Page 7

Garrett Stone almost kissed me on his porch and I wanted him to so badly my teeth ached.

The crust is in the pie dish. I'm arranging apple slices in careful overlapping circles when I hear him.

Bare feet on hardwood. He rounds the corner into the kitchen wearing a white t-shirt and gray sweats and sleep-rumpled hair, and I nearly drop the pie. The shirt pulls across his chest and shoulders. His eyes are heavy with whatever he was doing in bed that wasn't sleeping.

"Couldn't sleep," he says. His voice is low, rough. His eyes find the pie, then me, then the flour on my cheek. "You bake when you can't sleep?"

"I bake when I feel things I don't know what to do with."

The honesty surprises both of us. He stops at the island. We stand on opposite sides of it with a half-built pie between us and the memory of his fingers on my jaw filling every square inch of this kitchen.

"Grace."

"Don't." I hold up a flour-covered hand. "If you're about to tell me that what almost happened on the porch was a mistake, I need you to know that I already know that. You're my employer. There's an age gap. I live in your house. I understand all the reasons."

He watches me for a long moment. The kitchen clock ticks. A moth beats against the window screen.

"I was going to ask if that pie has bourbon in it."

A laugh punches out of me, unexpected and real. "Yes. My grandmother's recipe. She said a pie without bourbon is just fruit in a dress."

The corner of his mouth twitches. "Smart woman."

"The smartest."

He comes around the island. Steps into my space. Close enough that I can feel heat radiating off his chest through that thin white t-shirt. Close enough that I have to tip my chin up to meet his eyes, and when I do, what I see there makes my lungs forget their function.

"I wasn't going to tell you it was a mistake."

My breath stalls.

"What were you going to tell me?"

His hand comes up. Cups my face, gentle, his thumb tracing the flour on my cheekbone. His palm is rough and warm and so big it covers half my face.

"That I haven't thought about anyone this way in five years. And I don't know what to do with that either."

My eyes sting. Not from sadness. From the raw, unguarded way this man just handed me the most honest thing I've heard in my entire life.

"Garrett."

"I'm too old for you."

"You're not."

"You work for me."

"I do."

"My daughters are asleep upstairs and I'm standing in my kitchen wanting to kiss my housekeeper, and I need someone to tell me that's a terrible idea."

I set down the apple I'm holding. Wipe my hands on the towel. Step closer until my chest is almost against his, and I can feel every breath he takes, every beat of his heart through the thin cotton between us.

"It's a terrible idea."

"Yeah?"

"The worst."