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With that gentle thought, Janie managed a smile for him. “Do you want a warm slice, Hunt?”
His eyes snapped up, his light-brown gaze meeting hers. Startled. By the use of his name or her noncombative tone?
“No,” he said after a heartbeat. “I’m good. Thanks.”
Janie nodded. “How about you, Gemma? Could you eat another slice?”
Gemma patted her stomach. “I think I’d better not. That was amazing, Miss Janie. And also, Nathan is wrong—that pizza is every bit as good as Chicago’s. He wouldn’t eat it otherwise.”
Janie laughed. “Thanks.”
Gemma’s smile could warm a December day. The girl, Janie had surmised, was as easy to like as her brother was easy to become annoyed with. Both, she guessed, were working really hard at stuffing back emotions they didn’t want to surface—each using different means.
Just like a pair of siblings she knew. Her attention drifted back to Hunter just as Gemma turned toward him.
“Lake Shore Splendor has a great vibe. Good choice.” Gemma dipped her head with all the confidence of an experienced marketer. “But I think you should have a groundbreaking party.”
Hunter’s brow moved with a thoughtful lift, and then he nodded. “That does have some appeal, Miss Gemma. What would you suggest?”
“Invite everyone you know, obviously. And—what do you have to do up there? Can you swim in the lake?”
Hunter chuckled. “We’ve had several hard frosts, and yesterday I saw thin ice at the shoreline. So I wouldn’t recommend that.”
“Right.” Gemma became entirely pragmatic as she tapped her chin with a pair of perfectly pink-tipped fingers. “Swimming is out. But the water is still open . . . Do you have boats?”
“One old canoe over at Hazel’s cabin.”
“Well, that’s a start. How about fireworks? Can you do that?”
Hunter snapped. “That’s it!”
“Perfect. Then you’ll have to have an evening party. Fireworks and food. What can you make?”
Janie snorted, drawing both of their eyes. At Gemma’s slight mortification, she laughed outright. “Hunter can burn meat and slap together peanut butter and jelly. That’s about it.”
Hunter tried to scowl, but the moment his eyes connected with Janie’s, she saw him break. Ah, there he was. The man whose eyes could tell her his secrets. And a smile that could stop the world.
He laughed. “Janie isn’t wrong.”
“You could do the food then.” Pointing at Janie, Gemma offered the solution as though it were as easy as one plus one.
Sometimes one plus one made two broken hearts.
Janie blinked. Hunter swallowed and turned his face toward the table. His shoulders bulged under his flannel shirt, tension rippling hard in his silence. Then he lifted his chin, repositioned his smile into the neutralI don’t carezone, and looked at Gemma. “Janie is busy here.”
Kindness . . . friends.
“I could do it,” Janie said.
The scraping of forks against plates coming from the other side of the table stopped. Three sets of adult eyes turned up to her. Two hopeful. One stunned.
“You—” Hunter’s mask of indifference slipped. He wet his lips and rubbed the trimmed beard along his jaw. “You would do that?”
Ah . . . this. This could pave the way for something fresh between them. Not romance—that wasn’t possible for them.
But friendship.
Janie touched the muscled arm beneath that soft shirt. “Sure. I’d be glad to.”
