“Later, Coach,” Silas said without taking his gaze off Maggie Nichols of the strong arms and sexy voice.

They eyed each other for a beat, and then she was shucking her work gloves. “Sy as in Silas Wright? Bitterroot Landscapes?” she asked.

“That’d be me,” he said, approaching the porch like a tractor beam had locked on and was dragging him forward. “And you definitely wouldn’t be Dean Jensen.”

They met on the steps. “Maggie Nichols,” she said, offering a hand. Ringless. Long fingers. Calloused.

Silas closed his hand around hers and enjoyed the invisible sparks that shot out from the contact. Her eyes were brown, warm, and golden. They made him think of topaz in the sun.

“That’s a long handshake you’ve got there, Mr. Wright,” she observed, giving their joined hands a pointed look.

He grinned. “I’d apologize, but I don’t want our relationship to start out on a fib because I’m not actually sorry at all.”

“Ah, a flirtatious landscaper,” she said lightly as she withdrew her hand.

Kevin let out a mournful whimper from the truck window.

“Pipe down, Kevin,” Silas said, without looking back.

The quirk of her lips was a full-blown smile now, and he felt his stomach dip like it was on the rolling hills of a coaster.

“You named your dog Kevin?” she asked.

In response to hearing his name, the dog let out another pathetic moan.

“He named himself,” Silas explained. “The shelter tried every normal dog name in the book before they started on the people names.”

“Aw,” she said. The softness in her eyes had him reluctantly dragging his attention away from her. He saw Kevin was doing his best depressed pet routine, with one jowl pitifully draped over the truck’s side mirror.

“Don’t fall for it,” Sy said. “He’s a diabolical attention whore.”

On cue, the dog let out a howl.

“You can let him out, you know,” Sy’s future wife said, falling into the dog’s trap.

“You say that now, but Kevin’s a little burly, and while he has a heart of gold, he can look a bit intimidating. Plus, he just ate an entire pack of thick-cut, hickory-smoked bacon, and I’ve got concerns about his ability to keep it down.”

“Better for him to lose his breakfast out here than in there,” she advised. “If it gets in the vents, you’ll never get it out.”

Sensing an ally, the dog perked up.

“I can tell this is the first of many times that you two will be ganging up against me,” Silas said as he left the steps and headed toward the truck. “I don’t want you to think I’ll always be this easy.”

“Oh, my,” Maggie said as eighty pounds of brindle pit bull celebrated his freedom with a zoom around the front yard.