“Oh.” Jack seemed to ponder that while he took a stogie from the cigar box, stuck it in his mouth, and tipped back his chair. “Got a match?” he asked.

Leo rummaged through the items in the ceramic bowl Tessa had set in the middle of the table to collect their keys, sunglasses, and the extra garage remote, and he pulled out the box of matches he’d stashed there earlier.

“What’s that?” Noah asked.

Leo looked around. “What’s what?” Noah pointed to the bowl. “Um, a bowl?”

Jack chuckled. “Looks like it’s a handmade ceramic bowl with painted fruit that holds stuff.”

“I’m not really understanding your point,” Leo said to his friends.

“I really like the sunshine napkins,” Noah said. “They’re happy.”

Jack threw one at him.

“Look,” Leo said. “It’s different living with a woman.” And frustrating. Not because of the sunshine napkins, either. Because Leo couldn’t stop thinking about Tessa.

The kisses, her in his bed, the scholarship. The more he got to know her, the more complicated, infuriating, passionate, enthusiastic—did he say passionate?—she was.

His sister couldn’t stop talking about her brunch with Tessa the rest of their afternoon together. And then Tessa herself had surprised him by dropping off homemade pizzas for his friends tonight. She’d made them—in between all her other work—because she knew the guys would like them.

How could he have ever thought she was an Ice Queen? Or unambitious?

And what about that scholarship?

Nothing about her could be taken at face value.

“Yeah,” Noah said, looking around the house at the pillows Tessa had put on the couches, the rug she’d bought, and the pictures Leo had helped her hang. “Everything matches. And the flowers in those pots on the patio aren’t even dead.”

“Let’s go out there and have some cigars,” Leo said, hoping to change the subject.

He was a little agitated. Not just because he was low on sleep.

It was what Juliet had said.

That’s what was bugging him. Once he and Tessa talked it out and he found out what really happened, he would be back to his normal self; he was certain. And he planned to do that as soon as he saw her. Even though he was afraid of what he might learn.

Jack trailed right behind him as he walked outside.

“Are you okay?” his friend asked. “You seem a little on edge.”

Leo gave him a death frown. “I don’t want to hear any more married jokes, okay?”

“You mean about sunshine napkins? Fruit bowls? A living room with matching pillows? And…whoa. What’s this?” Jack walked over to the garden shed, which was dark green with gingerbread trim and double barn doors, and opened them.

“Is it a she-shed?” Noah asked, a little too excitedly.