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“You own a farm.”

“Yes.”

“And somehow this has never come up.”

“You've never asked me whether I own agricultural property.”

“Strangely enough, no.”

Max's smile widened. “Then I think we've solved the mystery.”

I studied him for a moment, trying to reconcile the man sitting beside me with the image forming in my head. “Where is it?”

“Outside Montreal. Far enough from the city that it's quiet, close enough that getting there isn't a nightmare.”

“You bought a farm in Quebec?”

“I bought it after I signed my second big contract. I'd been looking for a while, but I knew what I wanted, and I wasn't interested in buying something just because I could afford it.”

Something about that caught my attention. “What did you want?”

The humor in his expression softened as he thought about it. “Land, mostly. Enough for the horses without seeing another house every time I looked out a window. A barn that didn't need rebuilding from the ground up, although I ended up rebuilding half of it anyway, and an old house with enough character that it didn't feel like somebody had constructed it six months earlier and expected me to be impressed.”

I smiled. “So you bought an old house that needed work.”

“I bought a perfectly respectable house that had several minor issues.”

“How many?”

Max considered that. “Enough that my contractor bought a new truck.”

I laughed before I could stop myself, which immediately sent pain stabbing through my side and earned me something rude in French from Max. I was still smiling when I realized the room had shifted slightly around him.

Not dramatically. The coffee table hadn't started spinning and Max hadn't suddenly acquired a twin, but there was a strange lightness in my head that hadn't been there a few minutes ago. I blinked a couple of times and looked down at my plate, wondering why it suddenly seemed much farther away.

“Okay, that's weird.”

Max's amusement disappeared immediately. “What's weird?”

“The room moved a little.” I frowned, trying to decide whether it was still doing it. “Or maybe I moved. One of us definitely did something.”

He was beside me almost before I'd finished speaking, his hand hovering near my arm until I nodded permission for him to touch me. The concern on his face would've been funny if he hadn't looked quite so much like Cinder examining me after the hit.

“Are you dizzy? Any headache, nausea, or problems with your vision?”

I considered each question with what felt like enormous seriousness before deciding there was something much more important he needed to know. “You sound exactly like Cinder.”

Max looked offended. “That is possibly the most insulting thing you've ever said to me.”

A laugh escaped before I could stop it, and once it started, I couldn't seem to get control of it again. There wasn't anything particularly funny about Max sounding like Cinder, which somehow made it considerably funnier, and the bewilderment on his face only made things worse.

By the time I finally managed to stop, Max was fighting his own smile.

“What exactly did Cinder give you?”

“The good stuff, apparently.”

“You're high.”