Reno replied, “She’s fourteen going on thirty-five.”
“What should I bring for dessert?” she asked.
“A pie. Madison will trade her left shoe for a pie.”
“What kind?”
“Fruit pies. Apple, peach, cherry,” Reno replied. “And you’d better bring more than one. There will be Steeles present. Hank can put away half a pie in one sitting, and Dillon’s not far behind.”
“Noted. What’s your favorite?” she asked.
“Pecan pie. The kind my grandma used to make. Best pecan pie I ever had.”
She nodded, a plan forming in her head. She would text Tessa tonight. Ask her to have Dillon contact his mom and see if she’d be willing to send Grace their grandma’s pecan pie recipe.
“What are you working on?” she asked him with a glance at his laptop.
“Your retainer contract. It’s ready for you to sign, if you’d like. You can do it electronically on my laptop.”
She sat down beside him and he passed her the computer. He put his left arm on the sofa cushion’s top behind her and used his right hand to point at where she was supposed to type her name.
She signed the document and lifted the laptop to hand it back to him. His hand closed around hers, and lightning shot all the way from her fingers to her toes. The image of that dark-haired baby boy flashed through her mind, as well.
He let go of her hand belatedly and took the laptop from her.
He went inside, and she stood on the porch for a minute looking at the lake, whose surface was inky black tonight. The moon shone across its surface in blue-white relief.
Was there another child in her future? In their future?
She couldn’t pretend any longer that nothing was happening between them if she was thinking about potential children with him. He was great with Lily. Natural dad material.
He was kind, thoughtful, steady, hard-working, and made her laugh. Which was to say, he was natural husband material, too.
The good news was he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave, nor in any hurry to advance their relationship any further than she was ready for it to go.
But what if she was in a hurry to advance it? Was he ready for that?
Only one way to find out.
She was going to bake the man his grandma’s pecan pie.
17
Reno woke after yet another night of nightmare free sleep, and today it actually took him a minute to remember that this was new and different.
The voice that had chased him relentlessly for three years, no matter how far and fast he’d run from it, was gone—and not crouched and waiting to pounce again when he didn’t expect it. It was gone the way a houseguest is after he finally packs up and leaves, and the space feels bigger and emptier and a little strange.
He had no idea what to do with the extra room in his brain. For now, he was just living in it.
He put on the brace before he stood, the way Hank had told him to and he’d ignored for the past two months. He padded down the hall barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt.
Grace was at the counter in her robe. She had her phone propped against the sugar canister and was reading something on it with the focused little frown she got when she was solving a problem.
“Morning,” he said from behind her.
She turned the phone face-down so fast he’d have missed it if he were anyone else.
“Morning,” she said too innocently. “Coffee’s poured.”
