By the time Sadie closed up the Canvas Shop for the evening, she was restless as hell. She and Lollipop walked the length of the courtyard in the cold misty night, the dog pouncing on a fallen leaf, barking at a lamppost, making her laugh.

It felt good to have the three-legged sweetheart for company since her own thoughts skewed dark. But even with all Lollipop had been through, she wasn’t wired for dark. Every walk was exciting, a chance for a new adventure.

Sadie’s phone beeped into the chilly silence. A missed call and a voice mail. She grimaced. Caleb had tried on more than one occasion this past week to see her for reasons other than exchanging custody of Lollipop.

She’d evaded.

Not because of disinterest but the opposite. She was too interested, and that was scary shit. She was working up to facing those fears, she just wasn’t there quite yet, so she brought up the message with her eyes half squinted.

But the message was from her sister.

Sadie closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. And then opened her eyes again and texted a reply: It’s your wedding, whatever you want.

Clara’s response was, What I want is to not hear Mom say, “What about Sadie?” I’m tired of this being about you, okay? It’s my wedding.

With a pang of guilt, Sadie texted one more message: I’ll take care of it.

And then she turned off her phone because she had no idea how she was going to take care of it. Her hair was easy enough. The color was a wash-in and would come out with a few more shampoos. Her tattoos were slightly more problematic, but she loved them and wouldn’t apologize for them. She’d simply have Addie double the lace if needed.

What she couldn’t change was that she didn’t know how to be what her family wanted, and she’d lost the need to try anyway. All she knew how to do was be . . . her.

And she liked her, just the way she was.

Mostly. Okay, so she was working on that too. She could certainly start by being a little more . . . open. If she was, if she hadn’t avoided being alone with Caleb for an entire week like a chickenshit, she might’ve gotten another heart-stopping kiss.

And more . . .

Whew. Thinking of sex after not having it for three years made her a little shaky. Maybe she was hungry. Maybe she just needed French fries. Deciding that was it, she headed toward the pub, making a pit stop at the pet shop on the way. Willa was thankfully working late in the back, bathing a cocker spaniel.

“What’s up?” Willa asked, blowing kissy faces to Lollipop.

“I’m in need of French fries.”

“And you want to leave Lollipop here while you do,” Willa guessed.

“If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Willa said. “I still owe ya.”

“You don’t.”

“Yeah, I do.” Willa staggered to her feet and rubbed her baby bump. “Remember when I told you that I wasn’t feeling sexy, and that me and Keane hadn’t managed to have sex in two weeks? And you told me it was never too late to have my slutty phase, that it builds character.”

Sadie smiled. “And?”

“And last weekend, I hired a temp to take some of the overnight dog-sitting shifts. I bought some sexy stuff and seduced my husband. He was so happy, he coaxed me into hiring the new kid as a permanent addition.” She smiled. “We needed that. I mean the night before, we’d fought over the fact that he wouldn’t tell me where he’d hidden the candy I’d asked him to hide from me. I didn’t speak to him for twelve hours.”

“You’re pregnant,” Sadie said. “You were going stir-crazy.”

“To say the least.” Willa reached for Lollipop. “I’ve got her covered. Go have French fries. And a drink for me, okay?”

Two minutes later, Sadie walked into the pub. It was owned by friends of hers, the O’Riley brothers. Finn and Sean were bartending when she sat at the far right corner of the bar, which they kept reserved for the tight-knit group of friends who lived or worked in the Pacific Pier Building.

Finn jerked his chin her way in greeting. “Whatcha having tonight?”

She didn’t drink much. She preferred to eat her calories, thank you very much, but after thinking about Caleb and how much he made her ache for things she’d given up, she realized she needed more than French fries. “Whiskey. On the rocks.”

“Rough day?”

She shrugged. “A banana is a hundred calories. A shot of whiskey’s only eighty. I’m just choosing wisely.”

Someone slid onto the barstool next to hers. She didn’t need to look over to know it was Caleb. She could tell because her nipples got hard.

“How about you?” Finn asked her new barstool neighbor. “Rough day?”

When he didn’t answer right away, Sadie turned to look at him.

“More like frustrating,” he murmured, eyes on her. “Someone I wanted to talk to is playing the coy game and hasn’t returned a call.”

“Maybe it’s not about being coy,” she said. “Maybe it’s about being . . .” What? Afraid? That was weak. And she didn’t do weak. “Cautious,” she said.

“Where’s the fun in that?” As he spoke, there was a flash of something in his gaze, maybe frustration that she was being aloof. But it was instinct, a knee-jerk reaction thanks to her need to try to control her emotions, especially around him.

And for him . . .

But now that he’d had his hands on her, she was having a hell of a time controlling herself at all. And he was changing a lot of what she thought she knew of him. On the outside, he gave the world that laid-back, easygoing smile. All while holding most of himself back.

But in those sixty seconds that he’d had his mouth and hands on her, he hadn’t held anything back, giving her a glimpse of a man who had depths she hadn’t even guessed at.

“What’ll it be for you?” Finn asked Caleb.

“Fuzzy Navel.”

Finn nodded and moved away to make the drinks.

Sadie went brows up. “Did you order a Fuzzy Navel just so I’d ask you why you’d order such a thing?”

“You mean a girlie drink?” he asked.

“To be fair, I’d question any gender’s decision to order a Fuzzy Navel.”

Finn came back with their drinks and an order of fries. “To share. Play nice,” he said, looking at Sadie.

“Hey,” she said but Finn was gone. And okay, so she could see why he’d direct that at her. She and Caleb dug into the fries and she realized something else—eating deliciously, perfectly crispy fries with someone, sharing a big blob of ketchup, their fingers occasionally bumping into each other . . . it was an intimacy all on its own.

“So,” she said, watching as he sipped his drink, which made her smile because a big sexy guy ordering anything other than beer or a badass liquor was foreign to her. “I’ll play. A Fuzzy Navel?”

He shrugged. “Maybe I’m trying to get in touch with my feminine side so I can understand what a certain woman is thinking when she looks at me.”

She blinked. “Is it working?”

“No. You’re a closed book.”

She snorted. “You’re making that up. You don’t care about understanding what I’m thinking.”

“I care more than you know,” he said easily. “You’re just not open to it because you’re scared.” He paused while she absorbed the absolute truth of that statement.

“But you’re right,” he said. “I didn’t order the Fuzzy Navel to figure you out. I’ve got the feeling that nothing but time is going to help me figure you out.” He took another sip, his eyes considering her. “I ordered it because it was my grandma’s fave. She drank it whenever she was stressed, which was a lot. So now I do the same. It’s sort of my way of toasting her from whichever cloud she’s sitting on watching over me.”

Damn. That was really sweet. And when a guy like Caleb did something sweet, it was also incredibly sexy. She took another sip of her drink. “Think she was watching when you pushed me up against the brick wall in the alley and kissed the hell out of me?”

Caleb choked on his drink and set the glass down. He’d been coming out of a meeting with Hunt Investigations, the security company on the second floor, when he’d seen Sadie walk into the bar. Completely unable to resist, he’d followed her in and sat next to her. He was breaking down her walls one brick at a time—or so he hoped—but he knew he still had a long way to go.

What he didn’t know was why he insisted on pursuing this, pursuing her , when she clearly would rather pretend there was nothing between them. Maybe it was because of that , he thought with an ironic grimace. The seduction of being with a woman who didn’t want anything from him was too much to resist . . .

In any case, he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “First,” he said, “you kissed me . And second, damn woman, thanks for putting the image of my grandma in my head and ruining the moment.”

She laughed.

And God, he loved her laugh. It was deep and throaty, and she always seemed a little surprised that she could be amused.

“Why was she always stressed?” she asked.

He didn’t like to think about his past, much less discuss it, but this was Sadie, and he took the fact that she was asking as a good sign. “She was a young single mom,” he said, “and then her daughter became a young single mom with a bunch of kids. There were a lot of mouths to feed.”

She just looked at him for a long beat. “And you were one of those mouths?”

He nodded.

“What happened to her?” she asked.

He turned back to his drink. “She died when I was little.” It’d been a whole lot of years, but she’d spent the most time with him while his mom had been gone working night and day, and he still missed her.

He felt Sadie’s hand cover his. He turned his over so that he was palm up and entangled his fingers with hers.

“I’m sorry,” she said, eyes and voice warm. “I’m guessing things were rough after she was gone?”

She hadn’t pulled her hand from his, and he ran his thumb along hers. It’d been a long time since such a simple touch had meant anything to him. “My mom did the best she could. My sisters helped. They all put their heads down and did whatever they had to do to raise me and send me off to college.”

She appeared to be mesmerized by this story, by the fact that he hadn’t been born rich and successful. “And now they work for you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“So you all . . . like each other.”

He laughed. “Yes.”

This seemed to be the biggest surprise of all for her. “And you’re still close.”

He wanted to bring their joined hands up to rub his aching chest, because she clearly couldn’t compute a family unit that was tight and loved each other. “Yes, we’re close, even though they still try to boss me around. Comes with being the baby of the family.”

This got a smile out of her. “Cute.”

“Or annoying and unnecessary,” he said. “Which I tell them as often as I can get anyone to listen to me.”

“So let me get this straight,” she said. “At work you run this huge conglomerate and are a well-known venture capitalist with more responsibility than I could ever manage, but at home you’re the baby?”

“See? Annoying, right?”

She shook her head. “Still cute.”

When he grimaced, she smiled. “So how did you go from barely getting by to . . . ?” She waved her free hand up and down, gesturing to—presumably—his suit.

“I got lucky,” he said.

She shook her head. “Going to call BS. No one’s that lucky.”

Giving in to temptation, he brought their joined hands up to his mouth so he could brush a kiss over her knuckles. “Now who’s cute?” he murmured. “And yeah, I do pretty good for myself, but here’s the thing—I didn’t do it alone. I had help along the way. A lot of it. No one does it alone.” Again, he brushed his mouth over her fingers.

She stared at him, squirming just a little bit. Kind of how Lollipop looked at him when she was both afraid to come out from beneath his bed and yet wanted in his arms badly.

Caleb Parker, dog whisperer. Hopefully also woman whisperer.

“Does your mom still work?” she asked.

“She’s retired now. Three of my sisters work for me, though one’s on maternity leave. My fourth sister’s an intern for me and in grad school back east. My corporation’s big on decent hours and great benefits, so I get to make sure they have a good life after giving me so much of theirs.” He nodded to a table in the far corner of the pub. “My family’s actually here tonight, or some of them anyway. It’s date night.”

She looked over and he knew what she was seeing. A striking forty-year-old brunette seated next to a handsome black man who was feeding her something off his fork and laughing—Sienne and Niles. Kayla’s baby bump was huge. The man next to her was holding her hand and had a baby strapped to his chest. Hannah was flashing her phone around the table and everyone waved to whoever was on the FaceTime call. And only Emory was missing. She was probably who they were FaceTiming. Or maybe it was his cousin Kel. His sisters loved and adored him.

“Looks very cozy,” Sadie murmured.

Caleb laughed. “Do not be fooled by appearances. We might love hard, but we fight just as hard and as often. Give it five minutes and someone will be up in arms about something.”

“Why aren’t you with them?”

He held her gaze. “I’m busy.”

Her breath hitched and she pulled her hand free. “No, don’t let me hold you up. We’re not . . .”

He went brows up, really wanting to hear her finish that sentence.

She shook her head, clearly at a loss for words as she waved her hand around. “This is silly.”

Grabbing her hand, he gave it a gentle squeeze. “What happened in the alley wasn’t silly.”

“No kidding.” She touched her fingers to her lips as if she could still feel his kiss.

He could certainly still feel hers. “Your turn, Tough Girl.”

Her gaze went from his mouth to his eyes. “What?”

“Your turn to give me something of you.”

She blinked. “You know plenty about me.”

“Actually, I don’t.” He leaned in a little closer. Their thighs touched and he watched her breath catch again. “Give me something,” he murmured. “You owe me now.”

At that, her eyes went hooded. She pulled back, fished some money from her pocket and set it on the bar before standing.

“Running scared?” he asked.

She stilled and stared at him. “Maybe.”

Honesty at least, he thought. “I’m not looking for your state secrets.” Yet. “Just tell me . . . something.”

“Like?” she asked suspiciously.

He shrugged. “Like . . . what you sing to in the shower. Or your favorite piercing . . .” Reaching up, he ran a finger along the shell of her ear and all the tiny silver rings neatly lined up there that always made him hot. “Tell me what gets you out of bed in the morning. Or what your parents are like, and if you have nosy-ass siblings like I do. Or maybe a secret wish you have that you’ve never fulfilled.”

She bit her lower lip and he thought oh yeah , he wanted to know her secret wish.

“Hell, tell me what you watch on TV,” he said. “I don’t care. Just talk to me about you.”

“Maybe I don’t share like that.”

“Ever?” he asked.

“Anymore.”

He didn’t often get frustrated. It wasn’t in his nature, and plus he usually didn’t care enough to get there. But according to his current level of frustration, he cared more than he wanted to admit. “My turn to call BS,” he said on a rough laugh. “We share a dog. We shared a moment in the alley that included a kiss, a pretty great one. And I shared about my oddball family—more than I ever do with a woman, by the way—simply because you asked. You asked, Sadie,” he repeated. “And now I’m asking.”

She paused. “I need to rephrase. I can’t do this. We’re not going down the road you seem to think we are.”

“And which road is that?”

She looked away, glancing over at his family. “I’m not the white picket fence, two point five kids, soccer mom kind of woman,” she said quietly. “And I think you know that.”

“What I know,” he said, standing to meet her toe-to-toe, “is that a week ago I’d have laughed at the thought of having enough time in my life for a dog. Or a woman.” He ran his fingers along her jaw. “Now I find myself making time for both.”

“Your point?” she asked.

“My point is that maybe you’ll surprise yourself and find that you want to make time too.”

She shook her head. “I won’t,” she whispered.

It seemed like an automatic denial. It also seemed like maybe she regretted it the moment it left her mouth, but though he waited, she didn’t take it back.

He’d struck out. He didn’t want to accept that, but he knew enough about stubborn women to know when to push and when to fold. So he handed her money back to her, dropped his own to cover their drinks and the fries, and walked away instead of pressing. He knew what he wanted, and he wanted Sadie. She was a calculated risk, and though he’d been a huge risk taker all his life, banking on Sadie being willing to face her emotions was a loser’s bet.