Chapter 3
Parker’s eyes narrowed slightly. He saw the pivot coming, his jaw tightening in anticipation of the trap.
“What are you proposing, Miss Vance?”
“A compromise,” she said smoothly. “It’s already two o’clock on a Friday. The stage lighting rig for tonight’s youth orchestra rehearsal is already wired into the sub-stage panels directly beneath where you’ve drawn your line.” That was a lie, but Parker hadn’t mapped the lower electrical mains yet. “If you start drilling with high-voltage wet core equipment now, you risk tripping the main breaker and leaving sixty middle schoolers in the dark with cellos.”
Mayor Higgins nodded vigorously. “She’s right! My granddaughter plays the cello. You can’t cancel their dress rehearsal, Cole. Parents have bought tickets!”
“Let the kids rehearse tonight,” Talia pleaded, stepping directly into Parker’s field of vision, tilting her face up to his. She allowed just a fraction of her real desperation to bleed into her expression, disguising it as community pride. “Give us until Monday morning. You can set up your base of operations in the old green room backstage. You can review all of Arthur’s original building logs—I have filing cabinets full of them in the office. You’ll see the load calculations yourself. If you still feel the need to core the stage after looking at the numbers, I will personally hold the vacuum hose while you drill on Monday. Deal?”
Parker stared down at her.
Up close, she could see the faint shadow of stubble along his jawline and the sharp, penetrating focus of his gaze. He wasn’t fooled. She knew, with a sudden prickle of dread, that he saw right through the performance. He knew the electrical grid excuse was flimsy; he knew she was playing the town council like an untuned piano.
Yet, something else flickered in those gray eyes—a spark of raw, human curiosity that had nothing to do with building codes. His gaze dropped briefly to her lips, parted and breathless, before rising back to meet hers. For a second, the entire theatre felt impossibly small, reduced only to the heat between their bodies and the weight of the secret beneath their feet.
“The green room,” Parker said slowly, his voice flat.
“Fully heated,” Talia offered quickly. “Desk, Wi-Fi, and a coffee pot that works if you kick it twice.”
“And full access to your father’s maintenance archives?”
“Every single ledger from 1975 to the day he passed.”
Parker looked from Talia to Evelyn Miller, whose arms were still crossed like an imposing sentinel of small-town bureaucracy, and then to Mayor Higgins, who was sweating into his muffler.
He reached down, picked up the chalk line, and wound it back into its red plastic casing with a sharp *snap*.
“Monday at eight o’clock in the morning, Miss Vance,” Parker said, his voice dropping low, aimed exclusively at her. “I fire up the drill. And if those ledgers don't match the deflection I’m seeing on this floor, I won’t just take a two-inch core. I’ll bring in an excavator and pull the entire slab out by the roots.”
A chill ran down Talia’s spine, sharp and icy, but she forced her brightest, most radiant smile to her lips.
“Fair enough, Mr. Cole. Welcome to the Starlight.”
Parker held her gaze for one beat longer than professional courtesy required. The intensity in his eyes was almost suffocating—a mixture of suspicion, unyielding purpose, and an undeniable, magnetic awareness that made her pulse flutter in her throat.
“I’ll need the key to the stage door,” he said, not breaking eye contact. “I work late.”
“I’ll be right here with you,” Talia said softly, her chin high, meeting his challenge head-on. “Someone has to make sure you don’t scratch the paint.”
Evelyn cleared her throat loudly, breaking the spell. “Well! That’s settled then. Bob, let’s get back to the office. Mr. Cole, we expect to see you at the rotary lunch on Monday if you’re staying the week.”
Parker gave the councilwoman a noncommittal nod, his eyes never truly leaving Talia. As the two older officials turned and began their march back up the aisle, their voices echoing in self-congratulatory murmurs about saving the youth orchestra, Parker bent down and methodically began packing his tools.
Talia stayed where she was, standing squarely on the chalk line.
Her knees were trembling beneath the hem of her coat, but she kept her hands buried deep in her pockets, hiding the tremor. She had bought seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours to keep Parker Cole from punching through the heart pine, through the aggregate, down into the darkness where her father had buried the truth thirty years ago.
Parker latched his metal toolbox, the sound sharp as a gunshot in the cavernous hall. He straightened up, slinging the strap over his broad shoulder, and looked at her.
“You’re going to run out of stage tricks eventually, Talia,” he said quietly, stepping past her toward the wings.
Talia watched his broad back disappear into the shadows of the stage left corridor, the smell of sawdust and cold rain trailing behind him.
“Not before the final act, Parker,” she whispered into the empty dark. “Not before the final act.”
The Starlight’s green room had not entertained an actor in thirty years, but by nine o'clock that evening, Parker Cole had turned it into a tactical command post.
He had dragged two heavy oak drafting tables together beneath the stuttering fluorescent tube, sweeping aside faded headshots of long-forgotten local Hamlets to make room for his blueprints, digital calipers, and three separate field monitors. The room smelled of old velvet, lemon wax, and the damp, sharp tang of melting sleet dripping from Parker’s heavy work boots.
Talia leaned against the doorframe, a chipped porcelain mug of bitter black coffee clutched between both hands, watching him work.
He had shed his canvas jacket hours ago. Now he wore only an indigo thermal shirt, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing forearms corded with muscle and pale scars from years on rough job sites. A heavy mechanical pencil was tucked behind his ear; his dark hair was slightly rumpled where his fingers had dragged through it.
He looked far too solid for this room. The Starlight was built on illusions, papier-mâché crowns, and false painted horizons. Parker Cole was pure, unyielding physics.
“You’re squinting,” Talia said, stepping inside. Her voice broke the silence that had settled between them like heavy stage dust. “The wiring in this wing was installed during the Carter administration. If you stare at those schematics much longer, you’ll burn a hole through your retinas.”
Parker didn't look up from the sprawling paper sheet. “I’m not squinting at the light. I’m squinting at your father’s math.”
A small, cold needle pricked Talia’s chest. She kept her step light, crossing the scuffed linoleum to set the mug near his elbow.
“Arthur Vance was a visionary, Parker, not an actuary. He cared about sightlines and acoustic resonance, not decimal points.”
“Visionaries still have to obey gravity,” Parker countered evenly.
His hand moved, fingers brushing against hers as he reached for the coffee. His skin was warm, slightly calloused, and sent a sudden, startling jolt straight up her arm. Talia didn’t pull away immediately, and neither did he. For a second, his gray eyes flicked to hers over the rim of the mug, dark and unreadable in the dim light.
