He laughed. She laughed. All was right. He met her eyes after they’d quieted, then said, “So, you’re back.”

“I’m back.”

“I’m glad.”

Sydney shook her head. This was an unexpected turn to her day. “You are, quite possibly, the first person to actually say that to me.”

“Well, the best things are worth waiting for.”

“You don’t stay for the fireworks?” Tyler asked as Claire was boxing up the empty wine bottles. He’d come up behind her, but she didn’t turn around. She was too embarrassed to. If she turned around, she would become that deeply disturbed woman who couldn’t handle a man being interested in her. As long as she kept her back to him she was the old Claire, the self-contained one, the one she knew before Tyler introduced himself and Sydney moved in.

Sydney and Bay had already spread out a quilt, waiting for it to finally get dark enough for the fireworks. Claire noticed earlier that Henry Hopkins had joined them, and she was still trying to get her mind around it. Henry Hopkins liked her sister.

Why did it bother her? Why did Fred helping Evanelle bother her?

Her edges were crumbling like border walls, and she was feeling terribly unprotected. The worst possible time to deal with Tyler.

“I’ve seen this show before,” she said, her back still to him. “It ends with a bang.”

“Now you’ve ruined it for me. Can I help you?”

She stacked the boxes and took two of them, planning to get the other two on her second trip. “No.”

“Right,” Tyler said, picking up the boxes. “So I’ll just grab this.”

He followed her across the green to her van, which she’d parked on the street. She could feel his stare on the back of her neck. She never realized how vulnerable short hair could make a person. It exposed places that were hidden before, her neck, the slope of her shoulders, the rise of her breasts.

“What are you afraid of, Claire?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

When they reached the van, she unlocked the back and put her boxes in. Tyler came up beside her and set his boxes beside hers. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Of course I’m not afraid of you,” she scoffed.

“Are you afraid of love?”

“Oh, the arrogance,” she said as she strapped the boxes in to keep the bottles from breaking as she drove. “I refuse your advances so it must be because I’m afraid of love.”

“Are you afraid of a kiss?”

“No one in their right mind is afraid of a kiss.” She closed the back of the van and turned around, finding him closer than she expected. Too close. “Don’t even think about it,” she said, sucking in her breath, her back plastered against the van as he stepped closer still.