“It’s really simple. A group of people pay an agreed-upon fee before the growing season, and in return, each week they get a box of whatever’s fresh from the field. The farmer gets the money in advance, which is great when figuring out a budget ahead of time, and the consumer gets a price break on the weekly box, paying less than he would at the farm stand, and much less than at a conventional grocery store.”

The way his eyes had lit up told me he enjoyed educating people on what he did for a living. It also was fascinating information, and anytime someone wanted to talk food with me, I was willing. But right now, I was having a hard time concentrating because of how close he was. How good-looking he was. And thinking that if he was so passionate when he was talking about his farm . . .

“Slow food, right?” I said, aware that my voice was taking on a dreamy quality. Slightly less aware that I was rubbing a paint roller.

“Mmm-hmm. Slow.” His gaze narrowed, and then he narrowed the space between us, taking just one step but doing it slowly. He was close enough that if my shirt somehow popped open and my bra flew off, he could likely make me come just with his mouth on my breasts.

But then I remembered I was here to paint. And paint I did.

In that small room, Leo and I painted, and we listened to everyone having a grand old time chatting in the next room. But in that tiny office? Pheromones were bouncing off the walls.

We only said things like “Can you straighten out that drop cloth?” and “Do you have one of those stirrer sticks?” and “Does this look runny to you?”—but whenever our eyes met across the empty room . . . tingly tingles. The tension was so thick that when Leo broke the silence, I jumped a little.

“So your mom said you’re a private chef in California, right? She told me you cook fancy food for fancy people,” he replied, dabbing paint along the windowsill. “She seemed pretty proud of you.”

“Really? She used the word proud?”

“No, but she seemed proud.”

“Huh,” I said.

“You’re just home for the summer, right? Then back to the fancy?” he asked.

I nodded slowly. Ooh, perfect opening to tell him yeah, I’m here for the summer, I’ll be heading back out to California in the fall so, you know, if you want to be my company. . . . Guys usually loved this conversation. No strings, just pure fun. I opened my mouth to say this, but he continued before I had a chance.

“LA is great and all, but I’ll take Bailey Falls any day of the week.” He saw me frown. “You don’t agree?”

“I’m not big on small towns,” I replied. “Everyone knows each other’s business. Everyone knows each other’s history.”

“They watch out for each other,” he insisted.

“They gossip about each other,” I corrected.

“Some people would call that charming.”

“Some people would call that infuriating.” I laughed, shaking my head. “Listen, I totally understand the appeal of a small town; it’s just not for me.”

“Bright lights, big city?” he asked, suddenly right next to me. His paint roller had been getting increasingly closer to my paintbrush.

“Something like that,” I replied, feeling my heart thud in my chest. “Sometimes it’s nice to be just a face in a crowd.”

“Not possible,” he murmured, and I looked up into his eyes. Thud. “Just a face? Not possible.” Thud thud.

My pulse was racing, and it would be so easy to lift up onto my tippytoes and surprise him with a kiss. Instead, I fumbled, I blinked. This guy was exactly the kind of guy I normally went for—easygoing, good-looking, funny. But he made me . . . nervous. In a way that I hadn’t been in a long time. If I was going to turn this into anything but a painting party, I needed to get back the upper hand.

But before that happened, I needed to clear something up first. “I’m sorry again about that crack I made about your family, at the market the other day,” I said sheepishly. “I didn’t really mean it; I don’t even know your family. I only know what the rest of the town knows.” He blinked, his face taking on an edge I hadn’t seen before.

I hurriedly pressed on, my racing pulse making my words come out a little jumbled. “Obviously you’ve got tons of cash and old New York family and all that, and you’ve got all that land. And now you’re working the land, and you seem as passionate about growing food as I am about cooking it, and you’re all hot farmer guy, and I’m sure that’s a helluva story—and holy shit, I need to shut my mouth right now.”

“Roxie?”

“Uh-huh?” I responded, mortified.

“You seem very strange. But definitely . . . ” There was a grin in his voice.

“Definitely . . . what?” I looked up at him.

I have never in my life wanted to ravish someone. Kiss? Sure. See naked? Sure. But when my eyes met his, I felt a powerful urge to ravish. His mouth, his neck, his chest, his stomach, and everything beneath those frayed blue jeans. And the funny thing is, I felt like he was thinking the same thing.

And if Logan hadn’t come up the stairs at that moment to announce a snack break, it might’ve happened.

“Definitely,” he repeated with a grin.

I started tidying up my work space as Logan admired the room. “You guys are speedy. You want to work on that giant sunroom on the main floor next?”

“Actually, I’ve got to take a pass. Got a long day tomorrow,” Leo said, wiping a little bit of paint onto his shirt.

In the process, it rode up a bit. In the process, I got to see the stomach. In the process I tingled, and may have gasped the tiniest bit.

Logan noticed. Leo luckily did not. I turned quickly toward the wall to cover my blush, squeezing my paintbrush within an inch of its life. As Leo and Logan chatted behind me, I told myself it was just a stomach. A tan stomach, sure. Tan and flat and dusted with a little bit of happy trail, but it was just a stomach.

As I tried to convince myself of this, I realized that the room had grown quiet. And my skin, which was tingling again, told me Leo was standing right behind me. I turned.

“Nice working with you, Roxie.”

“You too, Leo,” I said. “Good painting.”

Good painting? Good grief.

“Good painting to you,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll see you around, I’m sure.”

“It’s a small town,” I replied. “Maybe you’ll show up at my back door with your nuts again.”

Leo shook his head as he turned to go, and I could hear him chuckling as he went down the stairs. I still didn’t have the heart to tell him about the paint all over the back of his shirt.

I grinned at Logan, slapped him on the shoulder, and said “I’m starving. Let’s go have some snacks!”

Chapter 7

That week sped by, and before I knew it, I was helping my mother pack for her reality show. And that’s a sentence rarely uttered. The producers had given her a list of things she couldn’t bring, including a phone or laptop. She’d need to be totally cut off from what was going on at home, and while that would have driven me batty, she was excited to unplug. She went through her final to-do lists with me, made sure I had everything I needed for the diner for the summer, and then was ready to go.

The trait that annoyed me the most about my mother was also one that I admired: her ability to go with the flow. Growing up, it was frustrating as hell to have my only parent be so easygoing. I wished for the kind of mom who made sure I did my homework, made sure things like permission slips were signed and bag lunches packed for field trips. But her flight-of-fancy brain also caused her to wake me up out of a dead sleep at night to make sure I didn’t miss a meteor shower, and sing Christmas carols in July at the top of her lungs as we barreled up the highway because she just had to go to an antique fair in Albany she’d just read about.