The next evening, Cecily felt as jittery and excited as a teenage girl on her first date.

As she dressed to go out with Zeke, she tried to remind herself that she was a mature, responsible woman and there was no reason to expect this thing with Zeke—which seemed to have sprung out of nowhere—to lead to anything permanent.

But she couldn’t help but be excited.

Really excited.

She had no idea what to wear—since she didn’t know what Zeke had planned. She was sure it wasn’t going to be fancy though, so she finally decided on a casual skirt—a long flowing one rather than the pencil skirts she normally wore—and green top that brought out the color of her eyes with a matching cardigan. She looked at herself for a long time in the mirror and decided she looked as good as she was going to look. Surely this was appropriate for most of the possibilities Zeke would have planned for the evening.

She grabbed her little bag and walked outside. She was a bit early, and there was no reason for Zeke to come and knock on her door. That would feel strange, unnatural. Better just to meet him outside.

She wandered out onto the path that led to his cottage and paused when she saw one of the beds along the fence had been weeded today.

She knew it had because she’d noticed a couple of stray weeds in Zeke’s usually immaculate beds this morning and reminded herself he was on sabbatical, so it would be Monday before the weeds got pulled when the local guys she’d hired came to work on the grounds.

The weeds were gone.

She knew exactly what happened to them.

When she heard a voice say from behind her, “Hey, I was just coming to get you,” she turned around to see Zeke.

He looked as dressed up as she’d seen him in over eight years—which wasn’t particularly dressed up. He wore a pair of khaki trousers and a shirt with a collar. The shirt was a very loud orange-red color, but still…

He’d definitely made an effort.

She frowned at him, despite the flutter in her chest. “Have you been weeding?”

His eyes shot down to the bed, and his lips twisted slightly.

“You’re supposed to be on sabbatical,” she continued at the confirmation in his expression.

“I like to work.”

“But you’re on sabbatical.”

He scowled. “You’re saying I can’t do anything?”

“Don’t you want to take some time off?”

“No. I hate lazing about. I like to keep things nice. Can’t we call it a hobby?”

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “I guess you can do a little. But make sure it’s just a little. I’ve hired a crew to come a couple of times a week, and there’s got to be the big jobs left for them to do. You can pull a few weeds, if you really can’t help yourself.”

“Good.” They smiled at each other for a minute. “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on then.”

She was smiling again at his terse and very unromantic invitation, but she walked beside him as they headed for his pickup truck. He’d bought the truck sometime during his marriage, and he’d had it ever since. He did all the work on it himself, and it still ran well, despite its age.

Cecily felt a little strange as she climbed into the passenger seat—since it wasn’t the kind of vehicle she normally rode in—but she didn’t mind.

It felt like Zeke.

And she liked Zeke.

A lot.

He slanted her a suspicious look. “What?” he demanded gruffly.

“What, what?”

“What are you thinking?”

He was worried, she realized. He wasn’t acting worried, but he was. He wanted her to be having a good time. She gave him a little smile. “I was thinking this is kind of strange. But nice.”

He nodded, letting out a visible breath. She’d spoken the truth, and evidently it was the right thing to say.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Not far.”

He drove them about fifteen minutes until they reached a public access to the beach and nature preserve. There was only one other car there. October on the Outer Banks was still usually pleasant and fairly warm, but most of the tourists had gone back to their lives. The air was comfortable, with just a note of fall crispness, and Cecily felt another little thrill of excitement when Zeke reached behind his seat and pulled out a paper grocery bag.

They walked to a table that looked out onto the ocean, and he pulled out the picnic he’d brought. Bread, cheese, deli meats, olives, almonds, grapes, strawberries, chocolate cookies, and wine.

“Wow,” Cecily said as the containers kept coming. “Did you pick all this stuff out yourself?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t even know what this bread is.” He picked up a square of focaccia and stared at it like it was an alien.

She laughed. “What did you do? Go up to someone in the market and ask them to help you pick out a picnic?”

He grunted his affirmation.

She laughed even more as he opened the bottle of wine.

He obviously didn’t mind her laughing. His eyes were deliciously warm as they rested on her face.

She couldn’t believe this was happening.

She couldn’t believe a man was looking at her like that.

She couldn’t believe Zeke was looking at her like that.

Once again, she tried to suppress the thrills of pleasure that kept rushing through her. She wasn’t a teenager. She wasn’t foolish or naïve. She knew this evening was just that… an evening.

It wasn’t a promise of a future.

The sun was getting lower in the sky as they ate, and the temperature was perfect—cool enough to be pleasant but not cold enough to need more than a sweater. The food was good, and the sky was beautiful, and Cecily was very happy.

She hadn’t been this excited about a man in… years.

Maybe ever.

“When was the last date you went on?” she asked after a minute, voicing the path of her thoughts.

Zeke shot her a quick look. “Not since Lara. She’s the only woman I’ve ever… really dated.”

She’d wondered if that was true since he’d met Lara in college. She’d assumed he’d gone out a few times with girls in high school and his first year in college, but it evidently hadn’t been much or serious.

“Why haven’t you dated at all since she died?” she asked. She knew the question was a risk, but if he couldn’t talk about it, then there wasn’t much hope for a relationship between them.

He met her eyes silently for a moment. Then he finally said, “I haven’t wanted to.”

“Why not? Surely it’s natural to want to… to be with someone.”

“Yeah,” he said with more than the usual gravel in his tone. “Sure. I liked being married. I like… sex. I’ve got all the normal drives. But…”

She was almost holding her breath as he trailed off, a piece of aged cheddar in her hand.

To her relief, she didn’t have to prompt him to continue. “But at first it hurt too much, the thought of being with anyone but her. And then… and then it was… It felt like I’d just be living a lie, leading women on since I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere.”

“Why wouldn’t it go anywhere?”

“Because I just couldn’t see myself being happy… with anyone. It was better to be alone.”

She thought about this for a long time. It seemed to fit what she knew about him, and she knew he was telling her the truth.

“To date,” he went on when she didn’t say anything, “you have to hope that it might… lead somewhere. And I never had that hope.”

She started to ask if he had that hope now—if that was why he was with her at the moment—but she stopped herself before she did. It was too soon for that kind of question. She couldn’t put him on the spot. It wouldn’t be fair.

And she was a little scared to hear the answer anyway.

“What about you?” he muttered after a moment.

She blinked. “What about me?”

“You haven’t dated anyone recently. At least not that I’ve seen. When was your last date?” His blue eyes were studying her closely, seeing more on her face than she was comfortable with.

“Uh, let me think. I guess it’s been about two years.” She’d dated a businessman who lived in Raleigh for a couple of months, after they’d met at a conference.

“That obnoxious guy with the expensive suits?”

“He wasn’t obnoxious!” she exclaimed.

Zeke sneered. “He was what my mom used to call a snake-oil salesman.”

Cecily giggled, realizing with another little thrill that Zeke sounded a little jealous. Jealous. “He wasn’t really. He was a smooth talker, but he wasn’t all fake. He was pretty nice.”

“So why did you dump him?”

“What makes you think he didn’t dump me?”

Zeke rolled his eyes.

She sighed and admitted, “I guess I realized it wasn’t worth the trouble. We had a decent time together, but it didn’t feel… I don’t know… it felt like we were just going through the motions.”

He nodded and looked like he understood what she was saying.

“I really think I went out with him because he was a decent guy and he’d asked me. I’m not sure I was ever really interested in him.”

“So why haven’t you dated anyone since?”

She shrugged. “I’m not surrounded by eligible guys out here, you know. I don’t get asked out very often.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

She opened her mouth to reply but then darted him a quick look when she realized how intimate a question it was.

“What?” he said with a little frown. “You can pry into people’s souls but don’t want them to do the same with you?”

“I don’t pry into people’s souls.”

“But you expect them to open up to you.”

“I try to be honest and open with other people too.”

“I know you do,” he said with a softer expression. “So why won’t you answer the question?”

She swallowed hard. “Um, I don’t know. I don’t think I really have been in love. I thought I was, but…” She shook her head. “No. I’m not sure I have. Is that a little pathetic? Thirty-seven years old and never been in love?”

“No. It’s not pathetic.” He was scowling again, and this time it was clearly about the way she was talking about herself. “Who did you think you were in love with?”

“I thought I was in love with my high school boyfriend, but, well, you know how that goes. Then I thought I was in love with a guy in college, but it fizzled out after a couple of months. Then I thought I was in love with…”

“With who?”

She put an olive in her mouth and chewed it up to give herself a minute before she answered. “There was a man from seminary. He was older than me, and we never actually dated. But we… we did some work together, and I was completely infatuated with him. I really thought that eventually we would get together. I spent more than a year waiting for him to make a move.”

His forehead wrinkled, and his frown was deeper than normal. “Who was he?”

If she said his name, Zeke would know who it was. Zeke had been at the same seminary.

“Cecily?” he prompted. “Who was he? What happened?”

Her shoulders slumped, and she dropped her eyes as she admitted, “He never made a move. He wasn’t interested in me that way.”

“So what happened?”

“We opened Balm in Gilead together, and then he retired and I bought him out.”

Zeke was clearly surprised by this admission. He’d obviously never imagined she would have had a crush on her old business partner.

Cecily felt stupid and so young for her feelings back then even though she knew they’d been natural, typical. Fred Pierson had been twenty-five years older than her, but he’d been single and brilliant and personable and attractive in that older-man way.

“Him?”

Cecily had to chuckle. “Yes, him. There’s no accounting for taste, right? It didn’t matter that he was so much older than me. I really thought something would happen.”

“So did you open this place with him because you—”

“No, no. I’d already realized it was never going to happen by then. Balm in Gilead was something I really wanted to do. I’d talked with him a lot about the idea of a place like it, and he thought it was a good idea and helped me work out the details. He put up most of the money, and I did most of the work. It was a good partnership while it lasted. And by then I wasn’t nursing a crush on him anymore.”

Zeke nodded, proof that he was listening, but he didn’t say anything. He was clearly thinking through everything he’d told her.

“So do you think I’m really stupid?” she asked at last, wanting to hear what was going on in his mind.

“Of course not,” he snapped. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know. You’re not saying anything.”

He shook his head. “You’re not stupid. Except if you were going to have a crush on a guy you could never get, why did he have to be an old man?”

She burst into laughter, pleased when Zeke finally laughed with her.

***

When they finished eating, they went for a walk on the beach. They didn’t talk much, but the silence was comfortable, almost intimate. Cecily kind of wanted to hold hands with Zeke, but she didn’t have the courage to reach for his hand.

It felt like something that he should initiate.

He didn’t. And he didn’t kiss her either.

In fact, as they were driving back home, she was starting to get a little worried. The date had been good. Really good. Their conversation and time together had been real and deep and meaningful.

But surely he wanted to touch her a little.

Surely she hadn’t imagined the chemistry between them.

She told herself not to be impatient or unreasonable. It wasn’t like they could spend the whole evening making out.

But a little kiss wouldn’t be unreasonable—surely.

He’d kissed her yesterday and had seemed to like it.

She’d liked it too.

Very much.

He parked the truck in his parking space and then walked with her through a side entrance and down the hall to her apartment. No one was in sight as she unlocked her door.

She turned back to smile at Zeke. “Thanks for tonight. It was… it was great. I really enjoyed it.”

“Me too,” he grunted.

She waited for just a moment and then gave a little nod. “Good night.”

“Cecily.”

She turned her head at the sound of his gruff voice.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She tried to smile but then stopped trying to pretend. “You could kiss me, you know,” she said a little tartly. “If you wanted to.”

He stared at her for a moment and then made a sound in his throat. He reached out to cup her face with both hands and leaned into a kiss.

It started gently—just a brush of his lips—but it didn’t last long that way. Soon she’d opened her mouth to his tongue, and he’d pressed her into the door with the hard line of his body.

Her head was spinning, and her fingers were digging into his back. She gasped against his lips, wondering how she’d been so foolish as to think he hadn’t wanted to touch her.

It was like he’d blazed into flames in her arms.

“I was trying to be careful,” he rasped, his lips still pressing little kisses against her mouth, her skin.

“Why?” Her voice was broken as pleasure and need throbbed with the speed of her heartbeat.

“Because one day, when I kiss you, I’m not going to be able to stop.” He leaned his forehead against hers, panting audibly. He still had her trapped against her door.

“Oh,” she managed to say. “Right.”

“Good night, Cecily.”

“Good night.”

He moved one arm so she could slip out of his embrace, and then she stretched up to press one more little kiss on the corner of his mouth. Then she opened her door, stepped inside, and closed it again without turning back.

She knew Zeke was standing there, hot and tense and turned on and staring at her like he would eat her alive.

She felt a little like that herself.

And she really liked it.

***

Nine days later, Cecily was sitting in her normal row at church. Zeke was beside her.

They weren’t really there together. They’d come separately, as they always did. Cecily came early for Sunday school, which Zeke never attended. Then she’d taken her usual seat and had seen Zeke enter the sanctuary at about five minutes until ten when the service began.

He’d been coming to this church as long as Cecily had. It was the largest one in the area, and the preaching and teaching were solid. He normally sat on the same side of the sanctuary as Cecily but a few rows behind her.

This week, his eyes had met hers as soon as he’d entered, and then he came over to her and wordlessly sat down beside her.

It made Cecily feel young and jittery—that way she thought she had outgrown. To be sitting in church next to a man. It felt like everyone should notice, should come over and ask what was going on between the two of them.

But no one did.

No one seemed to see anything unusual about their sitting together.

They worked together, after all. Zeke wasn’t touching her—he didn’t have his arm around her, he wasn’t holding her hand—and so everyone probably assumed they just happened to be sitting together.

It was a relief and a disappointment at exactly the same time.

She and Zeke had never had a conversation about telling other people about their dating. She assumed she was free to tell whomever she wanted—as was he—but the only person she’d told was her sister. She didn’t think Zeke had told anyone. He didn’t really have anyone to tell.

In a way, it felt safer. To keep this just to themselves. As soon as the church and her circle of friends caught wind of it, there would be talk, questions, gossip, covert observation. It was a lot of pressure that would be annoying—and wasn’t really necessary since they hadn’t made any commitments.

They had a month. It was a kind of safety zone. Nothing had to really change until the month was over.

Better for them to keep it to themselves.

She was sure Zeke felt the same way. He never wanted anyone prying into his business, after all. And he wasn’t even talking to her now. He was just sitting beside her, looking at the front where the worship leader was about to start the first song.

They sat together for the entire service and didn’t speak or touch at all. But Cecily was acutely aware of him beside her—the heat from his body, the sound of his breathing, his occasional shifting in the seat, the way the dark hair on his forearms looked against his tanned skin, the way the fabric at the knees of his trousers was getting thin.

He was a real man—not a fantasy of a boyfriend from her mind—and it felt so strange that he wanted to sit beside her.

When the service ended and everyone stood up and started filing out of their rows to leave, Cecily looked at Zeke squarely for the first time since he’d arrived.

He gave her a little twitch of a smile through his beard.

She smiled back.

They’d spent the previous evening together, driving down the Outer Banks to a cute, out-of-the-way restaurant she’d never been to before. Then they’d stopped for ice cream and a walk on the beach before they returned home.

He’d kissed her again after he’d walked her to her door. He’d pressed her against the wall and kissed her until her head was spinning and her body was pulsing.

He’d been into the kiss too. She’d felt it in his body. Neither of them had wanted to pull away, although they had.

She was about to say something—just something casual since neither of them had spoken since he’d sat down beside her—when Mary Turner came over, pushing through the crowds of people to reach Cecily.

Cecily knew what she wanted even before Mary asked her if she wanted to help again this year with the Fall Festival, which the church had every year at the end of October.

“Sure,” Cecily said with a polite smile. “Just put me down for anything, as long as it doesn’t involve crowd control. I’m no good at that.”

“I’ll probably give you a booth, like you had last year.”

“Perfect.”

“You’re always so great about helping out, and it’s nice that you don’t try to cherry-pick the best positions.” Mary turned toward Zeke, who was still standing in the row with Cecily. “What about you? Any chance of helping out this year? We can use all the help we can get.”

Cecily didn’t know if Zeke had ever been asked before to volunteer. She knew for sure he’d never accepted. He never did anything with the church except attend every Sunday and put a check in the offering plate. She imagined most people had stopped asking him for more years ago.

Some people didn’t like him—they thought he was rude or bad-tempered. And other people were intimidated by him.

Those people didn’t know him at all.

Zeke grunted in response to Mary’s question. The sound didn’t form a clear word, but it sounded like a negative to Cecily.

“Maybe you should,” she said softly, thinking how much better it would be for Zeke if he would try to get involved with other people instead of always being so isolated. “Since you won’t have work to do at Balm in Gilead this year.”

His blue eyes shot over to her with a look that wasn’t at all happy.

Mary looked hopeful. “Oh, it would be great if you could. We could really use some big guys to haul stuff around.”

Zeke’s gaze moved from Mary to Cecily and back. “I’ll check and get back to you.”

Zeke didn’t have anything in his schedule. He never had anything in his schedule except for work, which he wouldn’t be doing for almost three more weeks. He was just trying to stall and get out of the conversation.

But Mary looked happy that it wasn’t an outright rejection, and she said she’d check in with Zeke later in the week to confirm.

Zeke gave Cecily a cold look before he started to walk out of the sanctuary.

Cecily stared after him. He’d turned his back on her intentionally. He was annoyed with her.

For absolutely no good reason.

She followed him.

She couldn’t catch up with him quickly because of the crowd leaving the church building. She got waylaid by a friend of hers, who wanted her to come to a book talk next week, so Zeke was in the parking lot, opening the door to his truck, when Cecily managed to catch up with him.

“Zeke!” she called, hurrying as fast as she could in her heels and fitted skirt. “Wait.”

He turned toward her, his truck door open. He didn’t say anything, but he waited until she was standing in front of him.

“Are you angry with me?” she asked.

He gave her another cold look.

“Seriously?” She had to catch her breath from chasing him, so she took a minute before she continued. “You’re angry with me? For that?”

“I don’t want to be pushed into things.”

She almost choked on her surprise. “Pushed into things? I didn’t push you into anything. I just suggested it wouldn’t be a bad idea to help out. You’re saying I’m not allowed to do that?”

“You’re allowed to do anything you want. But I am who I am, and I don’t appreciate being pressured into being someone else just because we’re dating.”

She’d been surprised and frustrated before, but now she was getting more than that. She’d never met a more infuriating man. What was wrong with him that he’d react this way to something so little? “You’re crazy! I didn’t do anything close to pressuring you! What are you even talking about?”

“So you weren’t trying to get me to help out with that festival?” He was still angry. His muscles were tense, and his jaw was clenched.

“I just suggested it wouldn’t be a bad idea. And you know it wouldn’t be. You just don’t want to do it, and you know in your heart that it’s wrong, so you’re taking it out on me.” Because she’d lost her patience, she was snapping out the words, without thinking them through the way she normally did.

“I’m taking what out on you?” he growled.

“The guilt.”

“What guilt?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, so don’t act dumb. If you felt any pressure back there, it wasn’t from me. It was from your conscience. You know very well that we’re called to be in community, and you’ve been running away from it for years. If you want to keep doing it, that’s your business. Do whatever you want! But don’t act like I’m pushing you into something just by making a suggestion. Any pressure you feel isn’t from me!”

Zeke opened his mouth but then closed it again. He was almost shaking from anger or frustration or something.

She waited for him to reply, but he didn’t.

He got into his truck and turned it on.

She stood there in the parking lot, staring at him, as he backed out of his place and drove away.

And she couldn’t remember ever in her life wanting to shake someone as much as she wanted to shake him.

***

She had lunch with an elderly widow who was a friend of hers and tried to act normal, but she kept thinking about Zeke, kept getting angry about their argument and his irrational response to it.

When she got back home, she changed into leggings and a long tunic top and decided to cocoon herself for the rest of the day. She wasn’t going to worry about Zeke. She wasn’t going to brood about what this argument meant. She wasn’t going to stress about whether it meant her relationship with him was already over.

She wasn’t going to think about him at all.

She sat on her couch and watched Jane Austen movies and pretended not to think about Zeke.

At dinnertime, however, she was feeling less angry and more guilty.

She didn’t think she’d done anything wrong, but she was starting to see why Zeke might have misunderstood her suggestion. If she’d reacted less defensively, they probably could have worked this out without a blowup.

She was still annoyed with him, but she was also starting to feel bad about it.

She finished her second movie of the afternoon and then made some soup and garlic bread. By the time she’d put the bread in the oven, she couldn’t stand it anymore.

She needed to talk to Zeke.

She slipped on a pair of shoes and went to the door, swinging it open before she could change her mind.

Zeke was standing in the hallway. He hadn’t knocked. He was just staring at her door.

She blinked in surprise.

He blinked too.

“I was just coming to see you,” she said when she found her voice.

“I was just about to knock.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly.

“Oh.”

“I acted like an ass.”

A deep, shuddering emotion tightened in her chest. She gave him a wobbly smile. “I’m sorry too.”

“What are you sorry for?” he demanded, pulling his eyebrows together.

“I got mad at you.”

“I deserved it.”

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well, I’m sorry anyway.”

“I called up Mary and told her I would help out.”

Cecily sucked in a breath at this blunt assertion. “You did?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want you to do that for me, you know. I really wasn’t trying to pressure you.”

“I know.” He paused before he added, “I didn’t do it just for you.”

She understood what lay beneath the words. He’d known she was right. He was doing it for him. He was trying to change for the better. Washed with a wave of sappy emotion, she asked, “Do you want to come in?”

He nodded and she stepped aside to let him in. He looked around at the blanket on the couch, the television screen that displayed the streaming channel, and the kitchenette area with the pot of soup on the stove.

“I was going to eat soup and watch another Jane Austen movie,” she explained. “You can join me if you want.”

“Does it have to be Jane Austen?” That little gleam was in his eyes again, the one that proved that he knew her, he liked her, he wanted to spend time with her.

It made Cecily so happy she almost hugged herself. “Yes, it does.”

“All right,” he said with exaggerated resignation. “As long as you don’t mind snide commentary.”

“I’ll live with it.”

So they sat on her couch and ate soup and bread and drank wine as they watched the movie. Zeke was true to his word and offered a constant running commentary of snide observations. Cecily argued with this whenever necessary but didn’t mind it at all.

It turned out to be a really good night.

***

That Friday, Zeke and Cecily drove down the coast and took the ferry over to Ocracoke. They had a good time looking around in the shops and stopping at three different places to eat. Since their argument on Sunday, Cecily felt even closer to Zeke, and if his behavior and the look in his eyes was anything to go on, he felt the same way.

For the first time, Cecily was starting to let herself really hope.

It was still early. She knew it was too soon to assume this would last beyond the month.

But it felt like it was a possibility, and so she let herself be happy about it, hope for something more.

On the ferry coming back, they stood at the rail together and looked out at the sun setting over the water. Zeke had his arm around her, but they weren’t talking.

Cecily figured everyone around them just assumed they were a normal couple. No one was looking at them strangely, at least not any more than people always looked at Zeke when they were seeing him for the first time. No one thought it was strange that she was with him, that they were together, that out of all the people in the world, Zeke had chosen to be with her.

It made her feel good. Really happy.

And also a little nervous.

She’d lived a long time on her own. It was so different to now—at last—seriously contemplate being part of a couple.

She had to remind herself not to get ahead of herself. Today was three weeks since they’d signed the agreement for Zeke’s sabbatical and started dating. They were both obviously waiting until the month was over before they made any decisions.

Zeke might still decide that this wasn’t what he wanted.

She didn’t want to get her heart broken if he did.

The only times they’d gone out in public had been fairly far outside their social circles. He didn’t seem to want anyone else to know they were together—at least no one that they really knew.

It was a safety net. She understood it and sympathized.

Maybe when he asked her out to somewhere they’d be likely to encounter people they knew would she allow herself to hope that this was more than just trying something out for a month.

Maybe then she could let herself hope his feelings were real.

She already suspected that hers were as real as they got.