Chapter 7

“That mouse, he’s family.”

Walt Disney, Saving Mr. Banks

Hope had to admit Ronan was right: That salmon she caught made one hell of a good meal. He’d even let her help prepare it—nothing fancy, just steamed with a little lemon and garlic, but, damn, it was good. Even Kevin was impressed.

After supper, when everyone else went off to do their own thing, she followed Ronan back into the kitchen to watch him prep the rest of the fish for smoking.

He tied on a dark-blue bib apron, then pulled a white one out of the tall pantry cupboard, grinned a little, and tossed it at her.

“If you’re gonna hang around my kitchen, you’re going to have to work.”

“But I—” She caught the apron in midair, but instead of tying it on, she stared at it. “I don’t know anything about smoking fish.”

“It ain’t rocket science,” he said, soft and teasing. “Grab a bowl; you can mix the brine while I cut.”

And before she even had the apron tied, he started calling out ingredients.

“That’s it?” Hope stared down at the four items in front of her—water, salt, sugar, and syrup—and shrugged. “It really isn’t rocket science, is it?”

“Nope.” His voice was suddenly right behind her, tickling her ear and making her jump. “Watch yourself there.”

Hope turned as Ronan reached above her to the top shelf, bringing himself within a breath of her. He didn’t touch her—in fact, he seemed to make a point of leaning to the side just enough so he didn’t touch her—yet in those scant seconds, Hope’s hands twitched to wrap themselves around him, as they had earlier on the boat. But right as she started to move them, he found whatever he was looking for and stepped away.

Idiot. Giving herself a hard mental kick, she spun back to the counter, hoping he hadn’t caught how badly she was blushing or how she’d been ogling the broad expanse of his chest and wondering what it would feel like to slide her hands across it, skin-to-skin.

“It’s kosher.”

Hope scrambled to blink her mind clear again. “Uh, yeah, of course. I’m fine. It’s all good.”

Ronan laughed quietly as he reached over her shoulder and set a large box of coarse salt next to her bowl.

“Oh.” Closing her eyes for a second, Hope inhaled deeply, then nodded. “Right. That kosher.”

The brine couldn’t have been easier to make once she got him to give her exact measurements instead of telling her to “just pour some in the bowl,” but even so, she took her time stirring it, because she wasn’t ready to face him again.

She’d have to turn eventually, but not yet. The first thing she needed to do was tamp down the raging chaos inside her. That night out on the porch with him, it felt as if there were actual electric sparks shooting through the air, which would have made sense if they’d been standing in the middle of a summer storm, but they weren’t.

And then today out on the boat, when he’d pulled her up against his chest like that…Oh. My. God. Hope squeezed the mixing spoon tight as the still-fresh memory warmed her all over, sending tiny quakes to places deep inside her that were already vibrating from being near him.

There’d been a moment, both out on the porch and on the boat, when she thought he felt it, too, that snap, that crazy “holy shit” kind of moment, but then both times he backed off before anything happened. That could mean one of two things. Maybe he wasn’t ready for anything to happen. Or—and this was the one that worried her—maybe she’d imagined it and he hadn’t felt anything at all.

Blowing out a short, quiet breath, she gripped the bowl tight and carried it over to the table, where she poured the sweet mixture into the long plastic dish Ronan indicated. Together they lined up pieces of fish in the liquid, and even though his fingers brushed against hers so many times, she somehow managed to contain how much each touch made her shiver.

Okay, that was a lie. She didn’t manage it every time, but she only dropped a couple of pieces of fish, so that was good. In truth, it took until the following afternoon for her to calm all the shivers, and that was partly because she had something new to worry about: The first load of guests had arrived, and now it was game on.

Luka hadn’t been very happy when she found out Hope was going into the first day of shooting without any formal interviews, but Hope didn’t care. Once she found out that she was basically intruding on the guys’ only day off, there was no way she could bring herself to bombard them with questions about who they were and what they liked or disliked.

Besides, no answer they could have given her would have been as good as just being around them, watching them and listening to the way they spoke to one another. Or about one another.

They joked, they laughed, and God knew they gave one another a hard time, but not once did she ever doubt how they felt. It was heartwarming, it was sweet, and it was everything about family that she longed for in her own life.

Through their constant joking and teasing, she’d learned that Finn hated being called the fish whisperer, a nickname he rightly deserved and one Hope had been planning to use and exploit whenever she could. She learned Liam was the least temperamental of the three and that, for the first time in his life, he was happy to not be playing ball.

Then there was Ronan. She didn’t even know what to think about him. She’d been so nervous around him the first few days, so worried that he’d never warm to her, and now…now every time he so much as glanced her way, she was the one who warmed—all over, inside and out, and deep in places she’d begun to think had frosted over.

There was something in the way he looked at her, the way his eyes softened when she got all worked up over catching that fish. And, yeah, she’d admit it, when the nerd in her saw the way his tackle box was organized so perfectly—that might have earned him a few points on the hotness scale, too.

Even now, watching him, Hope was fascinated by the way he hung back, letting his brothers and Kate and Jessie do all the talking. It wasn’t that Ronan was rude or standoffish to any of the guests, but clearly he was happier in the background, because he’d acted the same way down at the dock earlier. While Liam and Finn welcomed everyone as they stepped off the plane, Ro got straight to work unloading the bags.

Hope had made sure Kevin and Chuck were ready with the cameras before they even heard the Cessna circling around overhead, so they had both video and still shots of everything—starting with the plane easing down on the water and sliding over to the dock, right up to where they were now, sitting in the great room, listening to Liam give the welcome speech.

One of the great things about doing this type of show was that you never knew who you’d meet or what their story would be, which could make for fun television viewing, but one of the bad things was that you only got one shot to get everything down. Hope and her crew had already filmed every inch of the property inside and out, so now it was just a matter of learning who the guests were and giving the editors of Hooked enough footage to work with.

The first special guest on the show was Rusty Germain, a catcher Liam knew from his early days in the majors. All on its own, that was great, but it turned out to be a huge bonus for the woman who’d brought her son to the Buoys in the hope that she could hit Liam up for some pointers on breaking her boy into the big leagues.

It took Hope longer than she’d expected to get everyone’s story on camera, and, in fact, by the time they were done, it was coming up on midnight. The last group had barely cleared the door of the pub when Kevin pulled out the memory card on his camera and dropped it on the table in front of Hope.

“G’night.”

“ ’Night, Kevin. D’you have everything you need for tomorrow?”

“Yup.”

“Are you sure? I’ve got—”

She heard him grunt as he shifted his camera a little. “Relax, Blondie. I’m set.”

A second later she was alone in the pub, surrounded by nothing but the creaks of the building and…what was that whirring? She followed the noise halfway to the kitchen, at which point she ignored the noise and focused on the smell—that warm, sweet aroma that could only mean one thing: cookies.

Racks of them covered the kitchen table, and by the looks of the empty cookie sheets beside them, there’d be more coming. She waited until Ronan shut the mixer off, then moved farther into the room.

“Smells amazing in here.”

“Hey,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “All done?”

Nodding, Hope stepped a little closer. “Do you always make cookies in the middle of the night?”

“It’s not even midnight.” Ronan pulled the bowl off its stand and set it next to the cookie sheets. “I have to get these done; otherwise, Finn’ll throw a hissy fit if I send him out on the water tomorrow with nothing but oatmeal cookies.”

“But they’re not just oatmeal,” she said, eyeballing the cooling racks and hoping she wouldn’t drool while she spoke. “They’re oatmeal raisin.”

“Yeah, that’s worse. Finn thinks putting raisins in cookies is the reason so many people have trust issues. They bite into it thinking it’s going to be a chocolate chip and then…”

Ronan snorted softly as he started scooping blobs of chocolate chip batter onto the sheets. And it was hardly sexy at all watching him do it. It was just cookie dough, right? Millions of people—men included—made cookies all the time. Maybe not at midnight and maybe not because they were trying to appease their younger brother, but what difference did that make?

None. The difference was that not a single other man could possibly look that good standing there in a green HOOK ’EM & COOK ’EM apron, with his forearms dusted in flour and a barely there grin tugging at his mouth.

“Hmm.” Hope swallowed hard, then licked her suddenly dry lips. “Can I help?”

“Thanks, but this is the last of it. You can be my taste tester if you want.”

Hope didn’t care what Finn said, oatmeal raisin cookies were a gift from the gods, and she wasn’t about to pass them up, especially not fresh from the oven. Selecting the largest one she could find, she broke off a piece and placed it gently on her tongue.

“Oh my God,” she groaned, closing her eyes as she sank onto one of the chairs. “It’s like a little piece of sweet gooey heaven.”

She chewed slowly, savoring every morsel, before finally swallowing and opening her eyes again. Ronan stared at her from the other side of the table, one hand on the edge of the bowl, the other wrapped around the scoop, his right brow quirked and his lips twitching against a grin.

“You all right?” he asked. “Can I get you a cigarette?”

“Wha—Oh!” Hope slapped her hands over her mouth but couldn’t stop the bubble of laughter that burst out.

“No, please,” he said. “Carry on. It’s nice to know they’re appreciated. I’ve just never seen anyone appreciate them that much before.”

The heat from Hope’s blush blasted up her face and didn’t stop until she was sure her scalp had to be glowing. Funny thing was, Ronan was blushing, too, like he’d done that first day and then again out on the boat. But unlike Hope, whose face was no doubt blotchy and awful, he was even cuter when his cheeks got all pink like that.

And the only thing she could think to do was stuff another piece of the damn cookie in her mouth and then talk over it.

“They’re really good,” she mumbled.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was getting that impression.”

Still chuckling, he pulled a jug of milk out of the fridge and poured her a tall glass before going back to his cookie sheets. Hope had never been so mortified and so amused all at the same time, but instead of just leaving it alone, she had to go and make it worse.

“If that’s what you can do with oatmeal raisin, I can’t wait to taste your other stuff.”

He didn’t say a word, but his hand froze in mid-movement, with a full scoop of batter dangling a couple of inches above the sheet.

“Your cookies,” she choked. “Because these are so good…and…and they don’t even have chocolate in them, so the ones there must be amazing because…well, you know…chocolate. They say it’s better than—Oh. My. God. Shut up, Hope.”

Ronan set the scoop down and smirked just enough to taunt her.

“Better than what?” he teased. “Than oatmeal?”

Hope refused to answer; she shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth, and when it was gone, she kept her mouth busy by drinking the entire glass of milk without stopping.

“Want some more?” he asked, but Hope was already shaking her head.

“No.” She kept one hand over her mouth, as if that would somehow filter the stuff coming out of it. “Thank you, but I think I better take what little dignity I have left and go to bed now. Good night.”

Head down, she headed for the door, barely managing to keep from sprinting out of the room.

“Hey, Hope?”

Crap. With one hand on the doorframe, she forced herself to turn, but that didn’t mean she had to look him in the eye, did it? At least not for more than a second or two.

“I, uh, I’m not sure who ‘they’ are, but if they say chocolate’s better than that, they’re obviously not doing it right.”

Hope couldn’t have been more mortified. Of all the things they could talk about, she’d somehow got them comparing chocolate to sex. And even though there’d been a couple of times in her life when chocolate had easily won that contest hands down, she wasn’t about to admit that to Ronan, because she’d probably follow that confession by daring him to prove his theory.

Instead, she forced what she hoped sounded like an airy laugh.

“Of course,” she said. “I was totally kidding. ’Night, Ronan.”

If he said anything after that, she didn’t hear it, because she bolted from the kitchen so fast that she almost took a header down the stairs to her room. It was only later, as she lay in bed mulling the whole thing over for the twenty-fifth time, that she realized it would have been a brilliant piece to get on film. Not the part where she had her little cookiegasm, of course, but the rest of it, with him looking so freakin’ hot in that apron, making cookies for his brother in the middle of the night.

Oh yeah. If that didn’t attract the female viewers, Hope didn’t know what would.

Days later, the image of Hope eating that damn cookie still taunted Ro. If that was her reaction to a bit of oatmeal, he couldn’t wait to see what else he could do to make her eyes roll and her tongue slip out across her lip like it had.

Shit—in his entire life he’d never seen anyone look that sexy eating a cookie. Hell, he’d never seen anyone look that sexy doing anything. There was something in the way she moved, as if she were gliding rather than walking, something in the way she spoke, her voice soft and gentle, so completely opposite to his own, and something in the way she listened—really listened, instead of just sitting there waiting for the other person to stop talking.

Sure, part of it was for her show, but unless Ro was completely off the mark, it seemed to him that she was genuinely interested in people and their stories. And even though he had no idea why, for some reason she seemed genuinely interested in him, which was pretty damn strange considering the things he’d said the first couple of times he talked to her.

Problem was, he was interested in her, too. Too interested.

It was a good thing she and the crew had gone away for a few days after filming ended, because it gave him time to shake his brain clear again, to maybe figure out why he gave her that big bag of cookies for the flight home or why he stayed on the dock after the plane pulled away and took off.

And to figure out why the hell he spent the next few days missing the way her laugh made him smile, even when he was in another room, or the way—well, holy shit, the lightbulb that went off in Ro’s head nearly blinded him—the way she spouted crazy bits of trivia when she was nervous or uncomfortable. How had he not noticed that before?

Hell, the second he handed her those cookies, she got all flustered and pink, could hardly look at him, and then blurted out, “You’re three times more likely to be attacked by a shark than you are to die in a plane crash.”

He shouldn’t have laughed, but, damn, she was cute when she was flustered. And apparently he did that to her—he made her nervous; he made her blush. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall a single time over the last week when he’d seen her react to anyone else at the Buoys like that. Just him.

“What are you smiling about?” Jessie’s voice jarred him out of his Hope cloud and right back to chopping up broccoli.

With his brothers and Kate on a supply run to Port Hardy, and the lodge empty of guests and crew until later in the day, the place was abnormally quiet, so he should have heard her coming, but that’s what he got for letting his mind drift like that.

“Nothing,” he said, forcing his mouth into a straight line. “I’m not.”

“Yeah, right.” She didn’t really need to snort like that; they both knew he was lying. “Well, when you’re done not smiling, I could use a hand making up the rooms downstairs. We didn’t put the bedding on after we washed it, and the crew will be back anytime.”

With a short nod, Ro dried his hands and followed her downstairs, where they headed straight into Chuck and Kevin’s room. It was a little crowded with the extra bed in there, but Ro and Jessie managed to work around each other as they made up the beds and then headed into Hope’s room.

Should he really think of it as Hope’s room? It had been Jessie’s up until she moved her stuff down the hall to Finn’s room, so technically this was nothing more than a spare room now, right?

It sure didn’t look like a spare room. Didn’t smell like one, either.

In all the years Jessie’d lived there, she never had that much stuff stacked in the closet, and as far as Ro could remember, the room had never had that faint rosy smell to it, but it sure as hell did now. If his nose was right, the smell was coming from that glass diffuser on her window ledge. Mandy had had a couple of those in the house when they were married, but they’d always given off a heavy musky smell.

This one, though, was barely noticeable, just enough to make him stand at the end of the bed and inhale a long, deep breath—something he shouldn’t have done, because the soft, simple scent made him picture Hope again. And as he fought to get the corners of the sheet around the mattress, he couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to slide in next to her and…

“You wanna hustle it up there, Romeo?” Smirking, Jessie shot him a quick wink as she tugged the last corner down around the mattress. “It’d look pretty creepy if she got back and found you daydreaming in her room.”

“I’m not daydreaming.” Feeble at best because, really, who was he kidding? Finn and Liam already suspected Ro had a thing for Hope, and there wasn’t anything those two didn’t tell Jessie and Kate. Besides, it was Jessie; she’d always had the knack of reading him and his brothers, even when they tried so hard to hide things from her. But that didn’t mean Ro was going to cop to anything. No, sir.

“Need I remind you,” she said, “that it wasn’t so many months ago you told me that you’d never seen two people work so hard at hiding something as Finn and I did? Well, back at ya, buddy.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ro jerked the blanket up over the bed, then waited for her to grab her side. “I’m not hiding anything.”

“No? Then tell me why you’ve smiled more in the last few days than I’ve seen in any given month.”

She was right. Shit.

“You haven’t yelled once since she got here—”

“Yes, I have,” he said, as if it was something to be proud of. “But the one lesson Da drilled into all of us was that we don’t yell when we’ve got guests here, and in case you forgot, we were up to our asses in guests all week. But it’s just you and me here now, so if it’ll make you feel better, I can yell my fuckin’ head off until the first plane pulls up this afternoon.”

He had her there and she knew it. Jimmy O’Donnell might have been a first-rate son of a bitch in the off-season, but when he had guests at his lodge, he never so much as raised his voice, let alone his fists.

“Okay, fine, but what was up with that care package you gave her when she left the other day?”

“What?” he scoffed, tossing her a pillow. “The cookies? She liked them, so I gave her a couple for the ride home. Big deal.”

“Uh, okay, I like your cookies, too, Ro, but I have to practically offer up an internal organ before you let me have any, and that wasn’t just a couple you gave her—it was a whole bagful.”

What could he say? He couldn’t deny it, so instead he sighed and straightened to his full height, as if that would somehow intimidate her into changing the subject. He should have known better. Jessie’d spent too many years working with Da to be intimidated by anyone.

“Look,” she said, “I don’t give a flying rip if you give her the moon. She seems like a nice girl, and if you like her, you shouldn’t feel you have to hide that. God knows you could do a lot worse.” She stopped, rolled her eyes and sighed. “Correction: God knows you have done a lot worse.”

The laugh was out of Ro before he knew it was coming. Wasn’t anywhere near a happy laugh, though, just a dry, acerbic bark.

“You’re both adults, Ronan, and as long as you’re honest with her about where this is going or where it’s not going…” Instead of finishing, Jessie exhaled a slow breath and shrugged.

He gave her a couple of more seconds, but when she didn’t seem to have anything else to say, he waved her out the door and tugged it closed behind them. They made it all the way to the top of the stairs before she finally broke.

“So that’s it? You don’t have anything to say?”

“Like what?” He started toward the pub but stopped when she clicked her tongue.

“Oh, I don’t know, how about something like, ‘You’re right, Jessie, I do like her.’ ”

Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. The last thing he was about to do was admit to anyone here that he might like Hope, or any woman, because he knew exactly what would happen. Since the four of them were all gooey-eyed over each other, they’d get all excited and start thinking that he’d finally met “the one.”

Ro believed in a lot of things, but him finding “the one” wasn’t one of them, and it didn’t matter how much he was interested in Hope or how much she might be interested in him—he could already predict how it would end.

“Or,” Jessie said with a sigh, “if it’s just sex you’re after, well, whatever, that’s your business. But remember how much work we’ve put into getting this place up and running again before you break her heart and throw the show into jeopardy because you’re—”

She broke off and pinched her lips tight.

“I’m what?” he scoffed. “A dick? An asshole?”

The more he pushed, the tighter she pinched her lips, which was usually a pretty good warning sign that shit was about to get real, but it was too late to back off now.

“You’re scared.”

“Of what? Hope?” With a hard snort, he rolled his eyes, hoping his reaction would be enough to trick Jessie into thinking she was wrong. Of course it didn’t work.

“Yes,” she said, so matter-of-fact. “She’s exactly what you’re scared of. Every day of your life you carry around all the crap of your mom and Mandy leaving you, and it weighs you down.”

He opened his mouth, but she kept right on talking.

“Deny it all you like, Ronan, but I’ve known this family too long and I’ve witnessed too much to believe for one second that those two women aren’t the reason you block everyone else out. You’re scared Hope’s going to do the same thing they did.”

How did she…No. There was no way she could possibly know what he had rattling around inside his head. Or his heart. And yet…Fuck. Ro clenched his jaw tight enough to make it ache, then ground out something they both knew was a lie.

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Turning, he marched the rest of the way through the pub and into the kitchen, but Jessie stayed right with him.

“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “And I’m sick to death of watching the three of you carry that shit around! We don’t know why your mother left and we’ll probably never know, but whatever her reasons were, none of it’s your fault, any more than it’s Finn’s or Liam’s. If you have to blame someone, blame your father—he’s the idiot who dragged her halfway around the world to start a fishing lodge in the middle of bloody nowhere!

“And as for Mandy…” Jessie buried her face in her hands and snorted. “Okay, I don’t know what the hell you were thinking with her. I mean, honest to God, Ronan…”

It wasn’t funny, but for some reason he found himself chuckling as he ran his hand down the back of his head.

“But love her or hate her,” Jessie said, lifting her hands in surrender, “the best thing she ever did was kick you out of the house.”

“Yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It’s been nothing but shits and giggles ever since.”

“You know what I mean; the two of you never should have gotten married in the first place.”

What the hell difference did any of it make at this point? He’d gone into his marriage believing he could be everything to Mandy, that he could—and would—give her everything she wanted. And he tried. God help him, he tried. He sold his farm because she didn’t like it; he took a job he hated so they could buy the house she loved; and when she wanted him to be more than just a laborer, he took night school courses so he could get a degree and a job she’d be happy with.

None of that was what he wanted, but he did it anyway. And why? Because he’d grown up knowing he’d never been good enough and had never done enough to make his own mother want to stay, so if he had any hope of Mandy staying, he was going to have to do everything he could to be the man she wanted. To be the man she could love.

Turned out the more he tried to change, to be that man for her, the less it seemed to work, because he hated who he’d become, and that made him miserable, which made her miserable, and no matter what either one of them did, they ended up resenting each other more and more, until Mandy finally cracked.

So, sure, maybe Jessie was right about him being scared, but what did she expect? History had proven that Ro didn’t have whatever it was that made women want to stay, and with two strikes already against him, he wasn’t overly keen on swinging for the fences again. No thanks; he’d take the walk instead.

While he’d stood there mulling everything over for the billionth time in his life and cursing himself more than he’d ever cursed Mandy or Maggie, Jessie poured them each a cup of coffee and held one out to him.

“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown, and it’s none of my business what or who you do.” Her teasing grin slowly began to ease some of the knots in his head. “But here’s the thing you O’Donnells seem to have a hard time understanding. You’ve all got issues and problems—we agree on that, yes?”

Again not funny, so why did it make him smile?

“Well, guess what? So does everyone else. God, Ro, I spent most of my life terrified of water; Finn still blames himself for your mother leaving; and even though Liam rebuilt that fish shack, he hasn’t forgotten what happened in there any more than you have.”

Ronan responded to that by setting his mug down, turning the burner on under a big pot of water, then going back to the cutting board he’d deserted earlier.

“So you had a shitty childhood, a shitty marriage, and your adult years haven’t been so hot, either; big deal.” Jessie pinched a small piece of broccoli and tossed it in her mouth. “Are you making broc-cheddar soup?”

Ro nodded.

“Excellent!” She nipped another piece, then used it to point at him as she picked up her lecture where she’d left off. “Those things, all that stuff from your past, they’re only bits of who you are; they don’t define you unless you let them.”

“Thank you, Dr. Phil.”

“I’m serious,” she laughed. “If there’s even a hair of a chance that you and Hope—I’m using her as an example; don’t frown at me like that—could get together and be happy, you’d be stupid not to jump at that chance. But you won’t do it, because of all that other shit that’s gone on, which has absolutely nothing to do with her. So, really, by not giving it a chance with her—again, just an example—it’s like you’re blaming her for something she doesn’t even know about.”

He started to deny it, then closed his mouth tight, because Jessie was right. That was exactly what he’d been doing all these years, and it was exactly what he’d planned on doing until…well, shit…until he didn’t know when. Forever? Probably.

Catch and release had served him well since his divorce, so there was no reason to change anything now, was there?

“I’m just saying,” Jessie said. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Instead of answering, Ro cocked his brow at her and snorted.

“Oh, please,” she said. “Sometimes you have to risk it. Do you think it was easy for Liam and Kate to put their history behind them and give it another try? Hell no. And don’t even get me started on Finn and me. If he hadn’t pulled his head out of his ass when he did, who knows where I’d be right now.”

Ro couldn’t help but grin at that. Any other woman would have told Finn to shove the lodge and everything else up his ass sideways, but not Jessie. She loved him enough to hold on even when Finn’s fear made him push her away.

“Your silence isn’t changing anything here, Ronan. I’m still right. So just do it. Give it a shot—and, yes, I’m speaking specifically about Hope right now, because even if Finn hadn’t said anything to me, I’m not blind. Clearly you have a thing for each other, so take the shot. If it doesn’t work out…well, that’d be crappy, yeah, but what if it does work out? That’d be pretty awesome, am I right?”

Ro wasn’t about to start thinking about anything working out, not long-term anyway.

“So what do you suggest?” he asked dryly. “That I drop to one knee the second she steps off the plane?”

Jessie didn’t so much as smirk. “Don’t be an ass. All I’m saying is be nice to her, let her be nice to you, and if things start to happen, don’t freeze up, don’t shut her out, and, to quote your brothers, don’t be a dick.”

Ro tossed the chopped broccoli into the pot and sighed over a small twisted grin. “They don’t mince words, those two, do they?”

“No. No, they don’t, and it’s not often the two of them offer any kind of good advice, but when they do, you should take it. Seriously.” Lifting her mug in salute, she headed toward her office but stopped before the door and turned. “And if you’re open to free advice about Hope, then I have two words for you, my friend: crêpes Suzette. You’re welcome.”

With a crooked little grin, she lifted her gaze toward the ceiling as the buzzing drone of an incoming Cessna sounded overhead.

“You want to come and help?” she asked, setting her mug on the counter and heading toward the lobby. “Or are you too busy with your soup?”

“Screw the soup.” Shit. He shouldn’t have said that out loud.