“Sit,” Talon orders, and like my girls always do at that command, they fall to their bottoms with their tails wagging. He takes their leashes from me then, like a pro, hooks them to their collars and stands. “Lead the way.” I grab the house keys then open the door, step outside, and then lock up behind us before I follow him down onto the sidewalk. “Eat.” Talon nudges my shoulder with his, so I take a bite of my sandwich. “My cousin Ashlyn lives a few blocks from here,” he tells me as I chew. “She and her husband run a dental practice in town.”

“Do you have a lot of family around here?” I ask after I swallow, and he laughs, so I look up at him. “What’s funny?”

“If you were from around here, you would know how many Maysons live in this area. My family has been here for generations, long before this town was even a town. They lived here when this place was just a place to get gas before you went into Nashville.”

“That’s how it was where I grew up in Montana. My family had all lived there forever. My great, great, great-grandparents and before them.”

“Was your sister the first to leave?” he asks as I finish my sandwich.

I wipe my mouth with the paper towel in my hand and nod. “Yeah. Well, she and Mike met when he was graduating college and she was graduating high school. His family is from here, and she didn’t want to be without him, so they got married at the courthouse in our town. She turned down her admission to MTSU to follow him here.” I wave my hand out to encompass the area around us. “Not even a month after they were married, they found out they were pregnant with twins. I’m sure there are still rumors swirling around the town I grew up in that it was a shotgun wedding—which it wasn’t, but you know how people chat.”

“I do,” he agrees, reaching for my hand and lacing our fingers together.

My skin tingles where our hands are connected, and my stomach twist and turns as his thumb smooths across my wrist. I’ve never felt this kind of attraction to anyone before, and it’s unnerving and invigorating, a combination that is confusing. “So what are you doing tonight?” I ask, needing to fill the silence and curious since he said he couldn’t stay for dinner. Unless he said that because he didn’t want to make me uncomfortable.

“My brother and I are building a log home just outside of town. It’s been difficult finding contractors who show up, so we’ve been doing a lot of the work ourselves.” He gives my hand a squeeze. “So tonight he and I are going to be laying the tile in the master bath.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“I don’t know about fun, but we need to get this house done. It’s our first build, and it’s important we finish by our deadline, which is starting to feel like it might not be possible.”

“Can you push your deadline back?” I ask.

“Our cousin, April, who is a realtor, got us a spread in some big real estate magazine for high-end homes, and she scheduled stagers and photographers to come out. I’m sure we could push the date back, but there is no guarantee we would be able to get that kind of exposure again.” I hear the stress in his tone.

“Well, I don’t know much about laying tile, but I can wield a paint brush or push a broom if you need some help.”

“Thanks, I might take you up on that offer at some point.” He slows when the girls do, allowing them time to sniff the grass on one of the lawns. “Are you working tomorrow?”

“Yeah… well, if I don’t get to the dealership and get fired,” I say as we start to walk again with the girls leading the way.

“Why would you get fired?” He frowns.

“I should have called into work to let them know I wouldn’t be there before I went back to bed this morning. I doubt my boss will be impressed with my sister calling in for me.” Thinking about it now, I probably should have called him when I got up, but finding Talon in my sister’s kitchen threw me off my game. I’ll send him a text when we get back to the house.

He laughs, and I frown. “Sorry, babe, but you’re not going to get fired. I watched your ass strut toward me and saw the men in the room watching you, hoping you’d be their salesperson. Your boss is not going to want to lose you.”

My nose scrunches. “That’s a lot sexist, and Ken doesn’t care about that. We get clients on rotation, so it doesn’t even matter if someone wants to work with you—unless you’ve worked with them in the past or they’ve had a problem with the person they are working with.”

“All right, so how many cars have you sold since you opened back up after the tornado?”

I think about it for a minute then shrug. “I think twelve.”

“Again, you’re not getting fired.”

“Whatever,” I mumble. He’s probably right, but not because I’ve gotten a ton of sales or whatever, but because Ken likes me. “I think we should probably turn back for the house,” I say when Retro falls to her rump on the sidewalk and Mercury sprawls out on someone’s lawn. “Unless you’re up to lugging two forty-pound dogs a few blocks.”

“Are they always like this?”

“Are you asking if they are always this lazy?”

“I was going to say ‘chill,’ but yeah.” He smiles as we head back toward the house.

“When they were puppies, they would rather sleep than do anything else. I got lucky with them. They were easy to train and always okay with just cuddling and hanging out rather than being into any and everything and all over the place.”

“You did get lucky. My parents have two dogs that are constantly running around yapping and hard to control when strangers come over.”

“What kind of dogs do they have?”

“A Yorkie and a Chihuahua.”

I laugh, knowing he’s not exaggerating. “My mom has a Yorkie too, and he acts the same way. His personality is huge, and he thinks he’s bigger than he is. The only good thing about him is that when he’s getting out of hand, he’s small enough that you can just pick him up and hold him.”

“You got a point there.” His thumb smooths across my wrist, and I shiver. When we get back to the house Cece’s minivan is in the driveway, so I stop near Talon’s truck. “So are we still on for Saturday?”

“Yeah, I’m working until two then watching the girls, since Cece is working that night. But their dad is supposed to pick them up around four.”

“All right, I’ll be here at five, if that still works for you?”

“It should. Can I ask where we’re going, so I know what to wear?”

“My place.” I raise a brow, and he grins. “I’ll be on my best behavior, promise. I just know I want to spend time with you without interruption and figured I’d barbeque. And since the weather’s nice, we can hang on the deck and take a walk down by the water behind my house. You can bring Retro and Mercury if you want.”

“That actually sounds really nice,” I admit. I mean, I like going out to a nice restaurant as much as the next girl, but I prefer jeans and sneakers to dresses and heels, and I doubt after working all day then taking care of the girls that I’ll be up to putting in the effort to go out someplace nice.