“Come on,” Paxton said. “Tell me. Please?”

He finally shrugged and said, “It was Willa Jackson’s couch.”

Paxton looked surprised. “I had no idea you were friends with Willa.”

“I’m not,” he said, finishing the roll in another two bites. “When I was out yesterday, I saw her drop something, but I couldn’t catch up with her, so I thought I’d just drop it by her house. I had no idea how tired I really was. I think I embarrassed her.”

That made Paxton laugh. She didn’t do that often enough.

“So tell me about Willa,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the concrete balustrade.

Paxton adjusted that ever-present tote bag on her shoulder. “What do you want to know?”

“She seems to have a very quiet life.”

“Yes.” Paxton tilted her head. “Why are you surprised? Her family has always been quiet.”

“But Willa was the Walls of Water High School Joker,” he said.

“Yes?”

Paxton didn’t get it. Neither did he, exactly. “I just thought she’d be more … outgoing.”

“She grew up, Colin. We all did.”

He scratched his hand against the side of his face. “Why doesn’t she want to go to the gala? Her grandmother helped found the Women’s Society Club.”

“I don’t know. When I sent her the invitation, I wrote her a personal note about wanting to include her grandmother. But she blew me off.”

“She didn’t want to have anything to do with the restoration?”

Paxton looked confused by the question. “I didn’t ask her.”

“You didn’t ask if she had old photos or old papers? If she wanted to see what was going on inside as it was being restored? Anything?”

“There were enough photos on record to go by. Colin, honestly, this restoration was about contractors and designers and scouring art auctions and estate sales for period pieces. It didn’t have anything to do with Willa. What could she have contributed?”

He shrugged as he looked out over the patio, to the pool, the pool house, and the mountain landscape beyond. The rolling mountains looked like kids playing under a big green blanket. He had to admit, there was nowhere in the world like this place. Part of his heart was still here, somewhere. He just wished he knew where so he could take it back. “I guess it just would have been a nice thing to do.”

“I did the best I could,” she snapped. “And where were you when all this was happening? You coordinated everything with the landscaping by phone and email. You wouldn’t even do that in person.”

“I didn’t know you wanted me here for the duration.” He paused, frowning at her reaction. “No one asked you to take on this project alone, Pax.” He’d been surprised by Paxton’s call last year, asking him to do the landscaping, but he couldn’t say no. She’d wanted a large tree on the property, and after a lot of networking, Colin had found one being threatened by development nearby. But transplanting a tree that heavy and old had to be carefully choreographed. Everything had to be planned, down to the smallest detail. All year he’d been in touch weekly with the arborists they’d hired. And he’d taken off a month to oversee everything up until the grand opening of the Madam, which he’d considered a great sacrifice, because he hadn’t been home for that long in over a decade.

Paxton threw her hands in the air. “The Blue Ridge Madam is the first thing anyone sees as they drive into town. It was an eyesore. It was either tear it down or restore it. That house is part of our town history. I did a good thing, even if I didn’t ask Willa Jackson to help.”

“Calm down, Pax. What’s wrong?”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Nothing’s wrong. I just can’t ever seem to do enough.”

“Enough for who? Mom and Dad? You have to get over that. You’re never going to be happy until you live your own life.”

“Family is important, Colin. But that’s not something I’d expect you to understand.” She turned to leave. “Cover for me at dinner tonight, will you? Tell Mama and Daddy that I had to go finish up some work at the outreach center.”

“Why?”

She spun back around and said, “Can’t you do that for me? It’s not as if you’ve been around for the past ten years to do it.”

She was right. “Is that where you’re really going?” he asked as she stepped back into the kitchen.

“No.”

Paxton drove to Sebastian’s house and pulled in front. His car wasn’t there. That’s when she remembered that he kept late hours on Thursdays at his office, which was the reason he’d had the time to go with her to visit her grandmother that morning. Now she had to see him twice in order to get through the day? She wondered how she survived before he came to town. Basically, she’d kept her stress to herself, sublimating it with red licorice or trying to work it out through her endless series of private lists.

She buzzed down the windows in her car and cut the engine. She felt better just sitting here, looking at Shade Tree Cottage. Reaching over to her tote bag, she brought out a small notebook, one of dozens she carried around. Sometimes she used whatever she had on hand, a paper napkin or the back of an envelope. It all ended up in her bag. Most of her lists were about control, about breaking down her life into manageable pieces. But some of the lists were simply wishes. There was nothing more satisfying than putting what you wanted most onto paper. It gave substance to something that was before as thin as air. It made it one step closer to being real.

She flipped to a clean sheet of paper and started a list about Sebastian. She had a lot of lists about him. Sebastian’s Favorite Things. If Sebastian and I Went on Vacation Together, Where Would We Go?

Today she started:

REASONS WHY SEBASTIAN MAKES ME FEEL BETTER

He doesn’t care that I’m as tall as he is.

He doesn’t care that I weigh more.

He holds my hand through things and doesn’t think less of me for it.

He smells fantastic.

He’s all clean lines and perfect manners.

“Do you do this often when I’m not here? Sit outside my house and work on your lists?”

Paxton gave a start and turned to see Sebastian, his hands on top of her car as he leaned down to look in her window. The sun on his skin highlighted how clear and poreless it was, and turned his blue eyes crystalline. She hadn’t heard him approach, but she could see now that his car was parked behind hers in the driveway.

She smiled and quickly tucked her notebook away. “No, I was just waiting for you.”

He opened the car door for her and helped her out. “It’s too hot to be sitting in your car. Your hair is wet.” He put his cool hand to the base of her bare neck, which made her want to shiver. It was a base reaction from a place deep within her, a well full of sharp longings and pipe dreams. She couldn’t fill that well, couldn’t stopper it, as hard as she tried. But for the sake of their friendship, she did everything she could not to show it.

She smiled. “You never sweat. Are you actually human?”

“I enjoy air-conditioning too much to ever be long without it. Come in.” They walked to his door, where he unlocked it and gestured for her to enter first. He put his keys on the entryway table. She caught a glimpse of herself in the gold starburst mirror and immediately set her tote bag down and used both hands to slick back her hair, tucking all the loose strands into the knot she’d tied that morning.

“Have you had dinner yet?” he asked.

She dropped her hands. “No.”

“Join me, then. I’ll grill salmon. I’m glad I came home first.”

“First?”

“Sometimes I go to that diner on the highway.”

“The Happy Daze Diner?” she asked, disbelieving. The place seemed so unlike him. It had been a family diner at one time, now it was a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, still doing business because elderly people who remembered it in its heyday continued to frequent the place.