“You look exhausted. Are you sure it’s okay for me to take you away from work and sleep right now?” Ava smoothed her skirt as she and John sat, menus in front of them at a small restaurant in downtown Dark Falls.

The spot was one of her favorites, and she wondered if he remembered from when they were together that she loved Italian food. The thought made her stomach flip, even though she told herself it was probably just a fluke. He probably wasn’t remembering the way he used to hold her hand and rub small circles on her skin with his thumb. Circles that had much more of an affect on her than they probably should have.

She reminded herself this was a friendly dinner. They were two old friends catching up.

Well, that wasn’t quite right. They’d been much more than friends at one point, but when she left college years before, that was what they’d left as. He and Lucia had been together and Ava and him had been the kind of friends who said hello when they saw each other on campus. Nothing more.

“I’m sure,” he said, picking up her menu and pushing it into her hands. “I’m too cranked up to go home right away anyway. I’ll crash in an hour or so. Right now, getting out of the precinct and off the job for a bit is exactly what I need.”

“If you’re sure,” she said, not really able to tell if he was telling her the truth or only trying to reassure her.

His smile warmed her, and the exhaustion seemed to clear from his face as he looked at her. “Absolutely. This is right where I need to be.”

A waitress approached their table, setting a basket of warm rolls on the table. Ava’s mouth watered. There was nothing better than warm bread and butter.

Except dessert.

When the waitress got through her spiel on the specials and took their drink order, John looked at the bread basket.

“Tell me you haven’t turned into one of those women who won’t eat bread.”

Ava couldn’t help but laugh. She reached for one of the rolls. “You’re crazy if you think I’d even consider passing these up. I don’t know what they put in them, but they’re like crack. I can’t pass these things up.”

“So, you’ve been here before?”

“All the time,” Ava said. “My dad and Janna love it, too, so we come pretty often. How about you?”

John shook his head, his mouth full of the roll he’d just tasted. He had polished off half of it with that first bite. When he swallowed, he added, “I remembered your obsession with Italian food.”

Ava half-cringed, half-laughed. “I’m not sure you could call it an obsession. More like, a healthy appreciation.”

He tilted his head. “Hmm, at least moderately fascinated.”

Now Ava full-out laughed. He was right. She was a little too attached to her pasta and melted cheese.

She spent the next ten minutes telling him in great detail about the desserts on the menu, before their meals came. He had ordered the lasagna and she was having the manicotti.

She reached over with her fork and took a bite of his. “I love the lasagna.”

John stabbed at her with his fork. “Then you should have ordered it.”

The smile she shot him was pure playfulness, and she realized how good it felt to be sitting there with him, even if this was only a friendly dinner. When they’d dated in college, it had been about more than attraction for her. She really liked him as a person. Being with him had been fun and easy.

He was younger than she was by a couple of years, but he’d had his head on straight and then some. He’d been serious about studying and working two part-time jobs to keep his loan debt down.

Going to college had been different for her. She had been all about reveling in the fact she’d been away from home, on her own for the first time. She had pledged a sorority and wanted to spend at least four nights of the week partying.

And then he’d come along and spun her around with the power of her feelings for him. When things got intense, she had run. She broke up with him, using the excuse that he was too serious for her, too set on the future and goals. She had told him she didn’t want to miss out on the college experience.

It was one of the dumbest things she’d ever done. It didn’t take her long to figure that out, but by then, he met Lucia, and Ava knew she couldn’t get in the way of that. She was at least mature enough not to try that.

She forced herself back to the moment, not really wanting to live in the memory of her foolishness at losing the man in front of her. “But I wanted the manicotti, too,” she said, putting the stolen bite of lasagna in her mouth.

He cut a chunk off his meal and put it on her plate before taking a piece of her manicotti and transferring it to his.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Mm hmm.” His response held a teasing tone and his eyes burned with a playful taunt.

He was having fun with her, but she could see the sharp edge being a cop had given him. There was a heavy weight around him, like he’d seen too much, knew too much of the evils of the world.

He also had an aura of power to him, the kind of thing that made her realize he’d already assessed the room, knew where each exit was and who he might have to take down to get out.

It made her sad in a way. She wondered how much of the boy she’d known was still there. He might have been serious about his studies and work in college, but she had seen a fun side to him. How much of that was gone?

Flashes of that fun returned to her. They’d had a lot of “fun” out on the roof of her dorm, laying on a blanket under the stars. It had been more than messing around that happened up there. He’d been playful sometimes with her, making her laugh or squeal when he tickled her.

Ava toyed with the stem of her glass. She didn’t know what to say next. She wanted to ask what had happened with his marriage. If he still loved his ex-wife. She felt uncomfortable asking, though, so she searched for something else.

“Tell me about your work. You’re a detective? Do you handle robberies all the time?”

John nodded, pushing aside his own plate as he leaned back. “I’m in Major Crimes, so I handle robberies, burglaries, homicide. There’s some talk of dividing us into more distinct units since the city has been growing. It’s hard for us to cover everything, and there’s some advantage to having detectives who focus on things like family violence or sex crimes. But for now, we take on most of that.”

She raised her brows. “Wow, that’s a lot. I can see why it would be hard to pull yourself away from things.”

John shrugged, and there was a vibe to the movement that said he didn’t want to talk about that.

“Will you get married again?” She didn’t know where the question had come from or why her brain didn’t screen it before she blurted it out.

John’s expression was… regretful? “No. I won’t put someone else though that again.”

Ava didn’t know why his answer hurt her. They were two friends catching up. She’d gotten over the loss of him a long time ago.

She knew they didn’t have kids and almost asked him about it, but something in his expression told her not to. Actually, it wasn’t just his expression. His whole body said he was shutting down the topic of his marriage.

Ava toyed with her water glass, smudging the condensation on the outside with her thumb.

“What about you?” he asked. “Any plans for marriage?”

Ava sipped her water, hedging. “I’m not sure I have room for that in my life right now. My dad and sister need me. I feel like there’s nothing left for something else.”

“Remind me about Janna. I know you said she had special needs, but I don’t remember the specifics.”

“She’s on the autism spectrum, and she also suffers from severe generalized anxiety. She needs a lot of support. My mom passed away four years ago, and my dad isn’t in the best of health. He’s had two mild heart attacks. For now, I live in a house at the back of the property, and they share the main house. It keeps me close so I can help out when they need me, but it takes a lot out of me. With that, plus managing the shop, there just really isn’t room for more.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Ava shook her head. “Don’t be. I make it sound like a sacrifice when I say it like that, but I love my life. I wouldn’t change it for all the world. I love that I’m able to be there for them. Not everyone is lucky enough to be that close to family.”

He nodded. “That’s true. My sister is only an hour away, but I don’t make time to see her often enough. I should get over there more.”

They slowed their conversation while the waiter cleared their dishes.

“Tiramisu?” John asked with a raised brow.

“Absolutely.” Ava grinned. She was addicted to the dessert. In her mind, soaking cakes in expresso was a stroke of genius never to be missed when it was available.

John nodded to the waiter. “So,” he said, when the waiter walked away, “it looked like Janna was designing jewelry at the shop? Does she do all your jewelry there?”

“Not all of it. Most, nowadays, though. She loves it, and it’s something that calms her. As long as she doesn’t have to meet with the clients, she’s happy, so I handle all of that, and she stays in the back and buries herself in gemstones and metals.”

“Do you keep in touch with anyone else from school?” John asked a few minutes later as they shared a large serving of tiramisu.

They had gone to school a few hours away and, as far as she knew, only a few of their classmates had settled in Dark Falls when they graduated.

“Not much,” Ava said. After her father’s first heart attack, she had left school early and hadn’t graduated with her class, though she’d gotten a degree online later. Then her mother had been sick, and there wasn’t time to go back to school for the advanced business degree she had been hoping for. “I still talk to some of my sorority sisters occasionally, but most of them have kids. They’re at a different point in life. How about you?”

John grinned. “Lucia got them in the divorce.”

Ava almost choked on her wine. “Excuse me?”

He laughed. “Didn’t you know? Even in a somewhat amicable divorce, there are always sides. She got the college friends. I got the cop friends.”

“I see. So it was amicable?”

She could see he tried to remain carefully blank, and he almost succeeded. But there was a heavy darkness to his eyes as he answered. She couldn’t see the sorrow in his expression, but she felt it nonetheless.

“By the time we filed for divorce, we’d moved past the stage of trying to hurt each other. We’d hurt enough when we were together. We were tired, I think. We were just finished.”

Ava put down her fork and sat back, wishing there was something she could say to that. There wasn’t anything but “I’m sorry,” so she offered that, weak as it was.

“’S okay. She’s getting re-married in a week. I’ll be at the wedding.”

“That’s great. I mean, not the divorce. That part sucks, but it’s good you guys were able to stay friends.”

John pulled out his wallet and signaled for the waiter. She knew better than to try to pay for the meal. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t a date or that they lived in the 21^st century, John was old fashioned in many ways. He believed in women working, if that’s what they wanted to do. He believed in women in politics and women in power. That much, she knew.

But he was firm on a few things. Men held doors for women, they didn’t sit if there was a woman who needed a seat, and men paid for meals.

She wasn’t above teasing him about it, though. “Still insist on paying and opening doors?”

He gave her that patented John Sevier grin. “Of course.”

She’d be lying if she said it didn’t feel really nice being the center of attention with him again. He’d always had a way of making her feel like she was the only person in the world when they were together. It would be too easy for her to forget that this was a “just friends” thing and start to wish for more.

He followed up with an offer of proof he wasn’t a chauvinist. “I’ll have you know I work for a female captain and have zero problems with that.”

The waiter swung by the table and took John’s card to process the bill.

“Oh yeah?” She couldn’t help pushing him. He was fun when he was playful, and she wanted to see more of that. “What’s that like?”

He laughed and shook his head at her. “No kidding. Our captain is a woman, and she’s great. Knows what she’s doing, paid her dues to get where she is, and she’s fair. I respect her.”

When they’d finished at the restaurant and headed out to John’s car, he squeezed her hand before opening the door for her. “I’m glad we did this,” he said. “It’s been good seeing you again, even if it wasn’t for the best of reasons.”

Ava’s eyes met his and for the smallest of moments, she thought she saw something there. Something of the same thing she’d been feeling as they walked side-by-side. That old heat that had always been so strong between them. The desire that hit her so hard when they were together so many years ago.

Then his eyes broke from hers, and she was slipping into the seat as he closed the door behind her.