1. Deirdre

1

DEIRDRE

T here were days that Deirdre truly hated the hardware store. Today, sitting on the floor sorting sales tags for three hundred types of screws in July, was one of those days. Machine screws, wood screws, self-tapping roof screws, concrete anchor bolts. How many screws did a town the size of Green Valley even need? Deirdre had the inventory list on one side of her and the printed shelf labels on the other. She felt sticky and grouchy.

It was nearly a hundred degrees outside, and the air conditioning hadn't worked since before they'd bought the place, so both the front door and the door to the auto shop were wide open and there were box fans set up that did nothing but move hot air from one place to another.

The inventory was a mess. It had things on it that Deirdre was sure they had never carried, and there were common items that weren't listed anywhere (though she had found one of the screws listed under lawn mowers for some reason). The database was in a spreadsheet from the 90's, built on one of the earliest personal computers. It had been updated hundreds of times and was so sprawling and complicated and wrong that it was barely worth using.

Several times, Deirdre had thought it would be better just to delete it and start again with the inventory from scratch on a modern system, but there never seemed to be the time to invest in such a Herculean task. It was easier just to make a hand-written tag and get on with life than it would be to update the database and print them all again. Deirdre scrawled a tag for the 13mm machine screws, which looked like an untouched box of 100, guessing at the price without guidance.

She tried not to resent the store, or the fact that Dean had bought it instead of moving with her to Madison to go to school. It had been a selfless act, and Deirdre reminded herself that Dean's huge heart was a big part of the reason that she loved him.

And she did love him, even when they frustrated each other or argued over money or spreadsheets, tired from chasing their toddler, Aaron, who had gone from crawling to sprinting in the past year, and was a holy terror with sticky hands.

Deirdre dumped two boxes of screws into one and slapped a random tag on the result. Who was going to be picky about a 35 cent bolt?

She finished the screws (so many screws!) and moved on to fix the yard tools with a weary sigh.

Dean was an amazing dad and a great husband, but Deirdre could not help but feel like she'd missed out on seeing what else was out there, outside of Green Valley. They were supposed to move to Madison and go to college together, but Dean hadn't been able to leave the sleepy town, and Deirdre wouldn't go without him.

He'd given her his class ring and tried to convince her to pursue her dreams alone, but Deirdre had stubbornly stayed. When she lost his class ring, he replaced it with a wedding ring. They moved into his parents' old farmhouse and never did around to sorting the boxes stored in the guest room because it was more space than they needed, even when Aaron came along.

Deirdre couldn't regret a day of it, because she loved them both so much, but sometimes she let herself wonder what she might be doing now if her life had gone differently. Not sorting screws on a sweltering day in a store where they'd be lucky to have two customers before they closed.

She heard the door chime but didn't turn, knowing that if she let go, the entire rake display was going to fall on her. Whose idea was it to hang them like this? Hers, probably. Dean had terrible spatial sense and left a lot of the displays to her.

"With you in a minute!" she called, forcing the rogue rake back up into the hanger with poorly concealed shifter strength. The sales tag fell off, of course, and she had to stoop to pick it up, just as she recognized that the hair at the back of her neck was rising in…anticipation?

Her deer was a quiet companion, both in personality and voice, almost never speaking if she wasn't in deer form. But she was trembling in Deirdre's head now, alert and completely focused on whoever was behind them.

Deirdre stood and turned as if she was in a dream, her body moving without conscious direction.

The man framed in the hardware store aisles was a stranger, and somehow also the most familiar person Deirdre had ever laid eyes on. He was tall, with dark hair and olive skin, movie star good looks and a lanky build like an athlete or a shifter.

He was staring back at her, lips just parted like he was about to ask a question or possibly rush forward and kiss her, and Deirdre had never wanted a person to do that so completely.

Mate! Mate! Mate! Her deer was capering like a fawn, delight and joy dancing through her.

For one heartbeat, Deirdre was perfectly happy, full of eagerness. Mates weren't a fairy tale. Her whole self knew this man was absolutely made for her. He was her happy ever after, her endgame, her perfect one, and he was smiling back at her in recognition.

And she was married .

The moment shattered like glass, every shard cutting straight into Deirdre's heart.

She was so screwed.