“Whoa, stop right there.” She sat up, still in his lap but facing him. “Don’t you even think that for a second. I was just trying to respect your desire for privacy.” She glanced down at the maze below them and smiled. “At least until I start bringing buses of people up here in a few weeks.”

They both relaxed, easing away from the tricky topic of how people might react to them as a couple. The socialite’s daughter and the convict’s son. She could hear her mother now.

Zayne made a face. “Owen Cooper is coming over this week with some equipment he thinks can tackle the mowing. Once we get the grass chopped down, the maze should reappear. It might be a little more ragged than usual, but people will still get lost in there.”

She’d feel a lot more confident once that mowing was done. Right now, no one would get anywhere in that field. “I want to talk to Owen about getting some pots of flowers to scatter around the farm that weekend. You know, to spruce it up a little.”

“You think my place needs sprucing up?”

“Just a little.” She held up her hand, pinching two fingers together. “It needs a woman’s touch, that’s all.”

He held her closer and chuckled, his voice rough and sexy. “I need a woman’s touch, too. Your touch, to be specific.”

She was more than happy to oblige, wrapping her arms around him. This was definitely a relationship, and it was one she didn’t want to lose.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“MOMMA! I’M IN your tree!”

Hudson was laughing, but he also had a tight grip on Zayne’s hands, holding him steady. They’d driven over to Darby Road to show her son the tree where she and Zayne had spent so much time as kids. The old willow tree along the side of the road had lost some limbs over the years, but it was still standing.

“It’s like being in a secret room, Momma!”

“That’s what your mother used to say.” Zayne smiled over at her. “She called it our secret place. We weren’t quite as little as you are, but still—once we were up inside, it was hard to spot us.”

“We had a lot of long conversations up there, didn’t we?” She rested her hand on his waist and he nodded quietly.

She remembered meeting him at the tree and talking for hours. Or just sitting in silence. It was before mobile phones and texting, so sometimes one of them would show up and just be there by themselves, hiding inside the draping willow branches. It wasn’t just a secret place—like he’d said before, it was also a safe place.