For me.

What it also did was draw Miles’ attention to my mouth.

His gaze dropped to my lips, and I immediately pressed them together. I had to resist the urge to lick them, but thankfully the rapid beating of my heart drew my attention away from the fact he was still staring at my lips.

Maybe.

Kind of.

Not at all, actually.

It was the whole reason my heart was doing a stupid little skippy-skip-skip against my ribs.

“I smile at you, Gabriella.” Miles slowly lifted his gaze back up to meet mine. “Just because you’ve never seen it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”

What did that mean?

“What do—”

“Gabriella!” The sound of Aunt Cat’s voice interrupted me, and just like that, whatever the moment was, it was gone.

We jerked apart as if we were doing something wrong.

Just in time, too, since the mudroom door swung open, and Aunt Cat appeared. She looked us both over like we were intruders.

“What are you doing out here?” Her eyes flicked between us again. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No!” I shouted, a little too loudly.

She raised her eyebrows.

“No,” I repeated after a moment. “I was stuck in the village, and Miles gave me a lift home, that’s all. He wanted to check the greenhouse for damage.”

“I’m sure,” she said dryly. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Has he checked it or were you too busy canoodling?”

Miles cleared his throat. “We weren’t canoodling.”

“Right. I suppose she had something on her mouth you couldn’t stop looking at.” Aunt Cat grinned.

My cheeks were red hot. Oh, God.

“Don’t you have a greenhouse to check over, boy? Chop, chop!” She clapped her hands together, making him jump.

Still, he jolted into action and disappeared through the gate, peering over his shoulder at us until the hedge blocked his view.

Slowly, Aunt Cat turned to face me. “Well, well, well. It looks like you have some explaining to do.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Contrary to Aunt Cat’s belief, I did not have any explaining to do.

There was nothing going on between me and Miles. We’d only just made friends, for goodness sake.

I mean, sure, there was that weird moment before she came out. Where he’d been looking at my mouth and had said he smiled at me but I just hadn’t seen it. Where my heart had moonlighted as a rocket and staged an attempted escape from my chest.

But that didn’t mean anything.

There was nothing going on.

It wasn’t like I wasn’t aware of the fact I was attracted to Miles. I knew I had a crush on him, but that’s all it was. A schoolgirl crush.

At least it had been. Until last night.

When he’d been nice to me.

Apologised.

Admitted he’d been wrong.

And smiled at me.

Mmph.

I didn’t care what he said—he hadn’t smiled at me. Ever. Not as long as I’d known him. In fact, he’d always made a conscious effort not to smile or laugh at me. Of course, it all rather made sense now that he’d shared with me how he’d judged me, but that didn’t make his insistence that he did smile at me make any sense.