“Are you coming?”

Realizing he’d been staring at her, he nodded and walked around the car to the passenger seat.

Without asking him where she was going, she drove him home. As they went through the entrance to Martinez Lawn & Garden, he directed her around the greenhouses.

“Home sweet home,” he said, looking to break the silence—and the tension.

“It’s nice,” she said as they approached the ranch house where he’d grown up.

“It was nice of you to wait.”

She shrugged as if it had been no big deal to sacrifice a good night’s sleep for him. “I had a lot of time to think while I waited.”

Oh please don’t let her say she doesn’t want to see me again. He really would lose his will to live if he couldn’t lose himself in her once in a while. Or every day. Every day would definitely be preferred to once in a while. He held his breath while he waited to hear what she had to say.

“You fired the woman who runs the retail business.”

He released a deep sigh of relief that she wasn’t telling him they were over. “You heard that, huh?”

“I think the whole bar heard it.”

The reminder of the new challenge facing them made Alex feel even more exhausted than he already was.

“I’d like to help you.”

He was shaking his head before the words were even completely out of her mouth.

Her hand on his arm stopped him cold. “Hear me out. I have an MBA from Wharton, and I have extensive retail experience. I put myself through college managing a clothing store. I don’t know a thing about plants or greenhouses or horticulture, but I could probably fake it well enough to lend a hand. If it would help you.”

Touched by her offer and her sincerity, he said, “You may not know much about horticulture, but you grow—and throw—a mean tomato.”

Jenny’s laughter filled him with an unreasonable amount of happiness. Similar to a limb reawakening, the feeling bounced through his body like a bad case of pins and needles. It’d been so long since he’d felt anything resembling happiness. “It’s really nice of you to offer.”

“I want to help.”

Those four simple words packed one hell of an emotional punch. He was a fucking mess this morning if that was all it took to unravel him.

“And for what it’s worth,” she added. “This,” she said, gesturing to the greenhouses and retail store in front of them, “has nothing to do with what happened last night.”

“Sure, it does.”