She finished deep cleaning by midafternoon, but her low-level anxiety (okay, honestly not that low) about confronting Nadim hadn’t eased. Breathing deeply to slow her rising heart rate, she grabbed her iPad and logged into a few job search boards while her email loaded. And … crap. An email from Abigail, the employment counselor. She didn’t get the job she had interviewed for last week. They went with another applicant.

Because of course they did.

Reena threw her iPad on the couch. She had let her hopes sail a little too high there. She took a deep, long breath, but it didn’t help. She needed to cook something.

Since she didn’t feel like making a yeast bread, she decided on pie. Mixing the pastry and cutting the fruit would distract her from that stupid job she didn’t realize she had wanted so much. Eating the pie later, with a scoop of the crème brûlée ice cream in the freezer, would be just the thing to soothe the crushing rejection. And finally, feeding Nadim the pie would soften the impact of the personal questions she planned to spring on him.

She went with her favorite: sour cream apple pie. Rich, buttery pastry filled with tart apples nestled in a sour cream custard and topped with a brown sugar crumble. No one could hold secrets when faced with the scent of that pie, let alone the taste.

Nadim arrived on time, armed with a plastic bag and a huge paper bag of takeout in one hand, and a six-pack in the other. He had grabbed Thai beer to go with the Thai food. Nice choice. His jeans were worn and faded, and his T-shirt carried the emblem of her favorite brand of sriracha hot sauce.

“God, it smells good in here.” He grinned as he dropped his things on the breakfast bar. “Sometimes I still have to pinch myself that I get to live near these smells.”

Reena started opening the paper bag of take-out containers. “Thanks. And thanks for grabbing dinner.”

“No problem at all. I’m looking forward to trying that chicken mint salad … ” He wandered over to the counter, near the stove. “I found the smell.” He leaned forward, nose inches from the cooling pie. When he stood straight his face looked luminescent with pleasure.

“Did you make the pie for me?” he asked.

“Yeah, um, for us. Dessert.”

He groaned. “You’re killing me, Ree.”

She bit her lip. Few people called her Ree, and only one person did it consistently, Amira. Hearing the nickname said from his lips with that accent made her shiver up her spine. “Where’d you get that shirt?”

He grinned as he pulled two plates down from her kitchen cabinet. “From a thrift store, if you’d believe it. There was one near a meeting I had with a restaurant developer, and I had time to kill. Here.” He went to the breakfast bar and took something out of the plastic bag and handed it to her. “I found this and had to get it for you.”