Saturday night, Hannah pulled up to the big suburban house with the neatly manicured yard, its water-guzzling lawn greener than green. She sighed, grabbed the bottles of wine she’d picked up from the liquor store, and headed to the door.

She knocked, waiting an appropriate amount of time before just letting herself in. It smelled like it always did, a hint of perfume along with garlic, the rarely-used living room furnishings without a hint of wear. She heard voices in the kitchen, her father’s in particular, loudly dominating the conversation as he often did.

When Hannah turned the corner and entered the kitchen, her brother spotted her first.

“Han,” Tom said from the dining room table. “You’re here.”

“Hey,” Hannah said, setting down the wine bottles.

“Hannah!” her mother said, turning from the open oven and coming to hug Hannah. Hannah smiled. She couldn’t help it; her mother’s warm smile could light up the night. She hugged her mom, the soft scent of her perfume wafting up. Claire Christiansen was tallish and thin like Hannah, although she’d put on a couple of extra curves with age. However, the resemblance ended there, as both Hannah and her brother took after their father with their Nordic faces and coloring. And Hannah definitely didn’t inherit her mother’s kind, giving personality.

“You look beautiful,” Hannah told her. And she did. Her mother had aged better than any woman Hannah knew. Plus, her red blouse looked amazing with her dark hair.

Her mother waved her off. “I’ve put on ten pounds,” she whispered, making a face.

Hannah rolled her eyes, not seeing the supposed ten pounds, the same ones her mother had been complaining about since the dawn of time. Nor would Hannah have cared even if she could detect them.

Her mom smiled. “You look skinny, Han. You aren’t trying to live on salads, are you?”

“You mean like you?” Hannah teased.

Her mother giggled. “Some of us have to, honey.”

Hannah turned to her father, who was sitting at the table with Tom. “Happy birthday, Dad.”

Her father gave a nod and a smile, one cool blue eye offering her a wink before he turned back to Tom so they could resume talking.

“Need any help, Mom?”

“Oh, no,” she said, putting the bread in the oven. “Actually, yes. Will you put ice in the glasses?”

Hannah did, and then filled them with water. She opened up one of the wine bottles to let it breathe. And soon, everyone but Claire was seated at the table.

“John,” her mother said to her father, eyeing his emptied highball glass. “Can I get you another drink, honey?”

“No,” he said. “I’m going to have wine. I assume Hannah brought a good bottle or two tonight.” He winked at Hannah again.

Her mother took off her apron and sat down next to Hannah’s father and everyone dug into their rack of lamb with mint jelly, her dad’s favorite for as long as she could remember. Her mother waited as everyone else served themselves first. Hannah used to try to get her mom to take the first helping—she’d cooked the damned meal, for crying out loud—but she never would. She always made sure everyone, her father in particular, ate first.

Claire stood up again, picking up the wine and going to fill her father’s glass. When she dribbled a little down the side, she did a “tsk-tsk” and picked up her napkin to clean it off.

John saw what was happening, a brief flash of annoyance on his face. “Don’t worry about it, Claire,” he snapped. “Eat before your lamb gets cold.”

Claire left it and began to eat. John picked up his wine glass, swirling it around like an aficionado and taking a big sniff before he sipped it. He nodded.

“Nice,” he said, giving Hannah a nod. It was the kind of word, and nod, that made it impossible to know whether or not he liked the wine. That was her father. You never knew what he really thought, unless he’d had a few drinks and his “win friends and influence people” veneer began to disappear.

“Are you injured, Hannah?” her father said, looking more curious than concerned as he sliced into his lamb. “You looked like you were limping when you walked in.”

“Oh, that. Just a minor foot injury.” The last thing she wanted to do was bring up High Peaks or any racing that night.

“Wait,” Tom said. “Weren’t you training for that big race? The hundred-miler?”

Hannah wanted to take her fork and jab it into Tom’s ribs.

Her parents’ ears perked up. “You’re going to run a hundred-mile race?” her father said.

Hannah sighed. “The race is over,” she said, hoping they would find a better topic and move on.

No chance.

“What happened?” her dad went on. “How long did it take you to finish?”

“I didn’t finish,” Hannah said, her focus on her lamb. “I had to DNF at mile eighty, because of my foot.”

“What kind of injury?” Tom asked. “Plantar fasciitis?”

Hannah wanted to jab him again. “No. A small stress fracture.”

John shook his head. “I’m not surprised, Hannah. I know you don’t like it when I say this, but women have difficulty handling that level of abuse on their bodies. It fouls up their hormones. That’s why you got a fracture. Your bones are thin, honey.”

Now Hannah wanted to stab her father with her fork. “I overtrained, Dad,” Hannah snapped. “That’s why I got injured. It can happen to anyone, female or male. My bones are fine, and so are my fucking hormones.”

“Hannah,” her mother chided. “Language!”

“Sorry, Mom,” she muttered, giving her dad the evil eye. But it was the truth. Her doctor had tested her, and her hormones and bone density were normal.

“That may be the case, Han,” John went on, swirling his wine in his glass, looking self-satisfied. “But there’s a reason endurance sports—all sports—are mostly the domain of men.”

“What reason is that, Dad? That men like yourself think women are fragile little damsels that need men to take care of them?”

Tom snorted at that. Tom often took after their father, but even he knew and acknowledged John’s flaws.

Her dad went on, undaunted. “I’m just saying—”

“Don’t say,” Hannah said. “Please,” she added, knowing such an addition would go a long way toward shutting her father up. “We’ve been over this before. Women are made for long-distance running. Everyone is.”

“Not me,” Tom quipped. “You couldn’t pay me enough to run that far. You couldn’t pay me to run a mile, for that matter, unless they had beer at the end of it.”

“Or vodka,” John chimed in.

They laughed, and Hannah couldn’t help but giggle along with the rest of them, thankful for Tom’s comic relief. The topic shifted from running to business, a better and safer topic, one which her father could talk about for hours.

Later, after Hannah helped her mother clean up, John went to take a phone call in his office and Hannah sat down in the family room with Tom.

“Who’s he talking to?” Hannah asked quietly, darting a quick glance at her father’s office.

“Frank. From the office.” Tom eyed her. “Jesus, Hannah. Suspicious much?”

Hannah gave Tom a look. “Oh, like that suspicion isn’t justified, brother of mine?”

Tom waved her off. “That was ages ago. He’s been a good boy.”

“He’s not a boy,” Hannah muttered, sipping her wine. “He’s a grown man. And married to our mother.”

“I know. But the past is the past. Let it go.”

Hannah sighed, and nodded.

On her drive back to Evergreen, Hannah tried not to think about her father’s ignorant comments about women and running. She loved her family—they were her family, after all—but she’d come to dread those occasional family dinners and holidays. She dreaded waiting to see what annoying thing her father would say. He always used palatable language, language that was polite and had any edges smoothed and softened, but somehow his words always managed to cut her.

She’d dreaded the dinner all week, but once it was over, it didn’t seem so bad in retrospect. Her father was who he was. Why her mother put up with him, she’d never know. But then again, what did she know about marriage? What did she know about anything having to do with love?

That’s why she’d hesitated when Cain had asked her about her dinner plans for Saturday night. She’d had such ambivalent feelings about going, especially after her High Peaks failure, but she hadn’t known how much of that to tell Cain. He seemed to appreciate her honesty, but again, being honest and probing into personal topics were different animals altogether. Cain didn’t share much about his personal life, so chances were he didn’t want to know all about hers, either.

She’d never expected Cain to assume her dinner plans were a date, and she most certainly hadn’t expected Cain to make that comment about not liking the idea of other men touching her. What the hell was that all about?

It had scared her a little. Not in the sense that she felt endangered in any way, but it unnerved her for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She hadn’t expected him to give a rat’s ass who she dated or even give it a second thought, much less show a reluctance to share her, like he wanted her for himself. It was the kind of thing she’d faced before with other men, men who’d wanted time with her she didn’t want to share, who’d wanted a commitment she didn’t want to give. Who’d wanted more than she could offer. And many of those men had reacted poorly when she made her limitations clear, as if she owed them her time or body or commitment just because they wanted it.

Yet, that didn’t seem like Cain. And he’d quickly backpedaled, as if recognizing the absurdity of his comments.

She headed up the hill in her SUV, the breeze from her open window cooler now, blowing her ponytail just a little. And when she passed the road that went to Cain’s cabin, she remembered the other thing she’d felt when Cain had said those unexpected things.

She’d felt a little gratified.

The truth was, if any other guy had shown such signs of jealousy with her, she would have kicked him to the curb. But for some reason, she had no desire to do that with Cain.

She only wanted to know more.