“What was that for?” she asked, finally finding her vocabulary.

“When Kevin does something good, he gets a treat.”

Maggie felt her mouth fall open in an O. “Are you dog training me?”

“I’m rewarding you for learning to do something that goes against your nature.”

She poked him in the chest. “That’s not a no.”

He shocked the hell out of her again by slipping an arm around her shoulders and dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “Come on, darlin’. Let’s get you some ice cream.”

The dog let out a strangled kind of yodel and danced up on his hind legs.

“Heel, you muscle-bound jerk,” Silas said, giving the leash a tug. Kevin jumped to obey, trotting at his heels.

“Look how good he’s being,” Maggie said, falling into step.

“Fancy dog trainers call it being food-driven, which is usually a great way to motivate during training. But if Kevin gets bored, he just decides to cut out the middleman and give himself the treats. Two weeks ago, I got a call from the ice cream place saying Kevin was waiting in line for his usual. Still don’t know how he got out of the house.”

They left the block of single-family bungalows behind them and crossed the street into a quiet section of the downtown. Brick row homes in cute paint colors and tidy front stoops crowded close together.

“Kevin has a very smart approach to life. Figure out how to get yourself what you want,” she mused.

Silas gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she refused to acknowledge how good, how right, it felt to be touched by him. “You can’t get yourself everything you want,” he told her. “Otherwise you end up trying to do the jobs of a dozen people and running yourself ragged.”

“Maybe I just need to simplify. Make my wants fewer,” she hypothesized. She could do a whole year on tiny homes or smallish homes. Less square footage meant less to renovate. She could double the number of properties she normally did in a year.

“Or maybe,” he said, interrupting her thoughts, “you should honor your wants as they are and accept the fact that no woman is an island. Get some help. Take a damn break once in a while.”

“I see what you’re doing here,” she warned him.

“The metaphors about you letting people in or that I’m using your food drive to reinforce positive behavior?”

“Oh, you suck, Wright!” Another shop window caught her eye. “What’s with all the gold bars and coins?”

Silas stopped in his tracks. “Are you telling me you don’t know about the Dead Man’s Canyon Stagecoach Robbery?”

“Maybe?”