Manny Rios, 59, independent minor league baseball scout, had only showed up to the town’s annual fire department rib cookoff because his boss threatened to reassign the southeastern Ohio territory to a 22-year-old kid who thought a 90 mph fastball made a prospect a first-round lock. He’d spent the last 40 minutes tucked against the side of a fire truck, beer sweating through the paper coaster in his hand, avoiding eye contact with anyone who looked like they wanted to ask how he liked the town, or if he was single, or what the patch on his worn scout jacket meant. Eight years after his ex-wife left him for her high school sweetheart cross-country coach, he’d perfected the art of the unapproachable scowl, and it had served him fine until he turned to leave and walked straight into someone carrying a heaping plate of ribs.
Barbecue sauce splattered across the left breast of his jacket, dark and sticky. Before he could grumble out an apology, a hand brushed his wrist, light enough that he almost thought he imagined it first. He looked down, met warm brown eyes crinkled at the corners, close enough that he could smell lavender soap cut with smoked paprika and the faint sweetness of peach iced tea on her breath. She was the neighbor he’d only seen waving from her pottery studio porch across the street, the one the cashier at the grocery store had muttered about three days prior, saying she was “bad news” for the married guys in town.