All the while she thought of Ethan. She told herself she had to forget about their kiss or the way she’d thrown herself into his arms. Both were spur-of-the-moment things. Nothing that had been building or anything—at least not on her end. If she ignored those feelings, they would go away.

It was awkward.

Ethan kept feeling Hannah staring at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. What was she thinking? She was probably thinking about last night and the kiss—the kiss she didn’t want to repeat. His ego took a direct blow—at least that’s what he told himself was the reason he was feeling down.

But if Hannah was fine acting like he hadn’t held her in his arms and she hadn’t kissed him back, then so be it. He could pretend with the best of them.

Ten minutes later, Hannah returned to the bakery. She called Ethan into the front room where there wasn’t such a mess.

“Mind if we pull up a piece of floor?” she asked.

He shrugged. It wouldn’t be the first meal he’d partaken of on the floor. “As long as it’s near the wall so I can rest my back. Pulling up all of those tiles has been rough.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Her gaze averted his.

She wasn’t as good at playing pretend as she wanted to let on. He took some small comfort in that knowledge. It would seem she wasn’t as immune to their kiss as she wanted to let on.

For a bit they ate quietly as they were both hungry. He still wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t been called away by Greg to settle a light-hearted disagreement amongst the firefighters. Would she have felt different about their relationship now? As soon as the thought came to him, he pushed it away.

“This is good,” he said, needing to break the silence.

“Yes, it is. Now that I’ll be living across the street from the deli, I see a lot of sandwiches in my future.”

“I don’t blame you.”

Is this what they’d come to? A bland, stilted conversation about food. He missed their fun, easy chats. Maybe trying to rewind the clock on their relationship was a mistake. It wasn’t that he would bail on the remodel—he’d never do that to her. But they needed some space from each other.

He cleared his throat. “Hannah, this isn’t working.”

“You don’t like lunch?”

“No. This.” He waved back and forth between them. “Us.” How did he say this gently? He couldn’t think of any other way than just to say it. “We can’t pretend to be friendly. It isn’t working.” It hurt him just to say the words. She had quickly become a good friend. And he already missed her fun, sunny presence. “I don’t think we should work together.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened but no words came out—not immediately. It was as if her mind had to take a moment to catch up with what had happened.