“Honestly, I just got on the first plane out once I got to the airport. I didn’t care where I was headed. But Colorado… I don’t hate it. Star Falls, I mean. It’s not like I’ve seen anywhere else in the state other than the airport and whatever I caught through the bus window. But it’s beautiful here. It must have been nice growing up with the mountains in the background.”

“I guess,” he says, in a way that makes me think he doesn’t feel lucky about any aspect of his childhood. He scrapes his fingers through his hair, his biceps flexing as he does.

“Whereabouts in Star Falls was home for you?” I ask, glancing back at the milk in the pan so I don’t start drooling.

“The family farm was at the foot of the mountain.”

“Below the Club?” I ask, handing him a mug of hot chocolate. We both take a seat on the couch, the rain echoing determinedly off the roof.

“Yeah,” he says. “The outer perimeter of the Club’s land on the southeastern side was the boundary of the farm.”

My eyes widen and I lean against the counter. “Oh, so the farm doesn’t exist anymore?”

“The apple trees are still there. Mainly. We took the diseased ones out.”

“Oh, Byron, that’s amazing. So the farm’s stayed in the family in its own way.”

“It’s back in the family,” Byron says. “When my dad died, the farm was taken by his creditors. But I bought it back.” His eyes are hardened, the boyish smile I see from time to time disappears completely. This is businessman Byron—steely and determined.

“I bet you did.”

“No marshmallows?” he asks, in his least artful subject-change yet.

“Apologies, in the rush to escape the potentially collapsing cabin, I forgot to bring them.”

He puts his arm out toward me, and for a moment, I think he’s going to cup my face, lean in and kiss me, but when his gaze flits behind me, I realize he’s reaching for something on the table behind me.

Was I thinking about kissing this man?

My boss?

The really rich, powerful guy who is exactly the type I’m supposed to be staying away from?

I know all the reasons I shouldn’t—each one is categorized and stacked up neatly in my brain. The problem is, the reasons I want to kiss him are mounting up, too. The more I get to know him, the more I want to know.

He holds up a bag of mini marshmallows. “You used to get a lot of leaks where you lived?” he asks, as he shakes the packet of marshmallows into my mug, then his.