She’d worn a dress tonight. Outside. In public. Sure, she’d piled on some leggings and threw on rain boots that screamed sensible, not sexy. But the dress. Black and knee-length and the only one she now owned. The closet in her former life had been filled with skirts and dresses and high heels. Now she lived in jeans and whatever shoes guaranteed she could kick the hardest and run the fastest.

“Maddie, honey.” Sylvia snapped her fingers in front of Maddie’s face. “I sense it’s been a while but there’s no reason to be nervous.”

She’d lost the thread of the conversation because she thought they’d slipped into a discussion of boots. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s only a dinner. Eating with a handsome man doesn’t need to produce this much stress.” Sylvia ended the comment with a wink.

Well, she could unwink, because no. “I’m not here for Connor.”

Sylvia bit her bottom lip in what looked like a failed attempt to hide the smile that overtook her. “Okay.”

Maddie blamed Connor for this. Him and his stupid pretty face. His stupid invitation to dinner. His stupid . . . When her mind circled back to his face again, she cut off the thought with a hard blink. “Wait, why do you think I’m here for dinner?”

“I saw Connor sitting alone and asked him to join me but he said he might have company. And now I see you out here, fidgeting and panicking.” Sylvia didn’t even try to hide her amusement this time. “I put two and two together.”

“It’s not a date.” Maddie said the line more out of habit than anything. She’d repeated the mantra during the entire walk to the Lodge from her house. That constituted a mile of muttering the same four words to herself.

Yeah, nothing weird about that.

Sylvia looked past her, toward the floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining room. “He hasn’t ordered yet.”

She would not look. She would not look. “Who?”

Sylvia let out a labored and not-so-quiet sigh. “Your nondate.”

“Ah, yes. Him.” Mr. McHottiePants. The guy she should have avoided from the beginning. “Any idea when he’s leaving Whitaker?”

Sylvia shrugged. “Go inside and ask him yourself.”

“That feels like a violation of the Girl Code. You should be helping me.”

Sylvia reached around Maddie and opened the Lodge’s door. “I am.”

Connor gave her fifteen extra minutes before he scanned the menu, determined to eat alone and not care. He could take a hint. It’s not as if she’d agreed to his proposal . . . or suggestion, or whatever this whole food thing was.

Not interested. Got it.

The whole invitation had been a shitty idea anyway. She’d snuck into his house, hit him, threatened him, and then got grumpy when he expected an apology. Paying for her dinner after that might send a weird message.