He was silent for a moment and then walked to the door and locked it. Then he flipped the sign to Closed.

She frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Guaranteeing us five minutes’ privacy. If they want to take photos through the window, they can go right ahead.” He walked back to her. “Did you really think I’d care about any of that, Jo? Did you really think I give a damn about what a bunch of strangers, or Denise, or anyone that isn’t you or I, think about our relationship?”

“It’s intrusive, and personal and—”

“It feels personal, I get that, but it isn’t really personal, is it? They don’t know you, or me, any more than we know them. Intrusive? Yes, maybe that, but I don’t care. I don’t care if they want to spend their day hiding out and taking photographs. It seems like a weird way to make a living to me, but who am I to judge? I make shrimp salad and macadamia cookies and I spend my life surfing so I’m hardly changing the world. That doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is you and me. Us.” He took her face in his hands. “I don’t know where this thing between us is going, but I want to find out.”

She wanted to find out, too. But it wasn’t that simple, was it? “What if they don’t leave us alone?”

“What exactly are you afraid of? What is this really about?” His voice was gentle. “You think they’re going to publish something that will influence the way I feel? That isn’t going to happen. Firstly, because I don’t check my phone that often so I’m probably not going to see it, anyway, and secondly, because I like to make up my own mind about things. I know you, Joanna. I know who you are.”

She’d expected him to distance himself. She’d thought his response would be the same as other people who had come and gone from her life. But this was Nate.

“You really don’t care?”

“If you have to ask me that, then you definitely don’t know me as well as you should. We need to work on that.” He kissed her, long and slow, and then he lifted his head. “Dinner tonight?”

It would have been easy to be swept away by the romance of it all, by the dizzy excitement that came from being this close to him. Once, she would have been, but she was a different person now. Her childhood had been saturated by wild emotions—grief, insecurity, anxiety—as she’d struggled to shape a life in the absence of a loving adult. She’d brought all her insecurities to her relationship with Nate. But now she was free of them. All she was bringing was herself.