Two hours later, Parker was in his kitchen, finally cleaning up the broken glass, eggs, and avocado. The breakfast rush had come in shortly after his conversation with Hank, and Parker had been, gratefully, busy nearly nonstop since.

Of course, his thoughts had still been on Ava, but he hadn’t stomped over to the pie shop to check on her. Or to demand that she let him show her why Bliss was better than New York. Or to kiss her.

Nope, he hadn’t done any of that. Yet.

As if on cue, he suddenly heard a loud crash against the wall that separated the pie shop from the diner.

This was a big one too. Without a second thought, he propped the broom against the wall and headed out his back door and through hers.

There was a glass pie pan lying in pieces in a mess of apples, crust and filling at the base of her favorite egg-throwing wall.

But what he was focused on mostly was the gorgeous blonde who was wearing a white and black striped skirt, black blouse, and bright red heels. She was sucking on the tip of one of her fingers.

“You okay?” he asked from the doorway. Because once he stepped fully into the kitchen, he was going to touch her and once he started touching her, he wasn’t sure how that was going to end. Or if it would.

“I burned my finger.” She held up the digit she’d had in her mouth.

He gripped the doorknob in his hand, memories from the night before flooding his head and mixing with a strange sense of protectiveness. Burns could be serious, of course, but the finger was only red. There was no blister or anything. She’d be fine.

But a second later, he made a decision. It felt like it was a lot more than just letting go of the doorknob and crossing the kitchen to where she stood, but he did those things with some kind of subconscious realization that once he did, everything was going to change.

He took her hand and pulled her to the sink. He started a stream of cold water and held her finger under it.

“You chucked the pie because you burned your finger or you burned your finger chucking the pie?” he asked, watching her finger instead of looking at her.

Their bodies were touching, he could smell her shampoo mixed with the scent of cinnamon, and even cradling her hand in his under a stream of cold water made him want her with an intensity that shocked him. Sexual desire, want, lust—none of those were new. But with Ava he felt like he was feeling them for the first time.

This had seemed so obvious to him when it was happening to Evan with Cori that Parker decided to be a grown-up and not deny or ignore the truth of what he knew was happening—he didn’t just want to sleep with her or even date her. He was going to fall in love with her.

“No. I—” She glanced at the counter next to his right hip.

He followed her gaze and saw that she had a couple of file folders and papers laid out. “What’s this?”

“Work.” She lifted a shoulder. “I was on a conference call while I was baking this morning.”

“And you got distracted?” he guessed. That was a lot of her issue with being unable to make a decent pie. She didn’t pay attention to textures or timers when she was doing something else at the same time she was baking.

“There’s a big merger that was supposed to go through last month and now it’s stalled.”

“You chucked the pie at the wall because you were pissed off about Carmichael business stuff?”

She hesitated. “I threw the pie at the wall because things aren’t going my way this morning.”

Parker shut off the water. He grabbed a towel but paused. Then he lifted her finger to his lips and placed a kiss on it. “Wait right here. I’ll be back in a second,” he said, wrapping the towel around her hand.

Her eyes were wide. “Um. Okay.”

Parker blew out a breath. Then he pivoted and headed back to the diner. He strode through his kitchen, shutting off the oven and the stove burners under the pots on his way. He pushed the door open and stepped into the main part of the diner.

“Okay, everybody, closing time,” he announced loudly.

Everyone in the diner seemed to freeze. Conversation stopped. There was no clinking of silverware. Nothing. They all turned to look at him. Parker put his hands on his hips and lifted an eyebrow. “What?” Though he knew very well what.

“Everything okay?” Al asked.

“Yep. Ava needs me today. So I’m shutting down. I’ll be open for breakfast tomorrow morning.”

If the first announcement had shocked people, the news that it was because of Ava sent a tremor of amazement through the room that was almost palpable.

But damned if everyone didn’t start getting up and pulling their wallets out.

“Just put the money on the counter,” he said, gesturing toward the counter where the register sat. “You all know what you owe.”

As Ava had pointed out to Al, they’d all been eating here long enough and often enough to know what their bill would come to approximately. If they were off by a few dollars, he didn’t care.

And if he made that admission out loud, he’d probably cause a rift in the space-time continuum or something. Because words like “approximately” weren’t in his vocabulary, and he did care that things added up correctly. Literally and figuratively.

Until today. Now he just wanted to get back over to Ava.

“Hey, Hank?” he called. “Can you be the last out and lock up?”

“Yep,” the older man replied. With a wink.

He was back in Ava’s kitchen a minute later. “Okay, come on.” He grabbed her purse, took her unburned hand and started for the parking lot behind their businesses.

---

Ava didn’t even try to figure out where they were going as Parker helped her up into his truck—his hands lingering at her waist—and then pointed the truck out of town. Nor did she ask. She didn’t care. The guy had kissed her finger after she’d burned it. She’d go just about anywhere with him right now.

Hell, she’d thrown the pie at the wall to get his attention. In part anyway. She’d also tossed the damned thing because it had turned out great. Again. Better than the one before. She’d even baked it while on a conference call. Still, the pie had turned out.

She’d actually cried over that pie. A little.

It had been delicious. It was something she would be more than proud to serve, and she hadn’t been able to help wondering what her dad would have thought of it.

And, without warning, tears had welled up.

She’d been relating to Rudy’s challenge of making the “perfect” pie. He’d been trying to recreate a pie that he remembered from his childhood. With no recipe. She could imagine how hard and frustrating that had been when she was having trouble even coming up with something edible. Even with recipes.

And then suddenly, unexpectedly, she’d done it. She’d tossed the recipes and had found the right combination all on her own. She was astounded by how satisfying that was.

All her life she’d been following in Rudy’s footsteps, sure of her course, because he’d mapped it out first. Then he’d made her leave everything that was familiar and had given her a to-do list to accomplish, without a plan for how to make any of it happen. Here she was, having to make up her own recipes and strategies.

But she was actually succeeding.

She was making something she liked. All on her own. She had Cori and Brynn’s support and Parker’s general tips. But she’d made the pie that morning with her own two hands.

She had no idea if Rudy would have loved her pie or if it was even close to being the one he’d been looking for. Really, she would never know that. And that thought was a little sad. Rudy’s pie quest had died with him, and there was no way of knowing if that pie would ever exist again.

But maybe this was even better in a way. She’d had to create a pie that she liked. That she approved of. It was her pie. And she was proud of it. She didn’t have to follow Rudy’s paths to be happy and satisfied and proud of herself. She really could be successful with her own plans.

And then, staring down at that pie, right on top of the feeling of accomplishment, she’d realized she wasn’t ready to fully own that pie and success. She liked the idea of her and Cori and Brynn working together to make this all happen and all of them falling just a bit short on their own. And she liked the idea of needing Parker’s help.

So she’d thrown the pie against the wall before anyone else could discover that she’d figured it out. Which she’d known would get Parker over to her kitchen. That was multitasking at its finest.

She glanced at Parker. It was silly to get all swoony over him kissing her finger probably. It was actually probably just a good excuse to give herself for not putting up one iota of resistance when he’d said “come on.” But she’d had very little coddling in her life and she liked it from the gruff diner owner who didn’t coddle anyone.

But as she studied him, she realized that wasn’t true either. He did coddle. The entire town, as a matter of fact. They got to eat Rueben sandwiches well past closing time. Of course, they couldn’t substitute provolone for the Swiss, but they also didn’t pay a nickel more than they had a decade ago for it.

He did coddle people. He just wasn’t showy about it. So the finger kiss and running her hand under cold water were stupidly significant to her.

Ava had loved being seen as capable and independent and able to tackle any issue and handle any complication. She’d had to show her dad that she was the one that solved problems, not the one that needed to be looked after so that he would ultimately trust her at the head of the entire company. But from Parker, a little extra attention to her needs, was very, very nice.

Bottom line—she wanted to get this guy naked even more than she wanted the Ashton merger to go through, or the second quarter profit reports in her inbox, or to go over the spreadsheets showing amazing growth in their west coast branch. And she loved mergers and profit reports and spreadsheets showing growth. But there would be more reports. There were other mergers, other companies, other deals. There was only one guy who made her feel the way she was feeling right now, and even studying the way his hands curled around the steering wheel, the way his thigh muscles bunched under the soft denim of his jeans as he pressed the gas pedal, the way he tensed his jaw as if keeping from saying—or doing—something at the moment, all made her stomach fluttery, and her body feel warm, and her panties damp.

Her phone pinged, interrupting her thoughts. She glanced down. The text was from Cori.

You’re taking the day off?

Ava glanced at Parker. She didn’t know what exactly he had planned or how long it would take, but she was sure he had his watch alarm set. Just a long lunch, she replied to her sister.

Are you with Parker?

Yes.

Well, whatever you’re doing, he’s not planning on recovering quickly ;)

What are you talking about?

He closed the diner for the day.

Ava stared at Cori’s response. That wasn’t right. He’d been open when she’d gone to the pie shop that morning. Are you sure?

Hank just put a sign on the door.

Ava looked over at Parker. “You closed the diner for the day?”

Parker rolled his eyes. “It’s been like fifteen minutes and everyone already knows?”

“It’s true?”

He focused on the road but lifted a shoulder. “Yeah.”

“You’re just not going to go back? What about when people show up for lunch and dinner?”

“Pretty sure no one’s showing up for lunch or dinner,” he said dryly.

Ava pivoted on her seat to face him more fully. “Why?” And why was her heart pounding like it was?

“Because when I threw them all out, I told them it was because you needed me.”

Ava felt her mouth part in a surprised O. And her body heat. “I…need you?”

Now he did glance over at her, the corner of his mouth curling up. “You sure do, Boss.”

Yeah, she sure did.

Her heart skipped and her stomach flipped. “And the whole town knows you did this for me?”

He sighed. “Apparently.”

Ava sat back in her seat, chewing her bottom lip, as emotions swirled through her. First and foremost was anticipation. Whatever he had planned, she wanted in. She knew what she hoped he’d had planned. And she was suddenly thinking that she might like to know what it was like to make out in a pickup for the first time in her life.

Or maybe that wasn’t so sudden.

Parker had closed the diner. For her. He grumped about the food because the food was very personal to him. But he also let people linger in his diner nearly thirteen hours a day. Because they were personal to him. The diner was about his dad, on one level. On another, it was all about him. Because fulfilling the needs of the town fulfilled him.

And now he’d closed it all down for her.

“The town will think there’s something going on between us,” she finally said.

That was part of her plan, but now she needed to know how Parker felt about it.

He looked over as he turned off the highway onto a dirt road. “Yeah, they will.”

The look in his eyes made her heart thump. “You’re okay with that?”

“I am,” he said with a short nod. “You?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“I figure this can count as your six months of monogamy. I fit all the criteria.”

Ava decided she shouldn’t be surprised that he was thinking along the same lines. He was a smart guy. A goal-driven guy. He wanted Ava to meet all the conditions of the will for a number of reasons.

But this didn’t feel like just a means to an end.

“You do,” she agreed.

“And we’ve already spent some time together,” he went on, his eyes on the road again. “We maybe wouldn’t have to do the whole six months. We could count some of the time before now.”

Yeah. Exactly. But Ava said, “Or we could start counting now. I mean, just to be sure.” Six more months with him instead of two? That seemed like one of her more brilliant ideas.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel and he swallowed before answering, “Yeah, we could do that.”

Ava felt a little flutter of what might have been giddiness. She’d never actually felt giddy before so she couldn’t be sure, but this had to be it.

They were quiet for a minute. Ava watched the fields passing the window, marveling at how far she could see out here. She’d barely noticed the drive into Bliss from the Kansas City airport. Her attention had been riveted on her laptop. As usual. And her three months so far had been spent in the town. She hadn’t really experienced the countryside. She wasn’t sure what struck her most—the lack of buildings, the lack of traffic and people, or the lack of noise.

“Wow, it’s really different from New York here,” she commented. She turned from the window as he chuckled. She smiled. “I know. That’s dumb to say. I mean, in my head, I knew it would be different. I even knew the ways it would be different. But it just hit me.”

“I remember driving to Bliss for the first time. I was so pissed. I was convinced that I’d die without having pizza available twenty-four seven.”

She frowned. “You remember coming to Bliss? You knew what pizza was? Weren’t you a baby?”

He laughed. “Nope. I moved here when I was fourteen.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? You’re not actually from here?”

His smile got smaller but also softer. “Oh, I’m from here.” There was emotion—love—in his voice. “I just didn’t come home until I was older.”

There was something about how he said it that made her throat tighten. She loved New York. That was where she’d grown up. She appreciated everything that made New York City New York City. But she didn’t feel that, everything that was on Parker’s face now, about the city.

“How did that all happen?” she asked, suddenly wanting to know all about him.

He blew out a breath. “I was a spoiled brat rich kid hanging out with other spoiled brat rich kids. Thinking nothing could touch us. Bored because everything was being handed to us.”

“You were a rich kid?” Ava asked, completely surprised.

“Well, not Carmichael rich,” he said with a little smile. “But yeah. We had money. My dad was an investment guy and did really well. I spent fourteen years in Chicago.”

“I had no idea you grew up in a city.”

He shook his head quickly. “I didn’t grow up until I came to Bliss.”

Ava felt herself smile. He was so in love with this town. It made her like it even more. But in that moment, it occurred to her that she liked it a lot anyway. Somehow, in a short time, Bliss had grown on her. It was a bump in her road, or so she’d thought, but there was something about a place that ran according to its own rules and everyone was accepted for who they were and where everyone had a place, no matter how quirky.

Life was pretty simple here. Everyone got up in the morning, did something that contributed to the lives around them, gathered for a meal, and went to bed happy, safe, and content. She supposed the same things happened in New York, just on a bigger level. People went to work to produce products or offer services that other people needed. But it was harder to see there.

Here, Noah opened his garage, people brought their cars and trucks in, and he fixed them. Parker opened his diner, people came in to eat, and he made them food. Evan opened his office, people came in to trademark their homemade jam and to transfer the ownership of their farm to their kids, and Evan reassured them that he’d take care of them. Teachers went to the school and taught the kids of the town. Farmers planted their crops and took care of their animals. Ed, the electrician, fixed people’s wiring. Nancy, the bank president, gave people loans so they could add on to their house, and Josh, the local builder, built that extra room for them.

It was so much easier to see how lives intersected and interacted here.

It had definitely grown on her. Especially considering that she very rarely got to see the impact of her work directly on the lives it affected.

Unlike the pie shop.

She sighed. She sucked at making pies, but she understood the interaction that her father had enjoyed. Even more, seeing it on Parker’s side of the wall. Okay, so Rudy hadn’t been entirely off base in having her come here.

“So how did you end up in Bliss from Chicago?”

Parker turned the truck onto a narrower dirt road. “Dad threw a dart at the middle of a map of the US,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Seriously? He literally threw a dart at a map? The dart hit Bliss and so you up and moved here?”

“Kind of. I was getting into some stuff that concerned him and he determined we had to make a change. He thought the Midwest was a good bet but didn’t know anyone or any place in particular. So he put a map up on the wall, closed his eyes, and left it up to Fate. As soon as he saw the name Bliss, he knew this was the place.”

Ava turned the rest of the way on the seat and tucked her leg underneath her. This was fascinating stuff. She’d never trusted Fate for a damned thing. She worked for everything. With a carefully laid-out plan and lots of research.

The Fate idea kind of sounded nice. Letting it go. Trusting it would work out instead of sweating it.

“What were you getting into?” she asked, trying to picture Parker as a spoiled rich kid with an attitude.

It wasn’t that hard to imagine, actually. She grinned. Sure, he wore denim like he’d been born in it, and he nearly always paired that denim with a cotton T-shirt—she’d seen him in a button-down shirt exactly twice in almost four months—but she could definitely picture him challenging authority with an I’m-better-than-you attitude. Maybe not so much in a prep school uniform with khakis and a tie, but she had no trouble visualizing a young Parker with a smirk, thinking he was above the law. It was interesting, really. He liked order and routine, but it wasn’t hard to believe that, while rules mattered, he would think his rules were the ones that counted. He exuded confidence and if he thought he knew better about how people should eat grilled cheese sandwiches, then she was sure he thought he knew better about bigger things too.

“My group of friends decided to make some money,” he said. “They started…acquiring objects and then reselling them.”

“Acquiring?” she repeated, noting the slight pause before the word. “You mean stealing?”

He nodded. “From their parents.”

She felt her eyebrows rise. “A bunch of fourteen-year-olds stole from their rich parents and resold the stuff?”

“Pretty much. Though there was a fifteen and a sixteen-year-old too.”

She shook her head. “Wow. What kind of stuff?”

“Jewelry. Small art pieces. Antique dishes and vases and stuff.” Parker shrugged. “Had to be small so they wouldn’t be noticed.”

“And what did they need this money for?” she asked.

“We didn’t need it for anything. We were bored. And thought rules didn’t apply to us.”

“Because the rules were different for you than for the rest of society,” Ava said. “I know what that’s like.”

He glanced over. “Yeah. And I think we wanted to see what would happen. How long could we get away with stuff and what would happen when we got caught. But then things started getting bigger. A couple of the guys broke into a neighbor’s house and I knew things were getting out of control.”

“How did you get caught?”

“My dad found me going through my mom’s jewelry. I was trying to find her grandmother’s wedding ring.”

Ava winced.

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “It had gone from little stuff our parents didn’t really care about, to bigger stuff and then on to meaningful stuff. Things that couldn’t be easily replaced. But that night—” Parker paused. “I think I wanted to get caught. I was getting nervous. Some of the buyers weren’t exactly nice people. And we were kids.”

“And you wanted to know what he would do,” Ava guessed.

He nodded. “I wanted to see if he’d sweep it under the rug, or yell, or punish me, or what.” Parker took a breath. “He’d never done any of that. He wasn’t around much, for one thing. He worked all the time. When he was around, his head was somewhere else. Always thinking about—worrying about—work.”

“You were trying to get his attention?” Ava asked, feeling a knot in her stomach. She knew exactly what it was like to never really mentally leave her work. And how it felt to look around and realize she’d missed stuff in the process. And how it felt to regret that.

“Not at first,” Parker said. “But I think it was bugging me how easy it all was. I did want his attention that night. I wanted to show him that things weren’t perfect, things weren’t just going along easily in spite of him not being there.”

He was frowning and the knot in Ava’s stomach tightened. “You wanted to punish him,” she said.

Parker pulled to a stop and shifted the truck into park. She barely noticed anything around her. She was completely focused on the man beside her. It seemed he was one of the few things that could capture her full attention.

He turned slightly, resting his arm on the top of the steering wheel. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I guess so. He was living in this world where his work took all of him, and he just assumed—and hoped, I learned later—that the money, the nice things, made me and my mom’s life easy and so everything was fine.”

“And when he found out what was going on?” Ava asked.

“I’ll never forget it,” Parker said, his voice a little gravelly now. “He asked what I was doing and I told him. I mean, I just confessed the whole thing. It just poured out of me. I remember feeling relieved. And then he stared at me for a long time, ran his hand through his hair, and then went to his desk. He pulled the map out, stuck it on the wall, and threw the dart. He quit his job the next day, and we were driving into a Bliss a week later.”

Ava swallowed hard as jealousy wrapped around the knot of what felt like regret in her gut. “Wow. I mean, that was…”

“Everything,” Parker filled in. “It was everything. He stepped up. Immediately. And he left it all behind to come here and make a life here that was about family and community and straightforward hard work that paid off in fewer dollars but a million other ways.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded. She understood all of that. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have. She would have been amazed to think of a man doing what Parker’s dad had done. But now…it was the perfect expression of love and fatherhood.

“Your dad did the same thing,” Parker said, his voice quieter. “He didn’t do it soon enough, he didn’t do it in the right way, maybe. But he got you here. He gave you a chance at a life you never would have imagined if not for something major making him look at things and realize it wasn’t going the way he wanted it to.”

She swallowed hard again, her throat tightening. She understood, cerebrally, that Rudy had been trying to give his daughters something good, something he’d found in Bliss, when he’d mandated they come to this town for a year. But she hadn’t really believed it would happen. Until Cori had fallen for Evan. Until Ava saw Brynn with Noah. Until she’d walked into the pie shop one morning and smiled at the bright colors and the curtains covered in pictures of fruit, and the scent of coffee and spices that hadn’t been there before she and her sisters had taken over.

The pie shop had been just one more thing Ava had to handle, that she had to make work for her sisters’ sakes. But slowly, she’d started to like it. She’d started to feel proud of the things she and Cori and Brynn had done together. And lately, with Parker, she felt something happening to her. She didn’t really worry about herself. She was in control of the things that happened to and around her. Usually. With Parker and the pie shop though, she’d come up against the first things that seemed to be happening in spite of her. When she’d wanted the pies to turn out, they hadn’t. Now that she didn’t want them to be perfect, yet, they were turning out great. And she had realized that she had no control over Parker and the things he made her feel.

And the lack of control made her a little nervous. But it also felt kind of good. New. Exciting.

“He changed the rules on me,” she finally said. “I always knew exactly what he was expecting, what he wanted to see with the company, what I needed to do, how he would react to things. I made running that company like he did, my entire focus. And then suddenly…this.” She sighed. “He dies of cancer before I even knew he was sick. Then I find out that he’s put together this trust and I have to live in this tiny town in Kansas that I’ve never heard of. I find out that he was running a barely-making-it pie shop simply because he liked pie. He wants me to make pie. I mean, it’s all crazy.”

He’d left her completely recipe-less.

Parker nodded. “He changed the rules on purpose.”

Yeah, she knew that. And she suspected that Rudy had known how good it would feel to succeed without following a recipe. By finding her way on her own.

“I figured out pretty young that Dad wanted us to go into business with him,” she said, her voice sounding raspy. “It wasn’t until I was older that I realized it was because he didn’t know how else to relate to us. It was all he could imagine having in common with us. He’d never been around kids, had no idea what to do with girls, not to mention three of us at once, and especially girls who were being raised by a woman who was socially conscious and was the one person he could never negotiate or bully into doing what he wanted—marrying him.” She smiled, thinking of her mom. “So he exposed us to his business because it was really the only thing he had. It wasn’t like he could take us to ball games or teach us to play violin or talk to us about his fascination with American history. He didn’t have any other interests. He didn’t know what else to do with us. For a while it was really frustrating, for everyone, because Cori and Brynn had no interest in any of it. But then I figured out that as long as I was interested, then Cori and Brynn could do their things in relative peace. It kept Cori from trying to make him happy and getting her heart broken when it didn’t work, or he didn’t get her. It kept him from trying to pull Brynn out of her shell, which just exasperated them both.”

“Basically, as long as you were interested in the business and could talk to him about it, he left Cori and Brynn alone?” Parker asked.

She nodded. “Cori didn’t get hurt and Brynn didn’t get pushed.”

“So you pretended to be interested and got in too deep to get out?”

“No. No, nothing like that.” She shook her head. “I really was interested. I loved the numbers. I loved dressing up. I loved the intense meetings, the negotiating, the victories. I figured out that people would underestimate me—because I was young and a woman—and I loved showing them what I knew and proving them wrong. I know everyone thinks I work too hard and too much and I’m super stressed out but the truth is, this fits me. I don’t think the job made me this way, I think the way I am makes me really good at the job. And it’s not bad for me. My blood pressure is below average, all of my other numbers are great. I get checkups every six months, I exercise to work off the stress, I sleep really well. I recognize it’s not for everyone, but it works for me. I’m not fun and sweet, but that’s because that stresses me out.”

He laughed. “You are fun and sweet, Boss.”

That made her stomach flip. “But not like Cori and Brynn,” she said with a smile. “And that’s okay. Honestly. Being fun and spontaneous and creative like Cori gives me heartburn. I can’t abandon schedules and I need a plan. I can’t just be sweet like Brynn because I can’t let stuff roll off. When people are being assholes, I call them on being assholes. Letting it go makes my stomach hurt and makes me want to yell at other people when it’s not their fault. Lots of people aren’t good with confrontation. I, on the other hand, excel at it.”

“So, not being fun and sweet is better for you?” Parker asked.

“Exactly.”

He seemed to think about that, but after a moment he nodded. “I get it.”

“You do, don’t you?” she asked with a smile. He did because he was the same way.

“I can have fun, but only if there’s a plan in place. I’ll go to a barbecue if I know what time it starts and what I’m supposed to bring. Pop-up parties aren’t really my thing.”

“Because you already have a plan and don’t want to just drop it at the last minute, right?” she guessed.

“Exactly.” He smiled at her. “What’s with these people who only plan for an hour or two at a time?”

“Right?”

They laughed. “And yeah, I’m not so good at sweet either.”

She felt everything in her soften at that. Soften. Not something she was used to feeling, but with Parker it seemed to be happening with some frequency. Interesting that a by-the-book grump would be the one to soften her up. “I think you’re better at it than you think.”

“Well, you let me do dirty things with butter,” he said. “That definitely helps my mood when I’m around you.”

The air in the truck heated but she laughed, feeling happiness soaking in clear to her bones. She loved that they could be matter-of-fact about everything—the things they were good at, the things they sucked at, their pasts, and their attraction. “I will definitely let you do dirty things with butter whenever you want.”

“You mean, if it’s on your schedule for the day.” He gave her a wink.

Nope, pretty much any time.

“You can put it on your schedule,” she said. “As long as our calendars on our phones are synched, we’ll be fine.”

He kept his eyes on hers as he reached for his phone. He swiped a couple of times, then typed. A second later, her phone pinged with a notification.

It was a calendar reminder that said simply Get naked.