“Not at all.” He clears his throat. “Just got dust in my eye.” He rubs again.

“Cool, cool. Me too,” I say, giving him an exaggerated watery wink.

“How was brunch?” He digs again, arms flexing as he does.

I never knew a man digging out a spot for a sidewalk could be an aphrodisiac, but here I am, admiring the way his shoulders bulge against his T-shirt and the tendons in his forearms ripple in the sunlight.

“Good.”

“You actually going to stay?” he asks, without looking up at me. Instead, he tosses a shovel full of dirt behind himself and keeps working.

“You really going to keep working while we have this conversation?”

“Yup,” is his gruff response.

“Yesterday you were all Me Cade. You woman. Stay here. Eat pussy every day,” I say in what is a sad attempt at some sort of Tarzan impersonation.

He doesn’t laugh though. “Well, today I’m more worried you’ll be thinking straight and will realize you belong in the city doing whatever fancy shit you do.”

“Manage a bar while slinging beer? My glamorous lifestyle truly knows no bounds.”

“Listen”—he shoves the shovel into the ground like he wants to hurt it before finally looking up at me—“if all this out here isn’t enough for you, I’d rather you just go now. I wasn’t joking about what I said yesterday. And it feels like a lot. I . . .” He glances away, wiping the back of his arm over his forehead. “I don’t want to live my life scared anymore. But I also don’t want to be made a fool of again.”

That painful twisting sensation is back in my chest. The heavy rock in my gut. This man deserves so much better than what he’s received.

“Cade, look at me.”

His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t look my way, opting to stare down at the ground he’s dug out.

So that’s where I go. I sit down in the dirt right in front of him.

“The fuck you doing, woman?” he grumbles as I tip my chin up in his direction.

“Trying to get your attention.” I stretch my legs out in front of me and lean back on my palms, feeling the cool damp dirt beneath them. It smells like earth, and flint, and pine needles.

It smells like home.

“You’ve had my attention since—”

I roll my eyes and wave a hand at him. “Yeah, yeah. Since I dropped my panties at your feet.”

“No. Since I first heard you laugh.”

That shuts me up.

“In the coffee shop. I was standing behind you and couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible your laugh was. All fucking light and warm. It made me want to laugh too.”

My tongue darts out over my lips as I regard him.