The fucker has a chiseled jaw. Light-brown hair with russet tones. A toothpaste-commercial smile.

  Is that her boyfriend? Does she have a new dude?

  Are you surprised? You’re the jerk who ditched her with a vague-as-fuck letter.

  I suck in a tight breath through my teeth, hating him on principle as he hands her the books and returns to his bike, strapping on a helmet before he goes.

  Which reminds me.

  I grab my phone from my pocket and unlock it to google a couple local businesses. I check the hours, then make plans to run an errand later. When that’s done, I tell myself to put Ripley’s possible romantic life out of my head. It’s not my business, no matter how much I once wanted to touch her, kiss her, throw her on the bed.

  After I tuck the phone away, I return to the counter right as the soft shuffle of bare feet approaches from the hallway.

  A woman, with even blonder hair than Ripley’s, turns into the kitchen. Her warm eyes are lined with wrinkles, and while she’s clearly much older than her granddaughter, the similarity is uncanny. “Good afternoon,” I say.

  “You must be the bodyguard,” she says with a cheery smile.

  “I am,” I say, though the preferred term is close protection officer. But there’s a time and place for corrections. This isn’t one of those times or places. “Banks Kendrick.”

  “I’m Lila Addison. The girls’ grandmother,” she says.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say, and extend a hand.

  After we shake, she nods to my laptop on the counter in front of a few jars of honey I’ve no doubt was produced by those little winged workers in the fields. “Hope this won’t disturb you, but I have some madeleines I need to make.”

  My stomach growls, Pavlovian thing. “Those scallop-shaped cookies that taste like heaven?”

  Mom used to make them after football practice.

  Her smile magnifies as she starts rummaging through the cupboards for baking supplies. “We’ll get along just fine, Banks.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Lila deputizes me for kitchen duty. At her insistence, I wear a white apron decorated with bumblebees while I mix sugar, vanilla, eggs, and melted butter.

  “So, Banks,” she starts, her tone casual yet probing, “tell me about this bodyguarding gig of yours. How does a young man like you end up doing something like that?”

  Translation: Why do you want to protect others?

  Because I couldn’t protect my mother from my liar of a father. While he never hit her, he manipulated her in other ways. He lied about everything. The least I can do is be the opposite of him.

  Protect rather than deceive.

  But that’s not the kind of story I share with everyone I meet. “I spent the last few years in private security, including cyber. Saw the market expanding and took a chance. Now this is a whole new level, running my own firm with my good friend, who’s my business partner.”

  She nods thoughtfully, a mischievous spark in her eyes as she folds the flour, baking powder, and salt mixture carefully into the batter. “And how do you plan on keeping my granddaughter safe? Do you have any special skills up your sleeve?”

  Unable to resist her charm, I smile. “I spent eight years in the Marines. First in MARSOC,” I say, and when she, understandably, tilts her head in question, I add, “Special forces for the Marines.”

  “Like SEALs?”

  I smile. “Well, we’re both Navy, but we’re Raiders. Which is cooler.”

  “I don’t know. Seals are pretty cute,” she says with a smirk. “The animal, not the special forces guys…although, now that I think about it, they’re cute too.”

  “My point exactly,” I say, then add, “and the last few years, I spent in intelligence.”

  “Brains and brawn,” she says approvingly.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  She stops folding, fixing me with an intense gaze, not at all unlike her granddaughter’s. “Now tell me something. Why can’t I have a bodyguard? I’d ideally love a hot, swoony, older gentleman who can hold his own in the kitchen.”

  “Then we should find you one.” I tilt my head toward my laptop as if I’m about to make a start on that project.

  “Just kidding. I know self-defense, plus I have my own mon cheri across the ocean.” Her whole face lights up as she tells me about a man in Paris named Laurent. They FaceTime every day, play trivia games online, and binge TV shows together too. She’s hoping to see him there at the end of the summer. “We want to take pastry-making classes together in the sixth arrondissement.”

  “That sounds lovely, Lila,” I say.

  She sighs hopefully. “We’ll see if it works out for him to be my French bodyguard who bakes.” She nods toward the mixing bowl. “Try it. I plan to have pastry competitions with him. I need to beat him.”

  I take the mixing spoon and sample some of the batter. It’s sweet and full of promise. “Delish.”

  She arches a brow. “You really think so, or are you lying to get me to say nice things to my granddaughter about you?”

  And I can see where Ripley gets it from—her skepticism. “Both.”

  Lila’s quiet for a beat. She stares out the window at the fields of purple, the sun dipping low in the sky, Ripley off in the distance working. “She’s my fearless girl. Full of energy too. I swear there’s nothing she won’t try to fix. Nothing she won’t try to do. She doesn’t stop,” she says, her tone full of maternal pride, but something wistful too. Like she wants Ripley to slow down perhaps.

  As we watch, I wonder if Ripley needs to keep going all day long for some reason. I wonder what drives her. It’d be good for me to know her more, I reason. It’ll help me do my job, so I turn to Lila. “Who was that guy here earlier? The one who brought the books?”

  “Are you worried about him? She won’t need to break out her self-defense moves for that man.”

  I laugh. “I was just curious. And I’m glad to hear that—that she knows them and that she won’t have to use them.”

  “He’s William O’Connor. He runs A Likely Story in town. Cute little bookshop. Nice young man.” Then she smiles, the kind that says she can see right through me. “Jealous?”

  Where the hell did my poker face go with Ripley’s grandmother? I pride myself on being unreadable when I have to. Valiantly, I try to erase any emotions from my face. “Just curious.”

  She pats my arm. “Sure. Of course.”

  As we finish arranging the dough for the madeleines on trays, a voice carries from the other room, growing closer. “There’s no way I’m not eating dessert first tonight, Grandma, and you only have yourself to blame.”

  Ripley strides into the kitchen, nose up in the air, drawing a deep inhale. When her gaze lands on me in the bumblebee apron, sliding a tray into the oven, she sighs like she can’t believe it. “And you help grandmas too?”

  Not her type, my ass. I flash a smile right back at her. “You bet I do, sweetheart.”

  13

  APOLOGY ADJACENT

  RIPLEY

  I still can’t believe I said that.

  Not the helping grandmas comment. But the You’re not my type zinger I fired off earlier today.

  It’s been weighing on me all afternoon as I worked, and it weighed on me through dinner with Grandma. Banks helped with the meal, slicing green beans from the garden while I made a salad, and Grandma whipped up a summer squash and quinoa dish. But then he took off to run an errand, reasoning I was safe and sound during dinner in my house.

  As I’m cleaning up, scraping the remains of the salad into the compost bucket on the counter, I sigh.

  “All right, that’s your fifty-ninth sigh tonight,” Grandma says as she loads the dishwasher.

  “You’re counting my sighs?”

  “Actually, I lost track somewhere between the salad and the madeleines. My point is—out with it.”

  I wash my hands free of compost, then check the window. After I confirm Banks hasn’t yet returned, I meet Grandma’s kind eyes as she leans against the counter, patiently waiting.

  But I’m not sure where to start. Yes, the comment’s been weighing on me. I’m not a mean person. I was just frazzled but also still embarrassed. The way he stood me up hurt so much. Even though I understand his reasoning, it’s taken me a while to forget the embarrassment of opening the door and saying spank me to a stranger.

  Especially when I thought I was saying it to a man who understood me. A man who liked my humor, my mouth, the things I said. A man I could finally share some of those secret bedroom desires with.

  I’ve never said “spank me” to anyone. Not to Eric Patrick, certainly. I’m not sure why. Maybe because it never seemed like his thing? But that night, I wanted to say it to Banks. Because I wanted it. Because I felt his want. Because I felt both safe with him and turned on.

  The irony.

  I haven’t told a soul what happened that night, not even Bridget or Chloe. But if I don’t tell someone, it’s going to eat away at me the next few weeks during the shoot. I won’t be able to focus on work, or running this place, or making sure Haven has everything she needs.

  “Grandma,” I begin, readying myself to speak plainly to the woman who took over the task of being my parent when my own died one night on a snowy road when I was only fifteen. “I met him before.”

  She sets down her towel and leans against the counter. “The baking bodyguard?”

  “Yes,” I say, my voice wobbly. “And it was a total mess.”

  “Oh, sweetie. Why?”

  “We met at a bar,” I say, then I tell her the whole story. Well, I give her the PG version. “And then we were going up to my room, and he never showed.” She blinks, eyes big and full of surprise. “But the clerk brought me a letter Banks left, saying he’d explain, and I felt so stupid. All I could think was it was something I’d said. For close to a month, that’s what I thought. He’d lost interest in me. Or he’d been lying to me. Or he was playing me. Or he was looking for an excuse all along and he found one. But it all came down to the same thing—he didn’t like me after all,” I say, my I can handle the world attitude sliding off my shoulders like a coat shed at the end of the day. “Because how could he truly be into me if he’d leave like that?”

  “Oh hon, why would you think someone wouldn’t be into you?” she asks.

  I give her a look. “Have you seen my track record, Grandma?”

  “We all have track records.”

  “But mine’s kind of a pattern,” I say, folding and unfolding the stack of cloth napkins on the counter. My ex isn’t the first man to go poof in a cloud of smoke. This guy I was seeing five years ago turned out to have been cheating on me the entire time before I found out when an alarm went off on Chad’s phone—pick up flowers for Samantha. His name was Chad, though, so it served me right.

  “A pattern’s only a pattern till you break it. I had such a thing for bad boys in leather jackets when I was younger,” Grandma says, a little wistful, shaking her head in amusement.

  “What’s wrong with leather jackets?”

  “Nothing, but they were all bad men who didn’t know how to treat a woman till I met your grandfather,” she says with a fond smile for the man she loved madly for many years till he died of a heart attack when I was ten. “Didn’t mean something was wrong with me. I didn’t know what I wanted and what I deserved till I met Russ. So why do you even think it’s you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do know,” she says.

  I dip my face so she can’t see me. “Because I’m bossy and difficult,” I grumble.

  “You’re not difficult.”

  I latch on to what’s unsaid as I lift my face. “But I am bossy?”

  “You are the boss. You run a business.”

  I’m the girl who knows how to get things done. The person who doesn’t back down from a challenge. Banks said as much the night I met him. But maybe he didn’t like those things after all. “I’m not the sweet sister like Haven. I’m the know-it-all. I’m the too independent one. I’m the pushy one.”

  “And I love you both madly,” she says.

  I believe that with my whole heart, but I’m on a roll, dammit, and nothing is stopping me. “And then I think I was kind of mean this afternoon,” I admit.

  “Why? What did you do?”

  I wince. “I said to his face that he wasn’t my type.”

  She gives me the look—the look that says you didn’t do your best. “Apologize then,” she says.

  “I don’t want to.” I pout.

  “You do have to work with him over the next few weeks,” she points out.

  This whole situation gets messier by the minute. “I just want to move past that night.”

  “And why can’t you? Is it because…he’s exactly your type?”

  Way to see inside my soul, Grandma.

  I close my eyes, a whoosh rushing through my body. That man drives me wild and turns me inside out. “It’s hard to be around him.”

  “Because you want him to swoop you up and carry you up the stairs?”

  My eyes fly open. “Grandma!”

  “I’m seventy-five. I’m not dead.”

  “I’m shocked.”

  “Why do you think I’m trying to go to Paris to see Laurent?”

  “To make croissants,” I say immediately. Innocently.

  The saucy minx winks. “Sure, if that’s what you call it these days.”

  I cover my face. She comes in for a hug, and I breathe it in, letting her comfort me. Maybe I needed this. No, I’m sure I did. I’m glad I got the truth off my chest.

  After we finish cleaning up, Banks’s car crunches on the gravel driveway, and a few minutes later, he knocks on the door, then strides in.

  “How’s it going?” His dark eyes find me immediately, roaming up and down like he’s assessing me. They linger on me a little longer than is necessary, and my stomach doesn’t just flip. It cartwheels.

  Attraction is such a pesky thing. Especially when it’s written all over your face, and I’m sure mine is a billboard.

  “It’s all good. I’ll show you to the cottage,” I say, because at least I can be a good hostess, even if I’m having a hard time apologizing.

  The bed’s already made up in the cottage, so there’s not much to do. It’s a big one-room cottage—a studio essentially. But I bring him an extra blanket, another pillow, and some fresh towels.

  After I set the towels on the bathroom counter, it’s probably time to leave. Instead, I point to the shower door. “You need to let the water run for a few minutes to heat up,” I say.

  “Good to know.”

  “If you want a hot shower, that is,” I add. I really should go.

  He crosses his arms. His broad chest somehow looks broader. “I love a hot shower,” he says, his voice a little lower than usual.

  “Me too,” I say.

  His eyes darken as he adds, “I’ll probably take one in a few minutes.”

  I swallow roughly, grabbing on to the counter so I don’t melt into a puddle of hormones. I’m picturing this man stripping down to nothing, the water sliding over his strong body and down his pecs, his abs, his thighs.

  How far does his ink go? Does it extend up his arms, over his biceps, across his chest? I try to undress him with my eyes, but unfortunately, they don’t have X-ray powers yet.

  “So, yeah. Enjoy,” I say, and it’s late. The stars are winking in the sky. It’s been a long day. I need to give him some space now.

  “I will,” he says. “Enjoy it, that is.”

  Just say you’re sorry, then go. “I should go,” I say.

  “See you in the morning. Let me know what’s on the agenda tomorrow, Ripley,” he says as he walks me to the door. My gaze strays to the tablet on the nightstand. A sheet of paper pokes out from it, like it did the night I met him. Looks like he’s still doing origami. This time he’s made a cat.

  It’s my last chance to do the right thing. I reach for the knob, then try. I swear I try to say sorry about what I said earlier.

  But instead, the words that fly out sound a lot like, “You’re good with your hands.”

  I mean, it’s close to an apology.

  The farmhouse is quiet as I get out of the shower a little later and pull on sleep shorts and a cami. My grandmother lives in the garden-level suite—her own apartment in the house.

  I’m up on the top floor with my dog. When I slide into bed, Hudson sits dutifully on the floor, wags his tail, asking to join me. I pat the mattress. He jumps, springing onto the bed, ready to slumber.

  I settle into bed, grabbing my phone to text my besties. I see Bridget and Chloe pretty often, so I don’t want to run into them on the street with my hot, hulking, too-handsome-for-words bodyguard without letting them know I have one. They’d give me a hard time about not telling them first. Best to warn them. Besides, I’m still feeling all twisted up about…everything.

  Ripley: Things I didn’t have on my bingo card for today—getting a bodyguard.

  Chloe: WHAT?????

  Bridget: Details!

  I grumble as I type out a quick explanation about Haven, and Chris, and the film.

  Chloe: So basically, you’re living the dream.

  Ripley: What dream?

  Chloe: The regular-girl-gets-a-bodyguard dream.

  Ripley: I don’t think that’s a dream.

  Bridget: You’re wrong, Ripley. You’re just wrong.

  Ripley: So much for getting any sympathy from you two.

  Chloe: I’ll see if I can bring you a cup of sympathy tomorrow. Ideally, when he’s striding next to you, wearing aviator shades, a snug T-shirt, and a broody expression.

  Ripley: Are you seriously already having fantasies about my bodyguard? You haven’t even met him.