“Oh but…they haven’t made any snow angels yet.”

“There were three dozen in the last movie.”

“There weren’t that many. Stop being dramatic.” She bumped him with her shoulder. “Besides, I love snow angels. My mom doesn’t approve of them; she thinks they’re a delivery device for pneumonia.”

A delivery device for pneumonia? Jesus, they were snow angels, not the plague! “So…you’ve never done one?”

“No, I’ve done them. Dad would take me to Central Park every year after it had snowed, and we’d spend hours making them. He thinks they’re art. My mom thinks if anybody can do it, it’s not art. We definitely have to get her to do a snow angel while she’s here. Even if we have to crash tackle her to the ground.”

Grady laughed. “I think I’ll leave the crash tackling to you.” Their gazes met for a moment, and they smiled at each other, the movie forgotten. The fact she was bribing him to be her fake rancher boyfriend—also forgotten.

Slowly, her smile faded, and she half turned toward him, grabbing her right leg and tucking it up under her so she was looking right at him. “I guess we should probably spend some time getting our stories straight.”

He mimicked her actions so he was also facing her, their bent knees about a foot apart, but somehow feeling closer now that he could look into her eyes without turning his head. “Our stories straight?”

“Yeah, you know. For when my parents ask you, So, Grady, tell us how you met our daughter.”

Okay. That made sense. “What have you told them already?”

“Very little, actually, so that’s something. They think Winona put us in touch and we’ve been talking online, but we didn’t actually meet face-to-face until I came to Credence. We could probably work on embellishing it.”

Considering he barely knew Winona and he didn’t talk or do anything else online with women, he was thankful for the heads-up. He sure as shit didn’t want to embellish it, though. “I think we should just stick to the basics.”

Embellishing lies made it hard to keep stories straight and, as he planned on talking to her parents as little as possible anyway, there didn’t seem to be much point. He wouldn’t be rude, but the reality was he’d be gone most days on the ranch, and he wasn’t exactly a night owl.

It was past his bedtime right now.

“Fine,” she conceded. “But I should know stuff about you. Like, where you were born and do you have any siblings and what are your parents’ names and…the name of your first dog and what you were like in school and about Burl and the ranch and a lot of other stuff.”