“I hardly think the kitchen is the proper place for you to…” What? Exactly what?

“You’re right, of course.” She made her voice very prim, very proper. “The kitchen is for cooking. I’ve certainly never seen you and Mama kissing in the kitchen. I’d have been horrified.”

His lips wanted to twitch, but he overcame the urge. “Shut up.”

“I always knew, if I happened to walk into the room and you and Mama appeared to be kissing, you were really practicing lifesaving techniques. Can’t be too careful.”

“You’re going to need lifesaving techniques in a minute.”

“Until then, let me ask you this. Do you like Brody, as a man?”

“Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do handsprings of joy when I walk into my kitchen and see…what I saw.”

“Well, there’s a possibility of a motel room on Route 81 in my future.”

“Ah.” Spencer dropped his forehead to hers. “Kate.”

“You and Mom taught me I never had to hide anything from you. My feelings, my actions. I have feelings for Brody. I’m not completely sure what those feelings entail, but my actions are going to reflect them.”

“Your actions have always reflected your feelings, with a stiff dose of logic tossed in.”

“This won’t be any different.”

“What about his feelings?”

“He doesn’t know. We’ll figure it out.”

“Doesn’t know?” His eyes, so like hers, went to smoky slits. “Well, the boy better make up his mind in a hurry, or—”

“Oooh, Daddy.” Kate blinked rapidly, shivered. “Are you going to go beat him up for me? Can I watch?”

“Really going to need those lifesaving techniques,” Spencer muttered.

“I love you.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You raised a child, on your own, for a number of years. You know what it means when you do that, when you love the child, when you’re committed to the child.”

His Freddie. His first baby, now with babies of her own. “Yes, I do.”

“How could I not be attracted to that part of him, Daddy, that I love so much in you?”

“And how am I supposed to argue with that?” He cuddled her closer, sighed. “You can tell Brody I don’t plan to buy a gun. Yet.”

She went down for lunch the next day. Then made a habit of dropping by, taking pastries and coffee, subs or sandwiches, to Brody and his crew.

Some might have called it a bribe. In fact Brody called it exactly that, as the offerings tended to make his men more cooperative when Kate skewered them with questions, or asked for changes to the original plan.

It didn’t stop him from anticipating her visits, or gauging his time so he could spare twenty minutes or a half hour to walk with her around town, or share a cup of coffee with her in the little café up the street.

He knew his men were wiggling their eyebrows or giving each other elbow nudges whenever he walked off with Kate. But since he’d gone to high school with most of them, he took it in the spirit it was meant.