Nana Shiffer’s blue eyes twinkled in her memory. If she squinted, she could almost see her kneeling in the garden, weeding petunias. “I would have loved to have my grandmother live with us.”

“When I was a boy, the house was full of family.” His jaw tightened. “It’s too empty now.”

Sadness darkened his gaze. Where were those relatives now? He shook his head like a horse shaking off a nagging fly and tugged his hat brim.

Mounting the steps, he wrapped a hand around one of the supporting beams and tugged.

The structure barely shuddered.

He peered into the rafters and nodded. “Sound.”

And good thing. The dude could probably rip off the porch with his bare hands. As she led him to the sycamore, he seemed to take in her many gardens with interest. Slowing her pace, she tried to see the beds through his eyes. Compared to Nora’s orderly plots, hers were jumbled and wild, but they were abundant and colorful, too—kind of like her thoughts these days. “Thanks for coming all the way out here…and for even considering building my gazebo. I know it’s a crazy idea. The more I thought about it, the more impractical it seemed—what with bumpy roots and the trunk expanding each year.”

“I can build it, I believe.”

He spoke with quiet certitude, exuding just as much confidence as Richard, but different somehow. She ducked under the pines.

He came to her side and lifted a bough. “How much land does your father own?”

Nodding her appreciation, she passed beneath it. “Two-and-a-half acres.”

“So much land so close to town.”

“Unusual, right? The big yard really sold my parents on this house. They’re away for work for a year, so I’m taking care of it by myself. Kind of quiet here, too, actually.” She glanced sidelong, but whatever he thought lay hidden beneath his hat. “Well, here it is.” She stepped under the sycamore, and the temperature dropped what felt like a full ten degrees.

Taking his time, he circled the tree, looking into the branches and kicking the dirt at the base. He approached the trunk and examined it, placing a hand on the mottled bark and pushing, much as he’d done to the porch beam moments before.

The tree was sound, too. She knew it well. She also knew the feel of that bark rasping her bare shoulders as a man devoured her lips with his own. Her face heated at the memory. Richard’s mouth was full-bodied, his lips as sensual as a woman’s. She snuck a peek at Jonas. This man’s mouth was a marble sculpture—a carved upper lip resting atop a delectably full lower one the color of a pomegranate seed.

He strained upward and tugged a low bough. The hem of his emerald-green shirt escaped his pants, revealing a sliver of skin.