What was wrong with him? Everything between them since he’d gotten home had been so…awkward. Trying to look at her during casual conversation and then eye-locking and completely forgetting what he was saying. Trying to say something normal but having it come out sounding like he was a nineteenth-century gentleman. (Had he actually said Would you like to take a stroll?) And starting a conversation only to have it fall flat. Like maybe he wasn’t the only one feeling the awkwardness.

The million things he had to do to start planning his new menu offerings had kept his mind off of Tessa for most of the day. But as soon as he came home and found her waiting on the patio, sipping tea and reading a book, he knew he was in trouble.

He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He was forgetting why he shouldn’t get involved with her. Oh, yeah—so he wouldn’t hurt her.

But all he wanted was Tessa.

“Maybe we should go for that stroll,” she said.

Their eyes met, and he definitely got the feeling from what he saw in them that she was not really serious about the walk. “Maybe. Or we could do a puzzle.”

Did he just suggest that? He hadn’t put a puzzle together in about twenty years. And he could go another twenty not feeling bad about that.

“I just bought a new one,” she said. “Lavender fields of Provence.”

“Oh, fun,” he said without real enthusiasm. “Or we could go visit the neighbors.”

“We could.”

“Or we could just talk,” he said.

“I was very proud of…us today,” she said. Okay, good. Now they were getting somewhere.

“Same. We make a good team.” He looked at their two hands, joined together. Somehow he’d started holding hers. It felt natural, holding her hand.

She squeezed his hand a little. “Leo, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want the truth.”

“Okay, sure. What is it?” Her tone made him nervous. He usually thought so clearly about women, but she had him all jumbled up.

She sat up and stared straight at him. “Are you allergic to my cat?”

His first thought was that he was going to murder Jack. “Not anymore.”

She let go of his hand and threw her hands up. “Why didn’t you say something?”

He blew out a breath. And looked into her eyes, as blue as the summer sky. “Because you’d had all the stress of your breakup and the business folding and then this crazy marriage. I just couldn’t make you give up something important to you, and I—”

The next thing he knew, his arms were full of soft, curvy woman. Kissing him. Wrapping herself around him, flooding his senses with her softness and her scent, with the touch of her lips on his.