My jaw dropped open. It was like I was stuck, one of those people in a viral video mannequin challenge—frozen absolutely solid, with a little crab-stuffed pastry halfway to my mouth. What he’d said made no sense to me at all. It was like word salad. Though I had heard the words, “I have an inheritance from my uncle,” it made about as much sense as if he had said Radiator peanut butter frosting jack-o-lantern purée. “Wait. What?”

“A million, give or take,” he said.

Dishwasher manila folder chocolate macaroon. The what? The what?

A flake of pastry landed on my plate. Still, I just gaped at him. I think I’d forgotten to blink for a while because my eyes suddenly felt dry and huge. How could that be? How could Max have a secret inheritance? Impossible! I’d watched him haggle with a guy at the lumberyard over the price of pressure-treated posts like he was a Bahamian fishmonger trying to get the wholesale rate on monkfish. Ridiculous. Max might’ve not been as broke as I was, but he didn’t have money-money. By any stretch of the imagination, we were no longer talking about three hundred bucks in his wallet at all times. We were definitely talking money-money. “Your uncle was totally bananas.” I tucked the pastry into my mouth before I said something I might regret. Because his uncle really was absolutely flipping bananas. Eight eggs short of a dozen, minimum. No hope of a soufflé. None.

Max nodded. “Totally, but he’d only ever made two investments in his life. Costco and Apple.”

My mouth dropped open again. “Is this real? Am I dreaming?”

He smoothed his napkin, but he absolutely was not laughing. He was smiling though, really smiling. And it was that smile, that sincere happiness, that made me finally understand this wasn’t some huge joke. I’d gotten to know him better and better over the past two weeks. That happiness was him. He was being honest.

It was true.

“I can’t believe you never told me!” I gripped the side of the table. “You little stinker! And why in God’s name have you been living on that houseboat all these years when you could’ve—I don’t know—bought a mansion and been driving a Range Rover while you collected huge chrome-faced watches and wintered in Turks and Caicos?”

“Because I’m not that guy. Why would I want anything more than what I have right here, right now?”

“Can’t imagine!” I chewed furiously. “Because Turks and Caicos sounds awesome! You’d look so sexy in a Range Rover!” I could see it now. Totally some sort of cologne ad.

“I’m serious, Rosie. Until last week, I thought I had everything I needed. Now I know it for sure.”

“Stop,” I said as a blush crept up from my chest, to my throat, to my cheeks.

“Never.” Max winked and took a sip of his scotch. “I’m not kidding. I mean that. It’s you, or it’s nobody.”

I tried to find the words, but they were just…gone. I had nothing, absolutely zippo. I mindlessly put another crab puff into my mouth and let myself get lost in those eyes and the way he held his hand in mine. That secret proved that Max was just as I’d imagined him. Never over the top, never bragging. Just Max. Million in the bank or no, he was the man he was. He was the man, I knew then, that I was falling for. Fast.

His fingers pressed into the back of my calf as his thumb ran over the very top of my shin. A light touch that just about made me dissolve in quivers. “Your turn for a secret.”

He began to spread a slightly too-cold curl of butter onto his piece of focaccia.

“I don’t think I have any secrets from you.” I watched the muscles of his forearm flex while he spread the butter. Goodness.

He pressed the knife into his bread and met my stare with his dreamy eyes. “None?”

I tried to think about it as I took a sip of my wine. He knew about Peter Rabbit. He knew I was utterly broke. He now probably also knew I snored a little. “I don’t think so.”

“Then tell me something I don’t know. Like…” He handed the buttered bread over to me. “Kids. What about kids?”

I shoved my own piece of focaccia in my mouth as fast as I could, far more out of surprise than anything else. Had he really just asked that? I could not possibly be sitting across from my Max, at a fancy-schmancy place in Portland, talking about kids.

“Too much?” He looked like he realized he might’ve unknowingly pushed a button.

I understood why he might have thought that—I flashed back to Loafers looking at my general reproductive organs area, the bastard—but this? This was completely different. Yes, it was from left field, it was a curveball, it was the pop fly into the stands. But it was also one of those very important things that we’d never talked about.

And that now we could.

Because we were there, we were at that point. We were staring into each other’s eyes on the edge of a huge, terrifying, wonderful abyss. There was nobody on the planet I’d rather have looked into the depths with than Max Doyle.

I swallowed my bread. I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “I want them more than anything in the world.”

It hung out there between us, the thing I never knew I wanted to know, but now wanted to know so, so much. There was a question unasked, and I knew I didn’t need to ask it. He felt it, without my saying a word. What about you?

“Yeah,” he said, moving his eyes up and down my body and squeezing my calf a little tighter. “Me too.”

* * *

Dinner was amazing. We talked and talked and laughed so hard my cheeks hurt. We remembered a million old moments. We talked first kisses and first times. And I talked about old crushes…

But Max didn’t. He leaned back in his chair as the waitress brought out another few tiny plates, one of them a very small cast-iron pan of baby shrimp and clams in a miniature paella that smelled so good I started to salivate as soon as she set it down.

“You know, I never really had crushes.” He straightened out his dessert spoon and lifted his eyes to meet mine. “Because I think it was always you.”

The paella platter sizzled between us. My heart felt like it was melting, like it was drizzling right down through me like raspberry sauce on a chocolate cake. “Really?”

He nodded. “I thought I was always just picky, but honestly, I think the one I wanted was right in front of me all those years. I had no idea at all.”

Max turned his attention away from me to the mini paella, putting some delicate scallops on my plate, next to some equally petite shrimp.

“Crazy, right?” he asked, mostly talking to the itty-bitty mussels and saffron rice.

“Not to me,” I said, taking my plate from him. “Not to me at all.”

For a long while, we stayed just like that, him gracefully eating his mussels with a tiny fork, while I chased a clam no bigger than a quarter around my plate. When I did manage to get the meat from the shell, it was worth it. Worth waiting for, worth working for, like all the surprising treats in life, maybe. I watched Max pick up a small cube of beef from a bright green and yummy-looking sauce.

“You’re still going to be hungry after this, aren’t you?” I asked, taking a piece of the beef, too.

He looked like he was going to play it cool, but then I gave him an eyebrow. A big arch of my left eyebrow to tell him, Things might’ve changed, but don’t you go changing, too.

“Fucking starving,” he grumbled softly. “I could eat a whole ham, right here. Like Julia.”

I couldn’t keep the snort down, so I didn’t even try. It was so loud that a prim-looking lady with chic white hair and a big turquoise necklace glanced at me, shocked. Her astonishment just made it so much funnier, but I pulled myself together, forced myself not to giggle and answered, “I’ve got an idea for after. Okay?”

Max nodded and looked me right in the eye. “I’ll never say no to you. Never.”