I knew it was a bribe to ensure I’d fess up, but when chocolate was involved, I did not care. “I’m right behind you.”

“So . . . then what happened?” she asked, getting the ice cream out of the freezer. I grabbed bowls and spoons and met her at the table.

“Well, after Lily obviously became my new best friend, then I washed and brushed Magnus.”

“And . . . where was Noah while this was going on?”

“He was taking a shower.”

She grinned mischievously at me. “With you watching?”

“What?” I laughed, banning the images that conjured up out of my mind. “No! I’d prefer not to go to prison for being a Peeping Tom, thanks.”

“I kind of think it would be worth it. He’s in fantastic shape. There was this article in American Weekly that said he still works out like he did when he was in the military.”

I’d seen him up close. I could believe it. “Sounds about right.”

“He’s so massive. It’s like he’s a reverse Beauty and the Beast character.”

“What do you mean?” I asked after I’d taken a bite.

“You know how all the servants in that movie are people who were turned into objects? He’s the opposite. Like a sexy refrigerator that was turned into a person.”

That made both of us laugh.

“He’s definitely not making a servant’s salary,” I said. “He tried to tip me over four hundred dollars and I had to talk him down to forty.”

“You did that the wrong way. In business you’re supposed to get as much money as possible. Plus, he’s a celebrity, which you seem to have forgotten. If I’d been you, I probably would have swiped something from his living room as a memento.”

“I think he would have noticed if I stuck his Golden Globe down my shirt.” She had a point about the money thing. I recognized that it didn’t make sense, but I hadn’t wanted to take his money.

Maybe it was because part of me didn’t want our relationship to be a purely professional one, no matter what I kept telling myself.

“I so needed this,” Shelby said and took another big bite of her ice cream. After she swallowed she added, “Because I went down to check the mailbox while you were gone, and guess what I found?”

She reached toward the middle of the table and put a magazine in front of me called California Architectural.

“Oh no . . . is this what I think it is?” I noticed a Post-it tagged to one of the pages and flipped to it.