“If I’m cramping you, just say so,” he told her, taking a step back.

  The instant flash of horror on her face was gone so fast he was glad he’d been watching acutely enough to see it. Was a bit put off by the placid, easygoing expression that covered it up. “Oh no, Cole! I just feel guilty, taking up so much of your time.”

  After studying her a few seconds longer, he shrugged, deciding to take her at face value. “These people have known me most of my life. See me every day. And know how to find me. Not a one of them will be upset that you’re hogging my company.” His chuckle came naturally, easing his own tension.

  “More likely, they’re watching to see if there’s any spark between us,” he added, with a conspiratorial wink. Watchers were hoping was more like it, though he’d long since taken the town’s sympathetic view of his love life on the chin. “That would be the reason you might want some distance between us.”

  With a frown, she stared up at him. “Seriously?”

  She’d chosen her food lightly. A spoonful of broccoli salad. A roll. Some kale stuff.

  While he’d loaded his plate with barbecued pork, cooked potatoes. And two spoonfuls of broccoli salad. With one glass in one hand and an overladen plate in the other, he grabbed the first empty seat he came to. A cement bench by the pool. Not one of the mostly full tables. Others were eating at random spots other than the tables set up for the occasion. It always worked that way.

  For Cole, it was practicality. The tables brought in were not only too short to fit his legs comfortably underneath, but they were also, by virtue of being portable, light enough that if his knee bumped into them from underneath, plates of food could end up in people’s laps.

  A fact learned the hard way.

  And a circumstance that made it easier for him to choose to part ways with the woman whose company he was enjoying a little too much.

  Her “seriously” still burned his ears. She was astounded that anyone would think she’d go for a guy like him?

  Worried that some other more suitable potential new dates would think her taken?

  There was no give in the cement bench to warn him that she’d joined him. Lillie’s nose between their knees might have been a clue, if Cole hadn’t already caught a whiff of the lavender-and-lilac whatever she used.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t just let that last comment go,” she said, her plate untouched while he shoved a forkful of meat and potatoes in his mouth. “Have I offended you somehow?”

  For once, Cole wasn’t interested in swallowing the bite of delicious food in his mouth. He did so, of course, with complete decorum. As always.

  Impeccable manners were another of the things he really liked about himself. Plus, chewing and swallowing gave him a chance to replay their conversation.

  Contemplate what was going on.

  Lillie’s big-eyed gaze settled on him. He tossed her a treat from his shirt pocket.

  “Of course not. You’ve done nothing to offend me,” he said when he could. Lifted his wineglass off the bench beside him and took a sip, to hide his own unease. Was it a lie to say she hadn’t offended him when her “seriously” absolutely had done so? Technically, she’d said, not done it.

  Though one could argue that saying was an act, and so had been done.

  “Then what was that about? Me wanting to distance myself so that people didn’t get the wrong idea? You’re the one who invited me here today, Cole Bennet. Why do that if you were so worried about people drawing wrong conclusions about you?”

  The question was a good one.

  For which he had no stellar response. Other than the truth. “I’m not the least bit concerned about myself,” he told her. His gaze more on her plate than anywhere else. “But you seem...kind of hesitant, meeting everyone, which made me think maybe you’re shyer than I took you for and here I am throwing you into the middle of small-town life, with no idea if you’ve ever even lived in a small town. Or had any idea how the gossip mills work. Even the well-intentioned ones.”

  He felt her tense. Would like to have known what part of what he’d said had hit her hardest. Didn’t figure they’d known each other long enough for the discussion a question on the matter might have raised.

  But did venture out with, “Have you ever lived in a small town?”

  “No. I grew up in Southern California, San Diego area.”

  A small town by Los Angeles standards, but definitely not anything close to the mere three thousand or so people who made up the year-round population of Shelter Valley. And maybe his first real piece of information about her actual life, not just her art.

  “People in small towns tend to get up in each other’s business,” he said slowly, glancing around at the yard full of people he knew better than he knew his own parents. “Maybe more so here because we’re so far from any other city. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not a mean-spirited thing at all. Quite the opposite. We’re a close-knit group because we care about each other.”

  And that was kind of where his confessional came to a close.

  “I thought it only fair to warn you that if we spend the entire afternoon hanging out, speculation will begin.”

  She’d taken a bite of broccoli salad. Tapped her fork in the air as she chewed. “And that bothers you,” she said after swallowing.

  “Not at all.” He grinned. “All the attention kind of makes me feel famous...you know...as small towns go.” When she glanced over at him, with a wry smile, he added, “You might just think you’re eating lunch and making small talk with your new boss, but this town could have you married by nightfall...”

  She laughed, as he’d meant her to. He chuckled, as well, just because the moment felt good.

  “So, seriously, though, I don’t want to lead anyone into thinking anything that isn’t—”

  “No worries,” he cut her off. “If by anyone, you mean me, rest assured, I’m not reading anything more into our time together than a chief of personnel welcoming a new hire to town, and maybe—because you’re surprisingly easy to spend time with, and mostly because Lillie likes you so much and is going to be nagging me to see you again—we become friends.”

  “I was actually more or less issuing a warning to myself.” Her softly spoken words, followed by her setting her plate down, mostly untouched, on the bench, pulled the reins on his thoughts. Choking them right off.

  “Mind explaining that?” he asked, setting his own plate aside. Gaining a Lillie glance from his uneaten meal to him.

  “I’m in a whole new world here,” she said on a very deep breath. “Facing challenges I’ve never faced.”

  Yeah, maybe saddling her with a new line had been a bit much for her first day on the job. Her talent more than warranted it. The hours she’d already agreed to work, helping with the other Christmas lines, allowed for the time commitment. But Lindsay, for all her natural ability and professional website, clearly wasn’t used to success in her professional life.

  “And I’ve never met anyone like you,” she continued before he could figure out a way to make taking away the offer of her own line a positive thing. And then, for a second there, he just couldn’t think at all.

  I’ve never met anyone like you.

  Guys like him didn’t get lines like that.

  “You make me laugh,” she continued.

  Okay, there. That he got. “I do tend to have that effect on women.”

  “No, I mean, inside, Cole. Where it can’t be heard. Where it’s felt.”

  He’d already suspected she’d been badly hurt in some way. Was pretty much positive at that point.

  “I just... Who knows if my job here is going to work out, if I can do the work... I just don’t want to lead—

  “—everyone on, thinking that there’s something between us when there isn’t.

  “I don’t want to start something with you, no matter how right it feels, when I’m not in any position to make promises.”

  If it was possible for a guy who wasn’t ever going to fall for a beautiful woman again to do so in the space of two lines, he might have just done so.

  Luckily for him, such things didn’t happen.

  Not quite as much in his favor was the blank his mind was drawing when it came to any kind of response.

  “And now I’ve said too much,” she added, picking up her plate as she stood. “I’m an idiot, and sorry, and the whole work thing and how wrong it is for anyone in the workplace to...wow... I’m going to call a cab...”

  He took hold of her elbow with only enough force to keep her from walking away if she didn’t really want to do so.

  “There is no cab service in Shelter Valley,” he told her softly when she looked back at him.

  Standing there, a look of extreme discomfort on her face, Lindsay shrugged. But not hard enough to pull away from him.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, it might be best if you sat back down,” he told her with a bit of a grin. “Or the entire town will have us in our first lover’s spat by nightfall.”

  Not true. Shelter Valley’s citizens weren’t that intrusive.

  When she sat, words poured out of Cole of their own volition. “You haven’t said too much, Lindsay. What you said was probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. And you have my word, I absolutely will not read more than friendship into any time we mutually decide to spend together.”

  When Lillie laid her head on Lindsay’s knee, Cole might have smiled. If not for the seriousness of the conversation he wasn’t done having. “Because as out of character as it is for me, I find myself thinking it feels right to spend time with you, too.”

  Her glance was long and intrusive. He had no problem whatsoever withstanding it.

  “You’re my boss.”

  “Only at work,” he told her. “And not really, because you’re contracted help. You’re your boss. I’m, or rather Elite Paper, is your client. That aside, though, in a town the size of this one, if, outside the workplace, people couldn’t associate on a personal level with people with whom they worked, then...we’d all have to walk around ignoring one another.”

  Her grin lit up her face. And his spirits.

  “Then I’m glad we’re in a small town,” she told him, and dug into her salads.

  Chapter Six

  Lindsay ate a lot of salads that next week. She flew through her days on a freedom high as she designed, without any of her usual plethora of back-to-back meetings and business meals. Her normally ringing-off-the-hook phone was mostly silent.

  At home, Lindsay Warren-Smythe thrived on the busyness of a schedule that kept her mentally challenged from the time she got up in the morning until she went to bed at night. Gourmet food was served up to six times a day, depending on how many meal functions she had to attend.

  In Shelter Valley, she had to seek out sustenance. Turned out, Ms. Bohemian was most fond of salads. Every variety. And she liked to be outdoors, taking long walks by the mountain and through town, too. The latter could just be a result of the very small living space within which she had to contain herself.

  She didn’t see her father. But she did what she was really there to do—get to know him—through others. Apparently a person couldn’t work at Elite Paper without hearing songs of praise for Brent Wilson. It seemed to Lindsay that everyone she met had a founding-father story.

  All good. The man worked in the trenches. He offered fabulous employee benefits, donated to the community—and to some personally when they were in need. He had a great sense of humor, had even played a practical joke or two along the way. And if someone was in need, he always made time to listen.

  Too good to be true, in Lindsay’s opinion. No one was that perfect, as she told Savannah in their almost nightly phone calls.

  Yet, she listened to every story. Every comment. Played them back in her mind as she lay in bed at night. Telling herself her avid attention to any Wilson detail was borne out of justifying her presence in Shelter Valley.

  And the salads, they were just for her.

  Though Cole had taken up her pleasure quest in that area, finding bizarre, new, different or specialty salads in the Phoenix valley for her to try.

  The day of the barbecue at the Wilson home, she’d opted to stay outside with Lillie and visit with townspeople while Cole went in to help the Wilsons put food away before the cleaning crew came in.

  And on the way home, when he’d invited her to join him and Brent for lunch the following day, she’d politely declined. Automatically, before she’d given the matter a second’s thought. With Lillie nosing her neck, she’d calmly come out with a set of guidelines by which she and Cole could spend time together as friends. No forethought on that, either. The rules had just been there.

  They wouldn’t hang out in Shelter Valley where townspeople would see them and make more of their relationship than was there. And they wouldn’t socialize with work people, or talk about work, when they were together after hours, so there was no sense of impropriety.

  No talk of work meant no conversation involving Brent Wilson, which meant that if it ever came out that she was Brent’s daughter, Cole would know that she hadn’t been using him. If he was just chief of personnel for Elite Paper, it wouldn’t have mattered, but as a friend...both versions of Lindsay had to have his back.

  As to whether or not she was going to tell Brent Wilson he was her father, she was leaning more toward a no. But hadn’t fully reached the conclusion as of that following Saturday as she and Cole, with Lillie in the backseat, returned from an afternoon of chaperoning the dog for visits at one of the nation’s top fifty children’s hospitals.

  “You’re really good with those kids,” Lindsay told Cole as he headed out of the city for the hour drive back to Shelter Valley. His shrug, so massive in his short-sleeved shirt, had her looking at him differently.

  Not as a friend.

  Or even someone for whom she had the secret and increasingly more potent hots.

  But as a thirty-one-year-old man who would make a great father and was of an age to be getting on that. The way he’d knelt—his knees left bare by the shorts he wore, unprotected on the hard floor—with a five-year-old child who’d wanted to pet Lillie, but had been afraid. A minute or two with Cole there, and the little girl was giggling as Lillie’s tongue made a quick swipe at the girl’s chin.

  “I’m surprised you aren’t already married with a houseful of them,” she said then, more curious than circumspect. More Warren than Warren-Smythe.

  Another shrug was her only response.

  Like he was hiding something. Would rather not talk about the entire marriage-and-kids subject. Because he’d been hurt? Had a fiancée who’d been killed, maybe? No other reason she could think of that a woman wouldn’t want to marry the man.

  Or...

  Horrified, she stared at him...remembering the previous weekend when she’d alluded to the fact that she was attracted to him. “Are you gay?” she asked, kindly. Feeling stupid, inept, and wanting only to give him full support. Didn’t mean, in any way, that he couldn’t have kids, but maybe he struggled to come out in his small town.

  “No.”

  The tone of his response, just that one word, left absolutely no doubt that the man was straight.

  His expression, the odd disappointment in the glance he gave her, surprised her.

  She’d slammed shut the door she’d kind of opened—telling him that she had feelings for him, in terms of starting something between them—the second after she’d opened it. By insisting on friendship only.

  “I’m just...you’re the whole package, Cole. Aware, fair, sensitive to the feelings of others, strong, kind, a compassionate leader, fun and funny and way too hot for my good.” The words poured out of Ms. Bohemian in a frantic attempt to undo any damage she’d done to her new friend. “I find it hard to believe that you aren’t taken,” she finished lamely, feeling Lillie’s eyes on her, whether they actually were or not. The girl was in the middle seat behind her. Last time Lindsay had glanced back, Lillie had been watching out the front windshield. She didn’t check to see if that was still the case.

  Didn’t want to feel the full throttle of the collie’s disapproval.

  Because one thing was for certain, as much as Lillie tended to everyone around her, most particularly gravitating to those experiencing emotional upheaval, Cole was always the dog’s first and foremost person. She only tended to others when she knew he was set.

  Cole’s head shake drew her thoughts from the girl in the backseat. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be one to pander,” he said with a small chuckle.

  “Pander?” She wasn’t one to get angry easily, or to give in to the emotion when it hit, but there it was, spreading under her skin. Making her face hot.

  With a brief glance in her direction, showing her his creased brows and self-deprecating look, Cole set the cruise control and settled back in his seat as he said, “Way too hot for your good? You don’t think that’s just a tad bit overkill? If a tad meant total?” He shook his head with another disbelieving chuckle.

  “Well, I’m not feeling all that hot for you right now,” she said, with a huff as she smoothed her long, lightly flowing red paisley skirt down her ankles as though the world depended on getting it just right. Telling herself to let the conversation die. But couldn’t do it. “I don’t lie, Cole.” She skated thin ice, though, apparently. Since the advent of her father into her life. And had to go on a cruise before she returned home, even if just a short day trip to Catalina Island because she’d told everyone in her real life that that’s what she was doing during her leave.

  “You have the hots for me.” He shook his head again. Staring straight ahead.

  “Yes.” She might as well have added the “so there” that her tone of voice implied. And then, filled with defensiveness, added, “Have you looked at you?”