Janet shrugged as she adjusted her ponytail under her baseball cap. “It was here when I got here.” She tucked her red volunteer shirt more securely into her shorts, and her smile rivaled Mona Lisa’s. “There’s a tag on it, though.”

“Oh, I see it.” Stacey caught the slip of paper between her fingers, and her smile became a grin. “Em-ma! It’s for you!” She said my name in a singsong voice and dangled the long-stemmed rose at me until I snatched it from her. Sure enough, my name was on the tag. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but when I turned the tag over my heart skidded in my chest.

Let the wooing commence.

“That’s from . . .” Stacey closed her mouth with a snap as I looked at her with rounded eyes, but I couldn’t stop her grin. “I know who that’s from!” The singsong hadn’t left her voice. I should have been annoyed, but instead her grin was infectious. I tucked the rose behind my ear, threading the stem through my hair so the bloom nestled above my left ear. Red roses were kind of cliché, but they were cliché for a reason. Red was the color of love. Of passion. Of the heart. The heady fragrance of the flower enveloped me as I started my day, and it certainly ensured that Simon—or was it Captain Blackthorne now?—stayed in my thoughts. As wooing went, it was pretty effective. I couldn’t wait to thank him.

I had no idea that was just the beginning.

Less than an hour after the front gate opened, a family came into the tavern. The couple were probably in their midthirties, along with a small girl dressed as a princess. We got a lot of patrons like that. Parents who wanted a drink but couldn’t exactly leave their kid to wander around alone outside. It’s not like we were a real bar, just a tent out in the woods. Hard to enforce an age policy at the door that way.

Stacey served the parents while I swept off the stray leaves that had accumulated on the tables overnight. I was almost finished when I realized the little girl had come closer and was now gazing up at me with big blue eyes.

“Good morrow, Your Highness.” I gave her a low curtsy befitting her princess dress. She was adorable, all pink dress and blond ringlets. She couldn’t have been more than six. “I hope you are enjoying the day. And may I say, that’s a beautiful rose. I have one just like it, see?” I crouched down to show her the rose in my hair, since she was indeed holding a long-stemmed red rose from the flower seller at the front gate.

She reached up a small hand, and I ducked my head a little so she could touch the flower in my hair. She patted it gently, then examined the rose in her hand carefully. “Are you Emma?”

I froze. How did she . . . “Yes.” I cleared my throat. “Yes, I . . . I am Emma.”

She looked back at her parents, who were close enough to hear our conversation, and they nodded at her encouragingly. The little girl then extended the rose to me. “It’s for you.”

“Oh. No. No, thank you, milady.” The last thing I wanted to do was take this little girl’s flower. Kids were capricious. If I took it now, in five minutes she might be screaming for it again, and I didn’t want to give the parents a headache like that. “I have one already, see? You should keep yours.”

She shook her head, little blond ringlets dancing, and extended the rose to me more emphatically. “It’s for you,” she said again. “The pirate said so.”

My jaw dropped, and for a moment I forgot how to speak. “The . . . pirate? What pirate?” What a stupid question.

“The pirate,” she said, a little exasperated, as though repeating it would explain everything. “He said find Emma and give it to her. He told Mommy where to find you, but it was easy. He said you were a pretty girl with curly brown hair and a blue dress.”

“Did he?” I pictured Simon, kneeling in front of this little girl, giving her a rose and asking her to be a delivery person, and my heart swelled. I looked from her to her parents, smiling in our direction, and back to the little princess again. “Well, I thank you.” My hand shook only a little as I took the rose from her tiny fingers. “You did a wonderful job of finding me. I will be sure to tell him so when I see him.” I touched the flower to the tip of my nose, automatically sniffing it even though I was already wearing one. Now I had two. As I stood up and bid the petite princess farewell I tucked it into the knot at the back of my neck and moved the first one back there to match it.

The third rose came from two giggling young women wearing corset tops and short skirts. They ordered what was probably their third round of hard ciders of the morning before presenting me with the long-stemmed red rose. The back of my head started to get pretty crowded, and when roses four and five arrived before midday, Stacey plucked the first three out of my hair and started fashioning a flower crown for me. By the time I had seven roses, the flower crown was pretty lush, not to mention heavy.

“Once you get a couple more it’ll look perfect.” She looked giddy at the prospect, and I turned to her in alarm.

“More? How many more are there going to be?” I peered at her while she giggled. “Did you know about this?”

She raised her hands in innocence. “I didn’t. I promise I didn’t. But you have to admit, it’s pretty cool. Romantic.” She looked toward the chess field with a thoughtful expression. “I had no idea the Captain had it in him.”

“Hmm.” And here came rose number eight, delivered by a Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator. He bestowed a kiss on my hand along with the rose, and I thanked him as prettily as I could, lamenting that his accent, not to mention his costume, was much better than mine. I was going to have to step up my game next year.

Next year? I stopped twirling the rose. Why was I planning next year already? Surely that was assuming too much. Counting on the future was the kind of thinking that got me hurt. Dumped on the way to a better life. I stomped down those ugly thoughts and brought my attention back to the present. Back to this silly number of roses arriving to me throughout the day, one at a time.

We were too busy in the afternoon to drop by the chess match, which must have derailed some of the rose delivery plans. Because once it was over, several of our fellow cast members dropped by the tavern, along with roses nine, ten, and eleven. By the end of the day the flower crown on top of my head made me look like a wood nymph, and there were more roses stuck at random into my hair and one was threaded through the laces of my bodice. Janet had left for the day, and Jamie had started to break down the bar when Mitch appeared, a smirk on his face and a rose in his hand.

“No.” I held up a hand, as if that would stop him from coming any closer. It didn’t. “No,” I said again. “I don’t need any more roses.” I tried hard to sound annoyed, but I hadn’t stopped smiling since I’d gotten the first rose that morning.

“Too bad, milady.” Mitch actually bopped me on the nose with the rose he held. “I am here to escort you to pub sing.”

I tried to wave him off. “I think I’ll skip it today.” I wanted to collect my niece and get home as soon as possible. One side effect to all of these roses was that Simon had been on my mind all day, a side effect enhanced by the fact that he hadn’t come by the tavern once. It was so unlike him that all I could think about was getting home, showered, changed, and over to his place pronto. I needed to thank him properly for all these roses. And in this case, “properly” meant “naked.”

Mitch laughed. “Nice try. You’re not skipping anything.” I had never been handed a rose so forcefully in my life, and by now I was an expert on being given flowers. He took my other hand and nestled it in the crook of his elbow. “I’m under orders.” He half led, half dragged me to the front of the grounds, where most of the cast and the remaining patrons had gathered for pub sing. By the looks of things, it was winding down; most of the acts who participated had already performed, and a quintet of women singing in a cappella harmony was just finishing up.

No sooner had they left the stage than Simon, still in costume as Captain Blackthorne, hopped up and commanded the attention of everyone there. “I want to thank all of you for joining us here today at the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire.” His authoritative voice traveled without the aid of a microphone, and when I looked at him I was amazed that this was the same man with the shy smile in all his family photographs. He was a completely different person in the costume and persona of a pirate. But the great thing for me was I now found both men equally compelling.

“It’s been a lovely day,” he continued. “The weather’s been perfect, and we have all enjoyed having you. I would like to give my particular thanks to those of you still here who assisted me today on my quest.

“For those of you who weren’t a part of it, let me explain it to you now. We have in our midst a woman named Emma. She is a tavern wench of great beauty, whose smile lights up the day like the sun, and the night like the moon. She has absolutely stolen my heart, but I do not mind in the least. In fact, if she would agree to keep my heart and take good care of it, I would never want it back.”

My own heart pounded at this speech, while the logical side of my brain tried hard to parse it. Who was speaking here? Captain Blackthorne, the pirate I’d been handfasted to at the beginning of Faire, and spent weeks bantering with in character? Or was this Simon, the mild-mannered English teacher, who had kissed me so sweetly in the bookstore a few days before? Or were they two halves of a whole, one living neatly inside the other?