“Do you always cook breakfast for women you’ve just slept with?” she asked, faintly surprised at her own boldness. The man had melted every muscle in her body the night before, and she still felt deliciously languid.

“Only sometimes,” Eli answered, spearing slices of bacon and placing them onto a plate covered by a paper towel.

“What’s the deciding factor?” Brynne asked, teasing.

Using a spatula, Eli scooped scrambled eggs from a second pan into a bowl. Carried them to the table, already set for two, along with the platter of bacon.

While doing those things, he appeared to deliberate.

Finally, as he drew back a chair for Brynne, he said, “It usually means I didn’t get called out to a car wreck or a bar brawl in the middle of the night.”

Brynne pretended offense, though she took the chair he offered. “Well, that’s romantic,” she replied. “Does that happen a lot?”

“Getting called out in the middle of the night?” Eli asked, purposefully missing the point. “Or sleeping with a woman I might or might not cook breakfast for?”

“What do you think, Sheriff Garrett?”

Eli laughed and sank into his own chair—the one he’d taken the night before, when she’d offered him a back rub.

Brynne blushed at the memory, not out of embarrassment, but out of residual pleasure.

She waited.

So did Festus. He sat nearby, on full alert, his attention trained on the slice of bacon Eli raised to his mouth.

“Are you asking me if I sleep with a lot of women?”

Brynne said nothing. She sensed a trap.

“Because,” Eli went on, after chewing thoughtfully on a bite of bacon, “if you are, I must remind you that, were I to ask you if you ‘sleep with a lot of men,’ you’d probably hand me my head.”

“I don’t sleep with a lot of men,” Brynne said, rather primly, though it was actually none of Eli Garrett’s business how many partners she’d had.

“I’d already figured that out,” Eli said. He gestured toward her empty plate. “Eat something.”

Now Brynne’s pride was stung. “Strange,” she said. “I could have sworn you were having a good time.”

“Brynne,” Eli said, “I didn’t mean you seemed inexperienced. I meant, you seemed—hungry.”

“So did you,” Brynne pointed out.

He reached across the table, holding a strip of crisply fried bacon in front of Brynne’s lips. “Eat,” he repeated. “You’re cranky.”

“I’m not cranky.” She took the bacon, nibbled.

“Yes, you are,” Eli said reasonably. “I’d like to know why.”

Suddenly, Brynne began to cry.

And that mortified her.

“Because I’m afraid we made a mistake,” she admitted, drying her eyes on the soft sleeve of her robe.

Could she be any less sophisticated?

“If that was a mistake,” Eli replied, “I’d really like to make it again.”