I made myself smile. “I’m having cupcake batter for dinner.”

He stared in my eyes for long moments before he muttered, “Right,” like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.

My phone rang again.

I looked to it and it was again my father. Seeing that made my neck muscles tighten, knowing he was likely getting angry and with every call he’d get angrier and more determined to find ways to share that anger with me.

“See you’re not tight with your dad,” Mickey noted and I tore my eyes from my phone to look at him.

“We have…issues,” I admitted.

“Shame,” he muttered.

“Yes,” I concurred. “Are you…” I hesitated to ask, to draw his visit out, to request information that was not mine to have, then my mouth went for it, “Close with your folks?”

“Absolutely.”

He answered and it was firm but it invited no further conversation.

“You’re lucky,” I mumbled, looking back down to my laptop.

“Absolutely,” he repeated, just as firmly.

I nodded to my laptop before looking to him. “Do you want a cupcake before you go?”

His mouth tightened and I watched it do this with an unhealthy level of fascination.

I did this because it had not escaped me he had nice lips, a full lower one, captivating creases running along both the top and bottom, all this highlighted by alluring whiskers and framed by hollowed cheeks under very cut cheekbones and his squared off jaw.

Oddly, that mouth tightened in anger made it even more striking than it was normally.

Even so, I couldn’t imagine why my thinly veiled attempt to give him the opportunity to escape me would cause him to feel that anger.

He untightened his mouth to ask, “Where’d you come from?”

My head twitched at his question. “I’m sorry?”

“Before Magdalene,” he explained.

“La Jolla. In California,” I answered.

“Know where it is, Amelia.”

Amelia.

Not Amy.

He was angry.

Why was he angry?

“Your folks back there?” he asked.

“Yes,” I told him. “I grew up there. Conrad took positions in practices in Boston and Lexington, but we landed back home before, well”, I tipped my head to the side, “here.”

“Practices?” he queried.

“He’s a neurosurgeon,” I said.

And again, Mickey’s mouth tightened.

“Your family?” I asked to change the subject to something that might not make him angry. “You said they sold you their—”

“Florida,” he cut me off, answering my question before I completely got it out, telling me something he told me already. Then he carried on, “Got three brothers. One in Boston, the oldest, moved the family business there. Second oldest is in Bar Harbor, he runs a subsidiary. Youngest, Dylan, lives in Vermont. He’s a professor at a college.”

“Oh,” I murmured.