Rudy Marquez is 52, a custom work boot maker with a gimpy left knee he earned dragging two rookie crew members out of a 2017 Lolo National Forest blaze. He’s spent the last eight years living alone in a cedar cabin 12 miles outside Missoula, and his biggest personality flaw is that he’d rather ignore a problem for three weeks than answer a single government email. He’d dragged himself to the Saturday farmers market only to drop off a pair of steel-toed logger boots for a regular who runs a stone fruit stand, and he was already mentally mapping his route back home to frozen pepperoni pizza and a rerun of *The Searchers* when a kid on a scooter came barrelling around a honey booth, hard.
The woman in front of him stepped back fast to avoid getting clipped, and the jar of pickled ramps she was holding slipped in her grip. Rudy reacted on old firefighter reflex, one hand wrapping around her bare elbow to steady her, the other catching the jar before it could shatter on the asphalt. Her skin was warm under his calloused palm, sun-warmed and dusted with freckles across her forearm, and she smelled like pine cleaner and the lavender lip balm she’d swiped on ten minutes earlier. When she turned to face him, her hazel eyes locked onto his for a beat too long, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and Rudy’s throat went dry. He knew exactly who she was.