Until a recent Saturday night at the Grange. Until today when she said she wanted to spend some time with him. How long would he have to wait to hear from her? Would she panic on the drive to St. Johnsbury and decide she’d been impetuous?

Leaning into the hood of a Chevy sedan, Nolan released a deep breath and tried to figure out how long he’d been staring at the V-8 while thinking of nothing but Hannah Guthrie and how she’d looked that morning—lovely and flushed and embarrassed and undone by their conversation.

Waiting to hear from her might actually kill him. It was certainly killing his concentration, he thought, as he got busy changing the spark plugs and filters on the older-model car.

Every time the garage phone rang, his heart stopped for a moment, which was flat-out ridiculous. She said she’d call him. She hadn’t said she’d call today. But why hadn’t he asked her to call to let him know she’d arrived safely after the trouble with her battery?

He wiped the grease off his hands with a red oil rag and threw it aside in frustration. Was it possible for a person to drive himself nuts? If it was, he was well on his way. Since his productivity was positively shot, he decided to break early for lunch.

He was on his way out the door to grab something to eat at the diner when the phone rang. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve let voicemail pick up the call, but there was nothing normal about circumstances under which Hannah Guthrie might be calling. So he ran back in and grabbed the phone.

“Nolan’s.”

“Hey, it’s me. Hannah.”

Come on. No way. Had he gone straight around the bend into the land of the delusional? Had he wished so hard for her call that he’d made it happen out of sheer will?

“Nolan? Are you there?”

It was really her. “Oh yeah, sorry. I’m here. Is everything okay with the car?”

“That’s why I called. I figured you’d be worried about whether or not I got here, and I did, so I wanted to tell you.”

Was it his imagination or was she rambling? And did she sound nervous? The calm, cool Hannah he knew and loved never sounded nervous. She was always in perfect control of her emotions, something he admired greatly about her in light of what she’d been through. “That’s good to know. I was hoping it wouldn’t give you any more trouble.”

“It didn’t.”

Nolan wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say next. His brain spun with possibilities, each of them rejected.

“I also wanted to tell you . . .”

His heart pounded as anticipation beat through him in time with his heart. “What, Hannah? What did you want to tell me?”