Jack Harkness walked through the falling snow toward the little jewelry store in town. He’d been ogling the cool old swords in the window for years, but he’d never thought he would be headed there looking for a way to start his own business.

“Hey Jack,” a female voice made him look up. It was Liz Baffles, one of his mom’s friends.

“Hi, Mrs. Baffles,” he said.

She grinned at him. “You know you can call me Liz now, right?”

He grinned back and kept walking. Jack had always had a way with older women. With all women, if he thought about it, and with men too. Jack was a people person.

But it was easy to be a people person in a town like Tarker’s Hollow. Life was good in the pleasant suburb and most people stuck around for decades if not lifetimes. It was easy to be comfortable with people when you had known most of them since you were in fourth grade.

Half a block away, the sign for Sticks & Stones swung in a gust of snowy air. The driftwood sign was oblong and rustic looking, but here and there, a shimmering crystal poked out of one of the knots in the wood.

The whole thing reminded him of the store’s proprietor.

Rachel DelGato was a senior when Jack was a freshman. In the wholesome sea of Tarker’s Hollow High School, Jack was wowed by Rachel’s dyed black hair, her Misfits t-shirts and safety pin jewelry. And he was taken in by her delicious ability to hold her head high and be straightforward, when all the other girls seemed anxious to be anyone but themselves.

Rumor had it that Rachel could be kind of a bitch. But Jack appreciated her unvarnished honesty. And he suspected that her tough exterior covered a heart of gold. Even in high school, she was never too cool to take her grandfather to the apple pick at Harkness Farms in the fall, dropping money in the otherwise empty tip jar for the younger Harkness kids who brought bushel baskets to the customers and advised them on where the picking was good.

Rachel had done something else to help his family too, but he wouldn’t mention it today. He was pretty sure she’d want it kept on the down low. And besides, Jack wasn’t supposed to know.

At any rate, when he heard Richard Crool had quit after he started a renovation for her, Jack figured it was fate that Sticks & Stones might be his first gig as a contractor.

He reached the door just as Minna Randolf was leaving.

“Oh, hi there, Jack,” Minna said. “How’s Tom?”

“He’s great as far as I know,” he told her honestly.

Tom Ingle had given Jack his start in the trades. From day one he had told Jack, You won’t work for me forever, son. You’ll want to go out on your own. But Jack still felt he was abandoning the man who’d given him his know-how. But it wasn’t like Jack had much choice. Tom wasn’t going to retire, ever. He liked his work. And Jack had already hung around too long if he ever wanted to get his ducks in a row to have a business and a family.

Jack continued into the store. It smelled nice inside, like wood polish and vanilla, with a hint of something metallic underneath. His sense of smell had been working overtime lately. He supposed it was to be expected, with his three-hundredth moon practically right around the corner.

When his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, he noticed Rachel DelGato observing him from behind the counter.

Her hair was now a rich chestnut brown that he suspected was its natural color, still cut short with jagged edges in a way that made her look like a fairy. Her large eyes matched her hair.

The coltish figure he remembered from high school was now statuesque, with supple curves.

“Hi, Rachel,” he said, suddenly feeling nervous.

She tilted her chin up at him in silent acknowledgment. The movement made the brown-green stones in her choker dance and wink.

“Thanks for having me,” he continued gamely. “I read up as much as I could about what you do here, but I’d like to know more so I can help make your expanded space work hard for you.”

Tom always said the three Ps in landing a gig as a contractor were preparation, preparation and preparation. Rachel hadn’t made it easy for him though. She didn’t even have a website for the store. He’d been forced to comb through back issues of the town paper and ask around to get a better feel for the place than he had from his occasional window-shopping.

“Come look,” she said, stepping out from behind the counter and leading the way to a velvet curtain covering the wall between her original shop and the property she’d bought next door.

Jack was surprised how hard it was to ignore the hypnotic click of her bracelets dancing on her wrist as she moved gracefully toward the curtain.

One of his brothers had told Jack that Rachel put some kind of spell on her rings - that’s why the people she sold them to always stayed together. At the time he had laughed it off. The idea of Rachel putting a spell on someone was ludicrous.

But after five minutes alone with her, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

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