He looked at me the wrong way, rarely keeping his gaze on mine. My boobs? Those he could have picked out in a lineup.

“Oh…” he forced his wandering gaze back to my face “…I’m sure there are lots of people who would love to have you. But for now, you’re mine. So get in the truck.”

Did I want to be his? Pfft … No.

If God was keeping count of my lies, that one got a tally mark.

As soon as we pulled out of the driveway, he played music from a playlist on his phone. I hadn’t heard the song. It was loud. Hard rock. Littered with swear words. And all about sex.

Conflict muddled my thoughts. I was an adult. I could hear bad words, even if I wasn’t comfortable saying them. Technically, I could get married and have sex. So explicit music should not have felt so wrong. After all, it wasn’t my playlist. But I felt uncomfortable because, like all sin, it tempted me. It tempted my mind. It made me think inappropriate things about my new boss.

“Too loud?” he asked, after the song ended.

I shook my head, a tight shake.

“Why are you so stiff?”

Blowing out a slow breath, I tried to relax my body and my mind. “Just … just nervous about my first day.” I pulled a pad of paper and pencil out of my backpack and opened it.

“Is that a crossword puzzle?” He turned down the music.

I nodded, adding boxes for my next word.

“Are you … solving one or making your own?”

“I’m constructing my own.”

“Why?” He laughed, but it was an odd laugh, a little forced.

“Because I enjoy doing it. My dad was an architect, and he also enjoyed crossword puzzles. Then he started making them just for fun. Eventually, he was submitting them to different places for publication.” I wrote out the next clue.

Seven down: Clownish

Then I filled in the four letters: ZANY

“Doing it makes me feel like he’s … not as dead.”

Fisher glanced over at me for a beat. “Not as dead. I like that. So … what do you do with your puzzles?”

“Not a lot at the moment. However, when I was in school, I got extra credit from my English teachers for making them. The school had an online newsletter, and it included my puzzles. I don’t know what I’ll do with them now. Maybe I’ll look for an online publication for them like my dad did. Maybe…” I grinned without taking my gaze off my paper “…they’ll make it in The New York Times. That would get me some blogger buzz.”

“People blog about crossword puzzles?”

Chuckling, I nodded several times. “Um … there are bloggers for everything. There are plenty of programs to generate puzzles now, but this is authentic. I hope big publications always favor the diehard cruciverbalist.”