“Cold drinks. Air-conditioning. A cold shower in the guest room if worst comes to worst.” She beckoned her friends inside and was just closing her front door when she realized that another guest was standing on her landing already.

“John!”

“Hello.” His frown was in full force, his hair immaculately parted on one side and smoothed back. He wore the party version of his typical outfit, meaning no tie and his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows. Mary glanced down at his wingtips and suddenly felt a rising, unexplainable glee that John was going to take those ridiculous shoes off. It would be her first time seeing him without them.

“I brought you this.” He shoved a paper bag into her hand. “You said not to bring food or drinks, but Estrella would keel over if she ever found out I came empty-handed.”

Mary looked into the bag and felt that glee rise a few more inches. He’d brought her crappy beer and expensive lemonade, presumably to mix together. “It’s perfect! Thank you so much. Here, come in, come in.”

As he was stepping through her front door, though, Mary stepped in front of him and reached forward, pressing two fingers to his eyebrows the way she’d done once before, changing his expression from judgmental to neutral. “I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself while you look around my fancy Cobble Hill house for the first time.”

Color rose to his cheeks as he looked down at her. For the first time, she caught a familiarly masculine scent from John. Aftershave. The old-school kind. She thought of barbershops and shaving strops. Her eyes dropped from his pink cheeks to his freshly shaved jaw, smooth but shadowed blue by his dark hair. “I’m not going to judge you, Mary.”

They were standing a bit closer than she’d previously realized and Mary’s fingertips sort of buzzed where she’d just touched his brow. “Richie’s not here yet,” she told him, just to say anything at all.

John smirked. “I don’t expect him for at least another hour. He’s only on time for court.”

His eyes flicked over Mary’s shoulder and his frown came back. It was then that Mary saw something else in those ever-present lines in John’s face. It wasn’t just his job and his past that he wore there. It was nerves as well.

He was nervous to meet new people at a party.

Cute.

John carefully took off his shoes and set them aside. Mary surreptitiously glanced down at his feet and almost rolled her eyes when she saw his crisp, predictable, perfectly black dress socks. She should have known.