Sarai rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Well, what would you call them?”

“Koozies?”

“Those are for beer cans,” she argued. “And these are prettier.”

“Why would you buy bowl sweaters anyway?” I asked, lifting a spoonful of soup so I could blow on it.

“Oh, I didn’t buy them.” She shook her head. “I got them from my secret Santa at work last year.”

I stared at her with one brow raised.

“What?” she asked, laughing a little.

“Santa?”

“They probably don’t know I’m Jewish,” she said with a shrug.

“Why wouldn’t you say something?” I asked with a chuckle.

“Because then I wouldn’t get a secret Santa present,” she said, a mischievous little smirk playing at the corners of her mouth.

“Maybe you’d get eight,” I pointed out.

“I work with accountants,” she replied. “They’re too cheap to buy anyone eight presents.”

I laughed.

“I feel their pain,” I said. “Christmas gets expensive! I have a big family, so it adds up.”

“I just have my aunt and uncle,” she replied. “But we usually do small holiday gifts for the neighbors, too.”

“Pretty tight-knit community, huh?” I asked.

“Understatement,” Sarai joked. “You can’t sneeze without a neighbor yelling bless you from three doors down.”

I chuckled.

“It’s nice,” she admitted. “It drove me crazy when I was younger, but I miss it now.”

“I know what you mean,” I said with a nod. “I used to hate that my family was always sticking their noses into my business, but now I find myself calling them to tell them stuff.”

“Oh yeah?” she replied nonchalantly. “Have you told them about me?”

I smiled, watching her as she looked down and then back at me, waiting for a reply. “Yeah,” I said finally.

“Well,” she blurted, raising her eyebrows. “What have you said?”

“That I met a woman,” I replied slowly. “And she’s smart and beautiful and way too good for me.”

She blushed and looked back at her soup. Damn, she was cute.

“Actually,” I said. “My sister and sister-in-law were convinced that our breakfast date meant you’d put me in the friend zone.”

“Why?” she asked in surprise.

“Apparently, breakfast isn’t a date.” I shrugged.

“It felt like a date to me,” she said quietly.

“Me too,” I murmured, reaching out to give her thigh a squeeze.

We sat there talking long after our soup bowls were empty and she’d cleared the little table from the couch. I learned that even though she was crazy busy, she seemed to sail through academics like they were nothing. She didn’t love the place she worked, but she liked the people she worked with and that was good enough for now. She had only a few good friends in Missouri, and Hailey was her best friend, but they’d barely talked lately, because Sarai couldn’t stand Sean and had a hard time hiding it.