1 Chapter 1

1

I was saying good-bye to the people who’d showed up for the last “Fridays with Frank” before the summer season began. I’d explained basic spring-cleaning and distributed a detailed handout to help cut down on area wildfires and was answering the last few questions when I saw the newcomer wandering around the shop. A lot of people—mostly men—seemed to do that here in my old-fashioned hardware store.

Riley, my seventy-year-old assistant, raised a brow at me and gave a minimal shrug. I shrugged back, took out my pocket watch, and gestured for him to take his break. While I had no problem with Riley watching the stranger, I wanted the privilege to do so myself. This good-looking newcomer liked walking around the store as much as I liked admiring him.

Oh, I knew it wasn’t me he came to see. There’s just something ambrosia-like about hardware—screws and nails, and little bits and pieces, all of them fashioned to make bigger pieces stay together and work. Not to mention the tools to fasten something or take it apart.

For whatever reason, many men responded to the siren song of the store. They ambled in and wandered around with no particular purchase in mind. Some ended up buying all kinds of stuff I knew they’d never use, and some just spent the time moseying and left in better spirits, smiles on their faces.

Even now at age thirty-five, I don’t know what siren sings to anyone else. Hardware stores, even though I own and operate one, still do it for me.

At any rate, for the past week or so, the newcomer had walked the aisles in the mornings, never buying anything he couldn’t pay for with cash but always with a relaxed, happy attitude. A dark, handsome man, maybe a couple of years older than me, the stranger had the easy grace of the rich men who strolled around town in the summer while on vacation. Instead of exuding entitlement as so many of them did, this stranger acted like he’d arrived home and it was good to relax.

With his tawny, messily chic hairdo, his twinkling brown-gold eyes, and his charming smile, he looked like he could lean up against a wall or sit outside on one of the benches and photographers would flock to take a shot. Despite the fact that he wore boat shoes, no socks, chino pants, and designer sweaters in a town where boots, jeans, flannel shirts, and lumberman jackets ruled, he looked like an all right sort to me.

Actually, if I were being honest, he looked a whole lot better than all right. In fact, he was up there in the exclusive category where I’d buy him a few beers at Stonewall Saloon and try to get him to go home with me.

If I was that sort of guy.

But I’m not.

After all, I was wearing my monkey suit: denim overalls, button-down shirt, and clip-on bow tie. My grandfather all but patented the getup in the early 1900s as part of the nonthreatening hardware helper image he was convinced oversold merchandise. Even though he was a taciturn curmudgeon at heart, he mainlined helpful and genial until closing time

The men in my family were clones of my grandfather as far as appearance went. We’re all tall, thin, and geeky, with prominent Adam’s apples, pale blue eyes, and dirt-brown hair. The only differences began internally and seeped out externally as people got to know us. My grandfather was addicted to Stoker’s chewing tobacco and Jim Beam, but only indulged outside work hours. Dad, on the other hand, at least early in my life, found religion and shunned all things mind-altering, except the Good Book.

I’d strayed from the straight and narrow after my preteen years. But I didn’t advertise it. My persona as helpful Frank McCord had long ago marked and unsexed me around here. Coming out wouldn’t serve any purpose now.

So I had spent years watching men come and go without a problem. Not this time. This stranger I wanted to meet and get to know. But how did other men do that? I was still working on the answer.

* * * *

Today when the stranger came into the store, instead of wandering and giving me a moment to fully admire him, he stepped confidently up to the counter.

“Hi there. I’m Christopher (mumble, mumble).” He stuck out a hand.

“Frank McCord. Sorry, I didn’t catch the last name.” I gripped his hand firmly, happy to get a chance to touch him. He shone. Handsome as they come, with a clear, warm smile and a gleam in his eyes. I wasn’t ever going to win a beauty contest, but I stood up straight as I looked at him.