“Jesamyn. She’s an architect. She’s a lot more mellow than Darwin, but her analytical brain is always running at full speed. It’s intimidating to even start a conversation with her.” She gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. “I think you would do okay, though. She can be a bit of a snob, so she would automatically think you’re a dumb jock. I’d love to see you go head-to-head with her while watching Jeopardy!”

“You think I’d have a chance?”

“I think you’d give her a pretty good run for her money,” Taylor said. “And when she discovers that you aren’t a dumb jock, she would spend the next hour talking your head off. Me and Chester—that’s my brother-in-law—have this special signal we send to each other when Jesamyn gets going. You see, Chester is of average intelligence like me, which is probably why I feel more of a kinship with him than with my blood relatives.”

“Average intelligence? I think you’re smarter than you let on.”

“Hey, I’m not saying that I’m a dummy or anything,” she said. “But I know I’m no Einstein either.”

“Einstein had an IQ of one sixty. Less than one percent of the world’s population is an Einstein.”

“And probably less than that can rattle off Einstein’s IQ and the number of people who share it,” Taylor pointed out. “And there’s nothing wrong with being average. Did you know that Walt Disney never went to college? He took a few night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago while in high school, but he didn’t get a degree. I’ll bet people considered him average before he created Oswald the Rabbit and changed the entertainment industry forever.”

Jamar reached over and captured her chin with his fingers. They were warm after being tucked inside his jacket pockets.

“I repeat, there is nothing average about you,” he said. His eyes fell to her lips and Taylor forgot how to pull air into her lungs.

“Taylor.” His voice was a whisper. “We have to eventually talk about that kiss and what it means.”

Her head snapped back. “No, we don’t.”

“Taylor—”

She shrugged off the blanket and stood. “I need to gather firewood.”

“We’re not building a fire,” he reminded her.

“Then I need to go to the bathroom,” she said as she took off for the toilets again.

Let him think she had a tiny bladder, or irritable bowel syndrome, or whatever.

You are such a coward!

Fine, so she was a coward. She’d wear the label this one time if it meant evading talk about that kiss. Taylor knew she’d have to face the implications of it sooner or later, but she was willing to do all she could to avoid it for as long as possible.