Chapter 6
The air left her lungs in a quiet, ragged gasp.
Silas leaned in, his face inches from hers. She could smell the chicory on his breath, see the gold flecks ringed inside his slate-gray irises, feel the radiant, furnace heat rolling off his chest. The entire room seemed to narrow down to the point of contact between his hand and her skin.
"And what about you?" Nora whispered, her hand rising instinctively to rest against his forearm. The muscle beneath her fingers was iron-hard, trembling with the strain of his restraint. "Did she give you an escape hatch too?"
"No," Silas breathed, his eyes dropping to her lips, his thumb resting gently against the corner of her mouth. "She gave me you."
The confession hung between them, naked and terrifying in its simplicity.
Before Nora could speak, before she could bridge the two inches separating their mouths, a violent gust of wind slammed against the alley door, rattling the iron latch with the force of a gunshot.
The spell shattered.
Silas pulled his hand back as if burned, stepping away from the counter with a sharp, ragged breath. He dragged both hands down his face, wiping the sweat from his temples, his back turning to her once more.
"I need to get the strap clamps," he said, his voice rough, defensive, shutting down like an iron grate. "Before the humidity warps the rail."
He didn't wait for her to answer. He pushed through the back door and stepped out into the howling storm, leaving Nora standing by the mahogany counter with her lips parted, her cheeks blazing, and her pulse roaring like the sea outside.
***
The storm passed by midnight, leaving Oakhaven washed in clean, salt-tinged air and puddles that mirrored the stars.
Two days later, the real architectural work began on the bakery’s commercial hearth ventilation.
Nora sat cross-legged on the clean subfloor beneath the main brick chimney, her laptop open on a plywood board beside the green ledger. She was reviewing the municipal clearance permits she needed to submit to the town clerk on Friday.
"Hey, Silas," Nora called out toward the rear prep kitchen, where the sound of his orbital sander was humming through a cabinet door.
The sander whined down and clicked off. Silas stepped into the doorway, wearing his canvas apron, a dusting of white primer coating his eyelashes. "Yeah?"
"Did Clara hire an outside mechanical consultant before she got sick?" Nora asked, frowning down at the open ledger in her lap.
Silas stayed in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. "Why?"
"Look at this entry on the hearth flue," Nora said, tapping page forty-two. She turned the ledger toward the light. *"‘When lining the chimney for the stone-hearth deck oven, the clearance to combustibles must maintain a minimum of eighteen inches, per 2021 IBC Section 2112 and Maine NFPA Amendment 31.’"*
Nora looked up, her architect’s mind clicking through the dates. "Clara passed away in April. But she was already out of commission—mostly resting upstairs—for almost two years before that. How on earth did an eighty-two-year-old retired baker know to cite the *2021 International Building Code*?"
A dead, freezing quiet descended on the prep kitchen doorway.
Silas’s posture didn't change, but his eyes narrowed slightly, the muscles around his jaw locking with microscopic tension. His hands, resting in his apron pockets, stilled completely.
"Clara had friends on the zoning board," he said evenly. "Harvey from the water department used to bring her the updated code binders whenever the state issued revisions. She liked reading them on the porch."
Nora tilted her head, unconvinced. "Harvey’s brother is a plumbing contractor, not a structural engineer. The 2021 IBC wasn't even adopted by our municipal council until late autumn of that year. Most architects in Portland didn't start citing Section 2112 until early 2022."
"Clara didn't like waiting for Portland architects," Silas countered. His tone was perfectly level, flat as a sanded pine board, but his fingers twitched inside his pockets. "She wanted to make sure whenever this place opened, nobody could shut it down on a technicality. You know how she hated inspectors."
Nora stared at the page for another second. The handwriting was unmistakably Clara’s—the sharp, upright strokes, the aggressive punctuation, the impatient slash of the crossbars.
"I guess," Nora murmured, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "It’s just... she wrote it with such modern precision. She even noted the clearance reduction tables for gypsum board."
"She was Clara," Silas said, stepping away from the doorframe and walking toward the sawhorses. "She didn't do half-measures."
He picked up a sanding block and began working on the corner of the display counter, his strokes rapid and purposeful, effectively closing the conversation.
Nora looked down at the ledger again. A tiny knot of confusion remained in the center of her chest, but she smoothed it down. Of course Clara had badgered the municipal clerks. The woman had terrorized every bureaucrat within a twenty-mile radius for fifty years; why wouldn't she intimidate them into handing over state building code updates from her armchair?
Nora closed her laptop, picked up her glass of iced tea, and set it on the edge of the display counter.
"Let’s hang the curved glass," she said, shaking off the technical haze. "I want to see what this showroom looks like before the sun goes down."
Silas set down his sanding block. "It’s a two-person lift. That glass is original nineteenth-century plate—curved, annealed, and completely irreplaceable. If you drop your corner, Davies, there’s no replacement in New England."
"I told you, Vance," Nora said, stepping up to the wooden crate where the massive, curved pane of antique glass rested in its padded blanket. "I don't drop things."
They took their positions at opposite ends of the glass.
"On three," Silas instructed, his voice dropping into that quiet, commanding professional register. "Lift with your legs. Keep the radius level. One... two... three."
The glass was shockingly heavy—nearly seventy pounds of thick, leaded crystal with a deep, graceful bow. Nora took the weight into her forearms, her leg muscles burning as they lifted the pane in unison, clearing the edge of the crate.
They stepped sideways in tandem, moving toward the oak counter base.
"Easy," Silas murmured, his eyes locked on the felt-lined groove in the timber frame. "Two inches forward. Bring your corner down an eighth."
Nora shifted her weight. Her work boot caught on the edge of a stray drop cloth, her balance tipping sideways.
"Whoa—"
The heavy glass lurched. Nora gasped, her center of gravity failing, her shoulder dropping toward the oak counter.
Before the glass could shatter, Silas moved with terrifying speed.
He didn't drop his end; he locked his left arm around his side of the pane, guiding it firmly into the lower channel with a clean, muffled *thump*, while his right arm shot out and caught Nora around the waist.
His forearm clamped against her ribs like a band of steel, lifting her bodily and pulling her flush against his broad chest.
The glass sat perfectly seated, unbroken, resting in its track.
Nora was pinned against him, her feet barely touching the floor, her hands pressed flat against the hard, warm expanse of his chest. His heart was hammering beneath her palms—rapid, heavy, wild. His face was buried in the curve of her neck, his hot breath washing over the sensitive skin behind her ear as he struggled to steady his breathing.
