The beard was new and glorious. The intensity was the same and annoying. The deep blue aura pulsed around him. Steady. Dependable. Strong.

Twelve years ago, he’d torn her heart in two. Seven years after that, he’d shattered it into pieces. She’d yet to forgive either of them for it. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t still appreciate him being the poster child for testosterone.

She bent to pick up her bags, but he beat her to it, adding her groceries to the ones he already carried. He smelled like leather and sawdust and horses.

“You don’t have to do that. I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own groceries.”

“What happened to your arm?” He asked the question briskly like it annoyed him to want an answer.

Of course he’d noticed. Brick Callan didn’t miss a goddamn thing, except for the most obvious one in the world.

“It’s nothing,” she said, reaching for the bags. He lifted them over her head in what she determined to be an unnecessary—and hot—display of strength. “A small break.”

“How did it happen?” The familiar, gravel edge of his tone settled in her belly and pooled there like warm honey.

He cared. Maybe not in the way a lovesick teenager had once hoped he would. But to the wounded thirty-year-old, it soothed.

“Car accident,” she said. “Seriously. Give me my groceries.”

“Where? Were you driving? Was anyone else hurt?”

She faced him on the sidewalk as the lake wind did its best to slip icy fingers beneath her layers. “No offense, but Chicago is out of your jurisdiction, Sergeant. And my life is none of your business. Remember?”

He laid one of those long, broody looks on her, the meaning of which she’d never decoded.

A vibration from her pocket startled her. Forgetting the man mountain in front of her, she dug frantically for her phone.

Pain in My Ass.

Shit. The hope that had bloomed in her chest disintegrated. She hit ignore like she had on his last four calls and stuffed the phone back into her pocket. Brick was frowning at her now. At least some things never changed.

“Where are you staying?” he asked, finally. “I’ll walk you.”

It wasn’t an offer. He was too much of a gentleman to let her play lame pack mule for a few blocks in hypothermia weather, and no matter how big of a fuss she made, he’d insist.

“Red Gate,” she said.

Brick looked down at his boots, then off into the distance where the sky kissed the water. He blew out a puff of breath.

“Oh, don’t go all tortured cowboy over it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like we’re gonna be running into each other all over the place.”

Red Gate Cottage was perched on the southern tip of the island, pinned right up against the water. It also just happened to be directly across the street from Brick’s house. She still wasn’t sure if that had been a factor in her decision.