Kept by the Quartermaster

Tessa Brandt has kept Harrowport fed for nine months. Somebody is stealing from her warehouse, and the council has given her ten days to find them. The thief is Cal Merrick, a carpenter with soft hands and a quiet explanation: eleven people in the flooded south ward that the town voted not to admit. He's been feeding them out of her stores for three weeks. Tessa should turn him in. Instead she makes him a deal, and the deal becomes a smuggling route, and the smuggling route becomes a small, dangerous kindness she can't stop. When the council finds out, Tessa will have to choose between her seal and her town. And Cal will have to decide whether he came back for the people he was saving, or for the woman who saved him. A post apocalyptic survival romance about ration books, stubborn decency, and what a city owes the people outside its wall.