“Yes. She overheard my comment and threw a container of something at me.” He searched for the offending object and spotted it in the bushes about two feet away.

Darius burst out laughing. “Obviously, she hit her mark. Oh, man, you’re gonna make me hurt myself laughing at you.”

Gabriel didn’t see anything remotely funny. Okay, he had called her uptight and irritating, but he didn’t see how that translated to having an object hurled his way. The woman must have pitched on some baseball team because her speed and accuracy were dead-on. The pain in his head could attest to that.

“Brent and I are going to have to make a trip back out there to meet this woman,” Darius said, still chuckling.

“Whatever. I’ll call you later.” He ended the call and strode across the lawn to Serenity’s house. He rang the bell three times before she answered with fire in her dark-brown eyes.

“I don’t have anything to say to you, Gabriel. So go home.” Serenity closed the door.

This day had gone progressively downhill. First there had been a problem with a part of the program he’d been designing, and now he had a starring role in something akin to Neighbor Wars. To make matters worse, even anger didn’t detract from Serenity’s beauty or lessen his surprising attraction to her. This was not helping his stress levels one bit. Gabriel blew out a long breath and walked back to his yard. He bent and picked up the container. He could smell the chocolate without even opening it.

Inside, he washed his hands and removed the top. Brownies? He broke a piece off one of the thick cake-like sweets and popped it into his mouth. It tasted so good, his taste buds wanted to break-dance. Before he knew it, he’d eaten two of the four large brownies in the box and had to force himself not to devour the rest.

Gabriel needed to apologize or do whatever it took to get Serenity to talk to him. One, he didn’t like being at odds with her, and two, he needed more of those brownies—or at least the recipe. He checked the time and toyed with trying to get a few more minutes of work done but nixed the idea because he was supposed to be at Nana’s for dinner in an hour. “Might as well go over early.”

That turned out to be a good idea, and he ended up fixing a couple of light switches while Nana cooked. “All done, Nana. Is there anything else you want done while I’m here?”

“Not right now,” she said, not looking up from peeling yams. She finished the last one, then washed her hands.

He watched her add the ingredients and smiled, remembering the times during the holidays when the kitchen would be filled with laughter and conversation between the ladies in the family.