“Same principle applies here, though. It’s good to take time.”

“This is a completely different circumstance than with Joel and Rachel. I can see with my own eyes, as clear as day, that girl is perfect for you. If you wait too long, someone else is going to snap her up.”

He hated the idea of Akira with another man.

His mom lifted the cake from the entry table and pushed it into his hands. “There’s a fine line between biding your time and becoming a little old man at the old folks’ home who doesn’t have any visitors.”

Ben didn’t see that as a fine line. He saw that as a gigantic line, fifty years thick in his case.

“How many of the women that you’ve dated have I liked?” she asked.

“None.”

She could raise one eyebrow and narrow her stare better than anyone. “Well. This one, I like.”

When Luke left prison, all he’d wanted was a quiet, simple life.

His life had been getting less quiet and less simple ever since he’d started work at the Center.

With a groan, he answered the knocking on his apartment door around one p.m. on Sunday.

Ben, Sebastian, Natasha, and Genevieve stood there. The women were each holding a handle of a picnic basket. Sebastian had a cooler. Ben carried a circular container.

“Surprise!” Natasha said.

“Mmm.”

“We couldn’t get you to commit to having lunch with us,” Ben explained, “so we brought lunch to you.”

“Mmm.”

“The good news is that we have excellent food here,” Ben said. “My mom’s chocolate cake.”

“Sam made chicken curry salad sandwiches,” Genevieve added.

“Fruit.” Natasha gave him a persuasive lift of her brows. “Potato chips. Cashews baked with my own rosemary salt blend.”

Luke sighed.

“Step aside,” Sebastian ordered, “and let us in.”

Luke held the doctor’s gaze. “I’m not your patient.”

“If you were, I’d have given you a heart that actually worked by now.”

For a moment they faced off, but then Sebastian startled Luke by grinning.

Since Luke had discovered yesterday that someone had been in Finley’s house, anxiety had been crawling over him. Through the night, he’d struggled with nightmares.

At this point, he was willing to try just about anything that might distract him. Including this.

He moved back and held the door for them.

Finley’s bachelor father had not harbored a deep and committed brand of love for very many people. His parents. Robbie and Robbie’s wife and kids. Finley. Just those. Nonetheless, the people he’d loved, he’d loved and protected fiercely.

Memories of her history with her aunt and uncle swam through Finley’s mind as she and Luke walked toward their front door on Monday evening.