It was Friday, and for the first time in a long time, I was looking forward to the weekend. As I finished my last appointment and started clearing off my desk and wrapping up the last few emails, I realized that I’d been letting work take over my life. I usually stayed late on Fridays, working ahead on my own time, and I often took work home—case files, session plans, research and articles to read. I’d spend my weekend ensconced in my little apartment, working and doing housework until Monday came again.

It had been like that since the breakup with Kyle, the cancellation of the wedding plans. That made some sense, even though the breakup had been my idea. But when I thought back, I realized the pattern went back much farther. Those last months with Kyle, I’d withdrawn into work, made it the center of my life, probably to avoid facing the problems in our relationship head-on. I hadn’t been happy, and instead of taking it out on Kyle and having fights, I’d simply gone to work.

I didn’t know what had changed, but tonight I wanted out of here. Summer was ending. Maybe I’d take a walk. Maybe I’d read a book—a novel, not an academic book. Maybe I’d make popcorn and watch mindless TV and do my nails. I was nearly jumpy, my blood singing, my skin tingling, all at the thought of two whole days to myself.

Okay, fine, maybe I did know what had changed. Jace Riggs had kissed me, sort of. I’d sort of kissed him back. It was nothing, but I still felt like I was on a rollercoaster, climbing to the top of the peak and about to go over. He was an ex-con car thief who smelled like leather and bonfire smoke, and when he’d leaned in close to me, when I’d felt that light brush of his lips and his beard, I’d been giddier than I’d ever been in two years with Kyle.

All of it was stupid, and all of it was in my head, but it had happened, and it still put me in a good mood. So, of course, my mother chose that moment to call me.

“Mom,” I said, picking up the phone because if I didn’t, she’d simply call again. “What’s up? I’m just heading home from work.”

“Tara,” my mother said. “Your father and I would like you to come out to dinner.”

My spine tightened, like it always did when my mother issued an order. There was never a hi honey, how are you from my mother—she always told me immediately what she wanted me to do, and there was always something. My father simply never called at all.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked Mom, trying to stay polite.

“The occasion is that we haven’t seen you in two months,” Mom said. “We’d like to see you and get an update on your progress.”

Honestly, this was how my mother talked. An update on your progress. My parents weren’t bad people, but two people who should never have been parents in the first place. It was so patently obvious they were unsuited to parenthood that I’d figured it out by the time I was fourteen. “I’m doing fine,” I said to Mom. I was pulling my purse from my drawer and toeing off the heels I’d worn, replacing them with the flats I’d brought in my bag.

“Regardless,” Mom said, “we should have dinner at Aldi’s.”

Aldi’s was one of Westlake’s most expensive restaurants. My parents were both investment brokers, and money had always been plentiful—we weren’t filthy rich, but I’d had more money than, say, Jace Riggs. Enough to go to private school and get a college degree, though both of my parents completely disapproved of my career choice. They’d been hoping their only child would be a surgeon. Counseling the downtrodden, the mentally ill, the ex-cons, and people who were on the skids of life was not what they’d imagined for my future.

I’d grown further apart from my parents since I started this career; they didn’t want to talk about it, which meant I couldn’t talk to them about the biggest thing in my everyday life. The breakup with Kyle hadn’t helped at all—they’d at least wanted to see me “settled” with someone unobjectionable like Kyle, and when I’d called the whole thing off, they’d been painfully confused. They still didn’t get it.

So I knew what this dinner would be. They’d ask for an update on my life; I’d tell them I was still single and still a counselor, and the rest of the night would be bitter tension. There were no two people more rigid, more unforgiving, than my parents.

I left my office and locked it, the phone crooked between my shoulder and my ear. “Maybe we can do it some other time, Mom,” I said, feeling my happy Friday night slip through my fingers.

“Tonight is the only night your father can make it,” my mother declared. “He has golf Saturday and Sunday.”

“Dad doesn’t care about dinner,” I said. I meant to toss the words off, but they were true. I could see my father once a year at Christmas and he’d be fine with it. I’d dropped off his radar when I got my counseling degree. I took the stairwell two flights down to the street because the elevator was known to cut off phone signals.

“Tara, it’s been two months,” Mom repeated.

“Is there a schedule?” I said.

“Laura Ferrano’s daughter visits her every Saturday,” Mom replied.

I felt my jaw go tight. How many times had we had this argument? Too many times to count. My mother’s requests—her commands—were always based on the idea of what behavior was correct rather than a true desire to see me. The older I got, the more correctness was required, based on where she thought I was supposed to be in life, and no matter how much I argued or how I worded it, I couldn’t get her to see it. The minute the topic opened, her defenses would go up. I loved my mother—I loved both my parents—but she was exhausting.

I exited the stairwell door to the street. “Mom—” I stopped.

Jace Riggs was sitting on the bench on the other side of the sidewalk. He was sitting with his elbows on his jean-clad knees, his hands dangling between his legs. He was wearing a T-shirt with a soft, slim-cut black hoodie over it that skimmed every muscled line of his torso and arms. His hair was clean and combed, his beard trimmed close to his jaw, and his gray gaze had lit on me.

I froze with the phone at my ear and held his gaze. There was no way it was a mistake; Jace was here for me. Waiting.

“Tara?” Mom said.

“I can’t come to dinner, Mom,” I said. “I have plans.”

“Plans?” Mom said in disbelief. “With who?”

No, oh no. I wasn’t telling my mother about Jace Riggs. “A friend,” I told her.

“What friend?”

“I have to go. He’s here.”

“He?”

I hung up and walked toward him. “Jace,” I said.

He watched me come forward. When I got close he lifted his elbows from his knees and leaned back on the bench, stretching one arm casually over the back—a pose that did beautiful things to his shoulder muscles. “Are you finished with work?” he asked.

“I am,” I said. “You could have called, you know.”

It almost sounded like a criticism, and I didn’t mean it to. The butterflies had started in my stomach and I was freaking giddy again.

“I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were working,” Jace said. His deep, almost sad gaze flicked past my shoulder and back to my face again. “Besides, I only have the reception number.”

Right. He hadn’t wanted to call and talk to reception because I wasn’t his counselor anymore. This wasn’t business—it was personal. I felt the giddiness warm up into a slow, pleasurable pulse between my legs. “True,” I said to him. “I’ll give you my number.”

Our gazes locked. Jesus. I could talk to a dozen people a day and say a hundred different things and not remember any of it. Yet every word I spoke with Jace Riggs was laced with meaning. I’d offered him my number, but I’d also offered him my trust and my privacy, and he knew it. For a woman who dealt with men on the edge almost every day, my privacy was my most prized possession; there were too many stories about counselors like me being stalked, threatened.

Jace’s gaze dropped to where I’d dropped my phone in my purse. “Are you busy?” he asked.

He meant, Was that a man you were talking to? Seriously. “That was my mother,” I said. “She asked me to dinner, and I said I had plans.”

Wariness now, just a flicker of it, but it was a common Jace expression. “Do you?”

“I have plans with you,” I said.

He rubbed his fingertips over his chin, rasping them over his beard, his rings gleaming in the sunlight. I’d seen Jace under my office fluorescents, and I’d seen him at night, but I’d never seen him in the sun. He was just as beautiful under any light. “Tara,” he said, my name vibrating through me as it came from him. “Tell me the truth. Am I bothering you?”

This man. This fucking man. “No,” I told him, my voice raw. “You aren’t bothering me. Are you hungry? Let’s get dinner.”