She and Nick were collaborating—on the book. That was all. His interest in it had given her new energy. In the past few days they’d run into each other more than usual. She’d stood with him once in his yard while Rex and Candy tussled over a tennis ball, and they’d had coffee again at Lucy’s. Nothing remotely as line-crossing had happened. Giving her a bite of his brownie was not in the same category. They talked about photography and architecture, paper quality and text-to-photo ratios until he left to pick up his son.

Then this afternoon . . . well. She still hadn’t let herself fully process what happened this afternoon. She’d found him parked a block away from the café. He rolled down the window. “I’m going to take you on a tour,” he said.

It felt mildly illicit to be getting in his car, but she did it anyway—first having a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching. She sank down low in the passenger seat. It was warm in the car and it smelled like aftershave, a smell she didn’t ordinarily like.

“Sears Modern Homes are cute, I’ll give you that, but they sure ain’t modern,” he drawled, cutting off a car as he took a right onto Wisconsin Avenue. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about preserving what’s best about the town.”

“So you’re not a complete monster,” she said.

“Mostly, but not complete.”

It felt safe now to relax a little. They were out of her zone, where people might look at them and wonder. She settled back into the seat, which had excellent lumbar support and a seat warmer.

Nick argued that there were certain houses in Willard Park that could be torn down to the betterment of the town. “They’re ugly, right?” She had to agree. The sixties and seventies had been unfortunate years architecturally.

He slowed down as they approached Winterset, a community not unlike Willard Park, where tear-downs on quarter-acre lots sold for a million plus. People were replacing the older houses with bigger versions. “All of the benefits, none of the decay, none of the outmoded wiring, no tiny closets and miniature bathrooms,” Nick said.

They walked around, Nick pointing out big porches and gabled roofs, Allison nodding. He had a point.

“They’re nice houses,” he said.

“They’re like Sears houses on steroids.”

“So you agree with me.”

She laughed. “I guess.”

“I knew you were my kind of gal,” he said, which she found embarrassingly flattering. His kind of gal. What was his kind of gal? How could Kaye and she both be his kind of gal? How could a comment both feel sexist and sexy at once?