Mike tossed Toby a dog leash. “How about taking Martin for a walk while I show Bree around?”

As Toby clipped the leash to the pup’s collar, Bree followed Mike through the glass doors. They stepped into an enormous great room with log walls, a high-beamed ceiling, and a massive stone fireplace. The magazine-worthy decor was both masculine and comfortable, with a color scheme of chocolate, cinnamon, and bittersweet. Old-fashioned snowshoes, topographic maps, and forged iron wall sconces hung on one wall; a big picture window with a view of the lake occupied another. A round coffee table rested in front of a deep leather couch draped with a black-and-gold-checked Pendleton blanket. The hearth held a twig firewood basket and a roughly carved wooden statue of a black bear.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“I always wanted a North Woods house. Cool and dark in the summer. Warm and comfortable in the winter.”

“Pure Michigan.” She smiled. “I’d say you accomplished your goal.”

“I hired a decorator. A great guy. He and his partner visit once a year and throw out the kind of stuff I tend to pick up on my own. I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with a couple of U2 posters and a stuffed carp.” His eyes were laughing at her, but as she smiled back, he looked away. “The truth is, I don’t have what you call first-class taste, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

True. Mike only had first-class kindness. “It’s a big house for a bachelor,” she said.

“I had a family in mind when I built it. I was engaged at the time.”

That surprised her, although it shouldn’t have. A man as attractive and successful as Mike wouldn’t have trouble finding women—at least women who hadn’t known him when he was younger. “Anyone I know?” she asked.

“No.” He nudged an ottoman out of the way so she wouldn’t have to step around it. “Her family summers in Petoskey. Breaking that engagement was the hardest thing I ever did.”

“You broke the engagement?”

“You figure I was the one who got dumped, right?”

“No. Not at all.” That’s exactly what she’d thought. “I just didn’t know you’d ever been engaged.”

“We had different values. She didn’t like island life or most of my local friends. But she had good qualities, too.”

“Just not enough for you to marry her.”

He refused to put down his former fiancée. “She took it hard. I still feel bad about it.”

And he would. The adult Mike Moody didn’t like hurting people. Maybe he never had.

He reached up to open his collar button, a simple gesture, but so completely masculine that she felt a little queasy. The sensation threw her off so much that she asked a question she’d never otherwise have posed. “Have there been a lot of women?”