“I don’t mean to be insulting, but you aren’t exactly super skinny or anything.” He had the muscular build of a man who took good care of himself.

“Is that a fat joke?”

“Hardly! And you know it.”

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling, “I know. I was a skinny kid who had the same name as my dad, so my gramps started calling me Slim, and it just sort of stuck long after I wasn’t a skinny kid anymore.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Was your brother’s real name Toby?”

Surprised by the question, she said, “No, it was Tobias, after our grandfather, but he hated that name and always went by Toby. Why?”

“My real name is Tobias Fitzgerald Jackson Junior.”

“It is not.”

“It is, too.”

A sob hiccupped from her chest as disbelief warred with hope. Was it possible that her beloved Toby had sent a new Toby to her? Did things like that even happen? Who was to say they didn’t?

“I almost said something the other night when you told me his name had been Toby, but I wasn’t sure if I should.” In a cajoling tone, he said, “I can show you my license if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you,” she said softly.

He reached up and took hold of her hand. “It’s kind of cool, right?”

“It’s way cool. I’m glad you told me.”

“In light of this incredible coincidence, you’re going to have to have dinner with me soon.”

Laughing despite the tears that continued to cascade down her cheeks, she said, “You don’t give up, do you?”

“Not on something worth fighting for.”

And here she’d thought Alex’s surprise wedding had been the romantic grand gesture of the day. Slim was giving him a run for his money.

“Does anyone call you Toby?”

“Nope. I’ve never gone by that. I was Tobias to my mother a few times during my reckless youth. Otherwise, I’ve always been Slim. But you could call me Toby if you wanted to.”

“Would you answer to it?”

“Probably not the first few times. I’d come around eventually if it meant getting your attention. So about this dinner you promised me. Still a yes?”

“I believe it is.”

“Really?”

His reaction made her giggle like the girl she used to be. “Really.”

“When?”

“I’ll let you know.”

He groaned. “You’re going to make me work for it, aren’t you?”

“A wise man once told me that anything worth having is worth fighting for.”

“That man needs to be stoned.”

Erin dissolved into a fit of laughter that morphed into a gasp when he ran his lips over the back of her hand. A jolt of awareness traveled up her arm that sucked the breath from her lungs. She’d never reacted to any man that way—ever.