“We haven’t heard anything bad, Harrison, I promise.” Lila’s voice was kind but firm. “And you’ll be the first to know if we do. Do you love my sister?”

“What?”

Harrison took a wide step back, eager to put as much distance between himself and that question as possible, but it didn’t work. Sophie appeared just as startled as he was. She’d jumped away from the counter and was standing stock-still in the middle of the doorway. Instead of retreat, he only managed to ram his body into hers, which was not the place he wanted to go right now. Touching her, even by mistake, reminded him of how soft she was, how yielding, how warm.

In other words, of how much he loved her.

“Answer the question, please. It’s important for finding Bubbles.”

He swiveled toward Sophie. “Did you put her up to this?” he asked. He hadn’t finished the question before he already knew the answer. That look of wide-eyed alarm couldn’t belong to anyone else.

“Of course she didn’t,” Dawn said. She shook the back of the chair in a pointed effort to get him to sit. As it appeared he was trapped anyway, he sat. He might as well be comfortable. “If you haven’t figured out by now that Sophie is the sweetest and most thoughtful person on the face of the planet, then you never will.”

“Um, guys? Maybe now’s not the best ti—”

Dawn waved her sister off. “The sweetest,” she echoed firmly. “And the most thoughtful, and everyone who meets her falls instantly in love.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, watching the woman in question. Memorizing her. “I know.”

“That includes humans and canines,” Lila added. “It’s uncanny, to be honest.”

“I know that too,” he said, his voice gaining strength. A few months ago, this was the exact kind of conversation that would have had him shutting down and running away. These were his feelings they were talking about—he and these three women, he and the woman he loved. A Parks man didn’t just loosen his tongue and say what he felt. He was supposed to hide these things, bury these things, pretend that he didn’t need these things as much as he needed the air he breathed.

“Of course I love her,” he said. “I’m in love with her. What kind of a fool would I have to be not to? She’s beautiful and capable and strong. She sees good things growing in terrible places. She’s the best person I know, and I’ve been hers since the moment she yelled at me for giving Bubbles table scraps.”

“I didn’t yell at you!” Sophie squeaked. Her cheeks were suffused with pink, her whole body motionless.

“You did, and you meant it,” he replied, strangely relaxed now that he’d gotten over that first hurdle.