So maybe he did think about her like that—a little bit. Once in a while.

Her problem was she already had two strikes against her name. The first was the best-friend’s-sister thing. It was just her luck to have developed a crush on a man who couldn’t untangle the woman from the sister. And then there was the whole age-difference thing, which seemed so incredibly stupid to Della. In the grand scheme of age differences, eleven years wasn’t much.

And did that kind of thing really matter when both parties were mature adults?

So maybe it wasn’t about that at all. Maybe it was code for something else? Or an excuse.

Maybe Tucker was hiding behind the age difference because getting intimate with a woman who’d been through what she’d been through came with a bunch of stuff that was messy and complicated.

Della came with baggage, and maybe Tucker didn’t want to have to work that hard? She certainly couldn’t blame him if that was the case.

And why the hell was she even contemplating this? She’d told Tucker she wasn’t after anything permanent, that she didn’t want a relationship. That she just wanted to date and have fun. And that wasn’t something she could do with Tucker. Not without making it weird and awkward between them after and therefore making it weird and awkward for him and Arlo.

If they lived in separate towns, didn’t share friends, and didn’t see each other much, it might be okay, but none of those things was so, which meant any messing around could impact their friendship. Could impact Tucker and Arlo’s friendship.

Maybe somebody worldly and sophisticated could pull it off, but she doubted she could.

She just hoped she hadn’t blown it already.

Della was mulling that over as she knocked on Rosemary’s door. Mrs. Devlin had been worried that Rosemary hadn’t showed for their Pilates class, and Della had volunteered to go and remind Rosemary the class was about to start. There was no answer to her knock, and Della frowned at the sock on the handle, pulling it off as she turned the knob and called, “Rosemary?”

The door swung open, and Della was confused for a moment to find Rosemary still in bed. Lying in bed. At almost two in the afternoon. Both hands clamping tight at where the covers bunched high on her chest. Was she ill? She hadn’t been in the dining room this morning, and that wasn’t usual.

“Oh…Della?” Rosemary’s voice was somewhere between alarmed and guilty.