“Then we figure out what comes next. The restoration shop, the partnership, us. All of it.”
Dylan drove home through streets painted gold by dying light, her lips still tingling from the kiss, her mind spinning with implications. In two months, she’d have her own restoration shop. In a week, they’d search a cemetery for clues about a ring that had crossed oceans and centuries.
Chapter Eight
November arrived in Laurel Valley wearing frost like diamonds and carrying the scent of woodsmoke and promises of winter. Three weeks had passed since Dylan and Aidan’s kiss among the chapel ruins—three weeks of exploration, of morning coffee that lingered longer than necessary, of dinners that danced on the edge of dates without quite committing to the label. They moved around each other with the delicate precision of people learning new rhythms, aware that the entire town watched with the fascination usually reserved for seasonal television dramas.
The restoration shop had consumed Dylan’s daylight hours, offering refuge in physical progress from emotional uncertainty. Hank’s crew had transformed the old Henderson building with the brutal efficiency of men who understood that sometimes destruction preceded resurrection. They’d torn up the beautiful hardwood floors in the work areas, jackhammered through decades of patches and amateur repairs, and poured new concrete that could support the weight of lifted vehicles and lifted dreams in equal measure.
The front third of the building had been preserved like a love letter to the past—those gorgeous hardwood floors refinished until they glowed like honey in sunlight, the tin ceiling restored to its pressed-metal glory, the brick walls exposed and sealed to show every nuance of age and endurance. It was becoming exactly what Dylan had envisioned: a place where past and present shook hands, where restoration was revealed as the art it had always been.
She stood now in what would be her office, watching snow begin its slow descent through the large front window. The first real snow of the season, arriving with November’s authority, transforming Laurel Valley into something from a child’s dream of winter—perfect, pristine, impossibly pure. Behind her, the work bays echoed with the percussion of progress as contractors installed the lift system, each clang and drill whir a note in the symphony of becoming.
“It’s magnificent,” Aidan said from the doorway, and she didn’t need to turn to know he was smiling. She’d learned to read his voices like sheet music—this one carried pride seasoned with something warmer, something that had been simmering since their kiss but remained unspoken, like bread rising in secret.
“Four more weeks, according to Hank.” Dylan traced a finger along the window, following a snowflake’s fatal descent. “Then I can officially open Dylan’s Restoration—though I’m still not sold on the name.”
“What about Flanagan’s Restorations? Classic, timeless.”
“Too formal. Like I should be wearing a monocle and discussing the Habsburg dynasty.”
His laugh filled the space between them, warm as August in November’s chill. “The Restoration Mill? Playing off the valley’s history?”
“Better. But still not quite right.” She turned to face him, finding him closer than expected, close enough that she could see snowflakes caught in his hair like nature’s confetti. “We missed Saturday again.”
Three Saturdays had passed without returning to their treasure hunt. First, the restoration shop’s plumbing crisis that had flooded the back bay. Then Aidan’s trip to the classic car auction in Bozeman where he’d bought three vehicles for future restoration. Last week, an early storm that had made the mountain trails treacherous with ice and bad decisions. Excuses dressed as reasons, all of them, but easier than facing what finding that ring might mean, what claiming it might promise.
“Next weekend?” Dylan suggested, the same words she’d offered for three weeks running.
“Next weekend,” he agreed with equal practice. “Though at this rate, we’ll be treasure hunting in snowshoes.”
They stood in comfortable silence, watching November paint the world white through the window. Dylan had learned to treasure these quiet moments—the spaces between words where understanding grew like mushrooms in darkness, where friendship deepened into something neither quite dared name aloud.
“Dinner tonight?” Aidan asked. “Simone’s making that butternut squash soup you love.”
“I’m working late,” she said, disappointed. “The McLaren’s owner wants it Monday, and there’s an engine harmonic that’s driving me insane.”
“I could bring you something. Save you from starvation.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I want to.” He turned to face her fully, and something in his expression made her breath catch like a skipped heartbeat. “Dylan, I?—”
“Mr. O’Hara?” One of Hank’s workers materialized in the doorway like an interruption incarnate. “Your brother needs you to check the placement of the alignment rack.”
The moment shattered like an icicle hitting pavement. Aidan stepped back, the almost-words hanging between them like snow suspended in air, waiting to fall.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, and Dylan nodded, not trusting her voice to remain steady.
She returned to The Pinnacle as afternoon deepened toward evening, losing herself in the familiar rhythm of diagnostics. The Ferrari’s engine was a puzzle wrapped in Italian engineering and expensive anxiety—its strange harmonic occurring only at specific RPMs, only when the engine was warm, only when Mercury was in retrograde and the garage spirits were feeling capricious.
The garage had gone quiet, Ralph and Danny long departed to their families and lives that existed beyond timing belts and torque specifications. Dylan worked in the pool of light from her work lamp, the world narrowed to the engine bay and the elusive sound that shouldn’t exist but stubbornly did.
She was so absorbed in the hunt that she didn’t hear the footsteps until they stopped directly behind her—expensive heels on concrete, a sound that didn’t belong in the garage’s usual symphony.
“Excuse me?”
Dylan straightened and turned to find a woman who looked like she’d been assembled by a committee tasked with defining winter elegance. Tall, blond, wearing a coat that probably cost more than Dylan’s monthly expenses, with the kind of bone structure that made other women immediately aware of their own facial inadequacies. This was a woman who’d never met a mirror that didn’t love her back.
