“As for my phone ringing itself hoarse, I bet you homemade hush puppies against your palomino that all those texts were from my mama, promising to whoop my ass if I didn’t make sure you were fed.” He went back to the fridge for a package of Italian sausage. “She’ll probably insist I teach you how to cook, too, so you don’t have to eat anything labeled ‘Salisbury steak’ ever again.” He patted her shoulder on his way to the table, as if she might be as distressed as he was by the concept. Spices spilled out of an overloaded rack on the counter, and he plucked several jars from among them.

“LJ, you don’t have to teach me to cook. I’m too busy to bother most of the time, but I can make anything I want to.” Which was entirely true, as long as what she wanted was mac and cheese or scrambled eggs.

“Take it as my apology for scaring you the first time we met.” He turned around, standing closer to her than anybody ever did. And yet his eyes were so warm and earnest that she forgot to move away. “I’m from the Lower Ninth Ward. We don’t turn our back on folks who’ve hit hard times.”

Andra inhaled, putting it together all in a rush. His résumé said he was from New Orleans. Had he been there during the floods? She’d been a teenager when Hurricane Katrina came through, and he was maybe a few years older than her own twenty-seven. That place he’d mentioned—the Lower Ninth. It tickled a faint memory in her. Maybe she’d read about it somewhere, but it didn’t seem polite to ask.

Instead she cleared her throat and said, “Spaghetti, huh? Shouldn’t you make something southern? Gumbo or grits, maybe?”

“My mama loves all food equally.” LJ smiled. “But I thought I’d save the sashimi lesson for later.”

“Sash-who-what?”

He rolled his eyes and picked up the grocery bag. “Come on, Andie-girl. Your kitchen’s better than mine, and we obviously have a lot of work to do.”

Five

The sand in the arena smelled scorched, the summer sun cooking every bit of moisture out of the ground and the people who walked upon it. But Andra wasn’t paying any attention to the sweat sticking her shirt to her back, or the four-year-old gelding she rode. In fact, she finally gave up and stopped, because she was laughing too hard to properly cue the animal.

LJ trotted a buckskin filly along the outside of the arena fence, saddlebags rattling and warbling a terrifyingly electronic version of “Ice Ice Baby.” He batted his eyelashes at Andra as he brought his horse to a stop. “What? You know Mary Kay doesn’t appreciate it when you laugh at her.”