“Are we dropping off the dresser first?” Logan asked, finally recognizing where Frankie was going when she turned onto Main Street.

Frankie drove past his closed optometry clinic. After his conversation the night before with Brooke, even he could see the windows were sterile in their plainness, especially juxtaposed with the stuffed window displays of Frank & Signs. Knickknacks, paintings, and old furniture pushed the boundaries of the display like a woman squeezing into a too-small girdle and not quite making it.

“Yes and no.” Frankie pulled around the corner and stopped, her tailgate lining up with the alley door. She jumped out and headed to the shop door while Harper and Logan climbed out of the truck. “We do need to unload this first, if you don’t mind helping again.”

While she was unlocking and propping the door open, Logan climbed into the bed of the truck, loosened the cinched tie-downs, and scooted the dresser forward. To lighten the load, he pulled out each drawer, stacking them one on top of the other in a leaning tower of boxes, which Harper ferried into the storeroom unasked.

“Thank you, friend,” Frankie said. She took the last drawer from Logan and balanced it on the stack as he’d been doing.

At her words, Logan looked up, surprised. For a second, he wondered if she’d been talking to him, but with his daughter’s trail of dark hair disappearing through the open door, he realized Frankie had meant Harper. He stepped down from the truck and shimmied the dresser out as far as he could alone without ending up with a pile of firewood in the alley.

“Ready?” he asked Frankie, and she stepped in, knowing without direction the best way to transport the heavy wooden furniture. They even managed to get the dresser through the back door without adding any scratches to the furniture or, his bigger concern, smashed fingers or toes.

“Thanks for the help,” Frankie said. “I never could have done this without you.”

“Dad, come see the desk.” Harper dragged Logan to where she and Frankie had been working on their latest project, even though he’d seen it the day before. With no noticeable change in days, work seemed to have stalled, but he humored Harper anyway. “I tried to get Frankie to let me paint it aqua or something,” Harper said with a scowl, “but she wanted to stick with the stain.”

Logan stepped forward, finally finding the excuse to do what he’d been tempted to do before. He pulled out each of the small drawers and pushed them in again, their S-shaped fronts melding into the design. Running his finger along one of the two appliquéd panels around the center cutout, he felt the wood give, if only a couple of millimeters. Sliding his index finger into the gap between the top of the panel and the top of the secretary, he found he could pull the panel to reveal a hidden compartment.

“I think it looks fantastic this color, sweetie, and it’s going to look great when it’s all shiny again.” He gave his daughter’s shoulder a squeeze.

“We’ll paint the dresser,” Frankie appeased Harper. “Thanks to HGTV trends, farmhouse chic has become my bread and butter, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that to this desk. It’s a classic,” she explained to Logan. “But try finding a matching drawer pull to replace this broken one …” She shook her head. “Replacing them all with new ones would be so much easier, but I think it’s worth a try to keep it as close to the original as I can.”

Frankie stepped forward and placed her palms on the desk, close enough to Logan that she could whisper and he would hear—and feel—her every word. “I’ve always had a soft spot for antique secretary desks, and when I found this one …” She sighed with pleasure. “It deserved nothing less than complete restoration.”

Logan wondered if he should move away, take a half step back, but he didn’t. “Are you trying to convince me you have a heart? That you’re actually a historian rather than a mad scientist slash psycho toy-torturer?”

Logan saw the beginnings of a smile before Frankie turned away, obviously ignoring him. “Harper, what do you say I finish the desk while you’re at school so you and I can work on the kitchen island starting Monday?” She paused a beat. “I’m thinking it needs paint.”

“Blue?” Harper asked, eyes wide with excitement.

“Actually, yes. I think so. What do you say?”

“Yes!” Harper fist-pumped. Her approval was no surprise to either adult. “Can we show it at the festival?”

“Of course.” Frankie crossed her arms over her chest, watching Harper’s celebration with amusement.

Logan couldn’t help but be surprised that his girl was so excited by all of this. He never would have expected it. She never would have had these kinds of opportunities if it weren’t for meeting Frankie. All because of that goofy cat with some fairy-tale sidekick name.

Speaking of … the back door rattled, but it turned out to be a person, not the feline.

“Hey, Dad.” Frankie greeted a bald man wearing a T-shirt with the local high school’s mascot, the logo faded and cracked. It probably dated back to when Frankie had attended.

“Hey, Frankie.” He engulfed his daughter in a hug, his height and girth so much more than hers that she looked like a kid next to him. With a laugh, he let her go and introduced himself to Logan and Harper. “Name’s Frank.” His proffered hand swallowed Logan’s. “You guys caught me off the premises.” He didn’t look the least bit chagrined. “Had to run to Hammers for a second.” The hardware store wasn’t far down the street. “Ran out of ammo for the staple gun.” Frank shook his beefy fist holding the staples at Logan in what could have been taken a threat, the metal hitting the cardboard with dull thuds.

“Ha. I figured you’d gone on a lemonade run, Dad.”

“Ah, now that’s not a bad idea,” Frank said, nodding. “I was finishing these chairs for Anthony. I’m sure he could fix me up.” He loaded the staple gun and popped four or five staples into the bottom of a chair.

Logan loved listening to the father-daughter rapport and hoped he had that easy of a relationship with Harper in another fifteen to twenty years.

“Since you’re here, I’m going to run these down to Anthony at the diner.” Finishing with the staple gun, Frank set the chair to rights and then took the staple gun apart and stowed it safely away. “The legs were loose, so I welded them tighter. Don’t worry about leaving when you need to, though. I’ll keep an eye on the door.” He hefted a chair in each hand, the chrome shining like new next to the metallic red of the vinyl seat cushions.

The man exited the front door toward Tony’s Diner, and the shop was suddenly much quieter.

“Now are we going to the other place, the one that might have a bed for me?” Harper clasped Frankie’s forearm.

Embarrassed that Harper was somewhat whiny, Logan reminded himself it was nice that she felt comfortable with Frankie.

“I think we might already be here,” Logan responded, giving Frankie a questioning look. “Right?”

Frankie put both hands up in a don’t shoot gesture and addressed Harper. “I have something I wanted you to see, but you can be honest with me if you don’t like it.” She led them around a corner and into the back display section of the store. “It isn’t your traditional bed.”

Harper followed Frankie, winding around the many offerings like the cat winding himself around doorframes and humans’ legs, and Logan followed along behind. “I didn’t see a bed here before. Dad asked me before we went out this morning.”

“Oh, so you did think to check with me,” Frankie said in a teasing voice, but the fact that she said it told Logan she’d been wondering. “That makes me feel better.” Frankie stopped in front of a daybed constructed from old wood with chipped paint. “Maybe you didn’t see it.”

Harper hopped onto the box spring and mattress draped in an old quilt only fit for an octogenarian. Inspecting the back and sides of the bed, Harper finally looked up at Frankie. “Is this made of old doors?”

“Two of them.” Frankie took a few fussy throw pillows off the bed, probably in an attempt to make it look more kid-friendly. The needlepoint did nothing for it. “One door along the back, and another cut in half for the sides.” When they’d been put together, the back had been elevated, giving the bed a more couch-like shape. “The fun thing is that during the day, you can scatter pillows across the back and it can look like your very own sofa in your bedroom.” Frankie turned around in a circle as if looking for an alternative. “I don’t think I have anything else right now, but we can keep looking if you don’t like it.”

“And the peeling paint?” Logan imagined Harper getting sick from lead paint, even if she was way too old to be eating it.

“I’ve sanded and sealed it. No wood splinters, no actual peeling of any sort. It only looks rough,” Frankie assured him. “What do you think?” she asked Harper.

“Did you make it?” Harper lay back on the bed and kicked her heels up over the arm at her feet. With her child height, that left her head near the middle of the bed.

“I sure did.” Frankie smiled down at Harper, pleased that she would ask.

“Then I love it.” Harper closed her eyes, looking like she might fall asleep if left much longer.

Frankie grabbed Harper’s feet by the shoes and shook them playfully. “Let’s be clear: You don’t have to say that to make me happy. It’s probably different from what you had before or what your friends have. I promise, you don’t have to like my work to like me.” She paused and gestured toward Logan. “For example, I have three pairs of glasses, and I didn’t get even one of them from your dad. And that doesn’t mean I don’t like him.” She sent an exaggerated wink his way, which made Harper laugh and his heart flop. What was so wrong with him that she fixed him up with everyone else but her?

“I like it.” Harper swung her legs over the side of the bed, twisting so she ended up standing next to the bed. “Can I have it, Daddy, please?”

Logan rolled his eyes, threw his hands up in the air, and let them drop heavily with a loud sigh. “I guess.” He was barely able to keep the laugh from his words. “If that’s what the princess wants, then that’s what the princess gets.”

“Should we load this up, then?” Frankie said. Curiously, she walked to the opposite side of the bed to strip off her decorations rather than starting in the closest corner, but then Logan noticed her surreptitiously removing the price tag and slipping it into her pocket. “Harper, could you grab my drill? I think it would be easier to remove the bolts for transport and set it back up at your house.”

While lighter than the dresser, the bed frame was bulkier. The three of them negotiated around the various objects in the shop, with a banged-up shin Frankie bore without complaint their only casualty. He called that a win, though he wished it had been him that had gotten hurt instead of her.

Logan waited until they’d loaded the bed before broaching the subject of payment. Knowing she’d give him a fight, Logan stood with his wallet out when she returned from locking the alley door. “How much do I owe you?”

Frankie put both fists on her hips. “I did not lure you back to my shop so I could take financial advantage of you.” She smirked at him, and he stepped back. “I thought it might be something Harper could like, and it’s my gift to her.”

With the fierceness in her look, Logan decided to put his wallet back in his pocket. He would track her father down later and give him the money, making up some excuse of not having had cash earlier. “Then at least let us buy you lunch.”