“I liked it a lot.” Turns out swooning wasn’t limited to Victorian ladies whose corsets were too tight. The traveling sparks completed their journey to her head, and her brain buzzed like she took a sip of champagne. The hubbub of the market morphed into the adult voices in Charlie Brown specials. Placing one hand on the table, she steadied herself and found the courage to meet his gaze. “Would you maybe just consider building me a gazebo?”

“Bring me a sketch of what you want it to look like,” he said, “and I’ll see what I can do.”

Nora gaped. “Jonas!”

He didn’t flinch. “I could use the work. Thank you for thinking of me.”

Tessa had no beef with Nora Beiler. She didn’t even know the woman. Still, Jonas’s assent felt like a mini victory. A flush of satisfaction bloomed in her cheeks, and she dropped her gaze. Gloating was unbecoming. “A sketch. I can do that. Thank you.”

She hadn’t made it two steps from the table when Nora launched into a tirade in Pennsylvania Dutch. Her tone left no doubt as to her meaning. Translation? This gazebo was so not happening.

“Enough, Nora,” Jonas said.

His voice was heavy as wet cement. Glancing over her shoulder, she caught a glimpse of sky-blue shirt as he disappeared through the door. She whipped around and lit off for the refuge of Troutman’s Famous Fries.

Something about that family just didn’t sit right. Why was Nora angry all the time? How did Jonas endure her? Why did the three of them live alone in that big, old farmhouse? They were a mystery. She popped a fry and shivered at the tangy explosion of vinegar and salt.

A mystery she was determined to solve.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

When Tessa agreed to give Jonas a sketch of her gazebo, she was so giddy she conveniently forgot one key fact. She didn’t draw.

So, on a balmy Saturday afternoon, hot on the heels of propositioning an Amish carpenter, she hoofed to the Green Ridge College library to lose herself among the stacks. Hours brainstorming gazebos while she weeded and an equally time-consuming Internet search yielded nothing. Try as she might, she just couldn’t reconstruct the compelling structure from her dream. Short of hypnosis, she was flummoxed. Time to get on her old-school research.

She plopped at a computer terminal, slung her bag onto her lap, and unzipped the front pouch. What happened to all her good pens? Nothing was so satisfying as a really good pen. Extracting a lesser utensil and a sketchbook, she snorted. No pen on earth could magically transform her into a gazebo designer.