. She stepped between Parker and the heavy rotary hammer drill he was lifting from the foam-lined case. “You don’t have the historic preservation variance. Chapter seven, subsection four of the County Antiquities Charter. Any stage constructed before 1940 is classified as an intact theatrical artifact. You need twenty-four hours’ notice and a signature from the council president.”
Parker paused, holding the four-foot-long drill by its rubberized balance grip. He looked down at her with an expression that bordered perilously close to amusement—dry, reluctant, and infuriatingly attractive.
“Chapter seven, subsection four applies to original surface finishes, Miss Vance,” he countered smoothly. “The pine under your shoes was replaced in 1988. It’s commercial-grade Douglas fir. Not historic. And emergency life-safety inspections supersede municipal historic covenants. State code 402-B.”
“You memorized the county charter?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“I do my homework before I pull permits.”
“You’re not pulling permits. You’re staging an invasion.” She crossed her arms, angling her body so that if he wanted to place the tripod-mounted core rig onto his chalk line, he would have to physically move her out of the way. “This building is the only thing keeping the downtown district alive during the winter. You condemn it on a Friday afternoon, and you kill the holiday production of *A Christmas Carol*. That’s twenty thousand dollars in local ticket sales. The bakery won’t sell its gingerbread; the pub across the street won’t seat a single dinner party after eight. You’re an outsider from the regional office, Parker. You don’t have to live with the fallout when you destroy a town’s tradition.”
Parker set the drill down on the edge of a vintage velvet wing chair—causing Talia’s eye to twitch—and took a deliberate step toward her.
He didn’t touch her, but he stood close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him against the chill of the unheated auditorium. Up close, she noticed the faint flecks of amber in his iris, and the sharp, clean line of his collarbone above his unbuttoned thermal Henley. There was an unsettling intensity in his face—not the lazy fatigue of a civil servant, but the focused precision of a man who looked at the world as a series of hidden mechanisms waiting to be dismantled.
