For a beat or two, Grady didn’t say anything. Nor did he move. He just stood there looking down at her, his gaze like a heat wave as it raked over her body. Then he passed her the pan. “My aunt would whoop my ass if I didn’t share.”

Suzanne let out a shaky breath as she took the pan and placed it on the blanket. “You want to grab our drinks?”

God knew she was going to need some kind of fortification if she was going to share a pan of brownies with a guy who looked, even now, like he’d walked out of the Wild West and whom her body had decided was just her kind of Christmas crack.

He grabbed both his tumbler and the bourbon in one hand and her glass and the wine bottle in the other. Crouching at the edge of the rug, he placed them on the floorboards, pouring another slug of bourbon for himself and topping up her almost empty glass. He handed her wine over, then picked up his tumbler before settling opposite her, also lotus-style, nothing but a pan of brownies and one very long night between them.

There was about a hand’s width between their knees, and damn if she wasn’t aware of every charged inch of that space. And how easily she could just slide her palm onto his thigh. She thrust the spoon at Grady instead, which he took with one hand, then raised his tumbler between them with the other. “To rug picnics,” he toasted with a touch of derision in his voice.

Suzanne tapped her glass to his tumbler. “I’ll drink to that.” She took a sip of her wine, placed it down on the floor next to the rug, and said, “Dig in.”

He dug in, so did she, and for the next five minutes, there was nothing but the sound of spoons scraping the bottom of the pan, the crackle of the fire, and the wind yowling outside. Suzanne stopped after eating a quarter of the pan. She was getting full, and the brownies were too rich for someone who didn’t have a huge sweet tooth.

“I’m done.” She splayed her hand over her belly as she took a sip of her wine.

Grady, who obviously did have a sweet tooth, smiled at her like she was some kind of lightweight. “That is a tragedy,” he said, faking a crestfallen expression for a beat or two before shoveling up more brownie and spooning it into his mouth.

Suzanne didn’t bother not to look as he continued to eat. He was mesmerizing to watch devouring the food she’d cooked. It was causing a happy little glow in her chest and a raging inferno inside her pajama pants. Stopping to draw breath, he took a swallow of his bourbon and moaned, which didn’t help the emergency fire situation going on inside her panties.