“I’m elbow deep in icing, honey!” I shouted toward my front door, bending back over the cake with my pastry bag. “Let yourself in, it’s open!” I finished as I continued to dot every third fluffy white buttercream frosting star with a point of pale yellow icing.

The door opened as I spun the cake around to get to more stars.

I was standing at the island in my kitchen, my head bent to the cake, when I felt her presence hit the room but stop in the doorway.

“I’m running a bit late,” I told the cake. “Get yourself a pop or something. In fact, get me one. Cherryade. Crushed ice,” I ordered, dotting more stars at the top border of the cake, then moving down to the bottom.

Martha didn’t move.

My eyes lifted and my mouth opened to say something but the words and my breath got clogged in my throat when I saw not Martha but Jake Knox, arms crossed over his wide chest, one broad shoulder resting against the doorjamb, lean hips hitched to the side, motorcycle-boot-clad feet crossed at the ankles.

I said not a word and didn’t move as I took in all that was him.

Ratty-assed, faded black T-shirt with the peeling words “Charlie Daniel’s Band” over an equally peeling American flag fitting just right over his torso, a pair of mirrored shades shoved in the collar by an arm and dangling down. Jeans so faded they were their own unique shade of blue with frayed bits around the pockets and delicious worn patches at his crotch, the length of them fitting loose or snug in all the right places on his slim hips and long legs. Unruly dark hair about an inch longer than I remembered, so it was curling low on his neck and around his ears. Below his sharp cheekbones, along his strong jaw and chin, and down the column of his corded throat was, from my experience, at least three days’ worth of stubble.

Silvery-gray eyes pointed right at me.

Fuck.

I straightened, filled pastry bag in my hands, and stared at him.

He stared back.

He did it better.

So I blinked and when I was about to say something, do something, maybe even yell something, he got there before me.

“You ready to talk now?”

I blinked again.

Then I whispered, “Sorry?”

“Talk, Tess.” His deep voice rumbled across the kitchen at me. “You promised we’d talk. I wanna know if you’re ready to do it now.”

I dropped my pastry-bag-filled hands to the counter and kept staring at him.

Then I asked, “Have you lost your mind?”

He ignored my question and told me, “Name’s Brock Lucas.”

I closed my eyes and dropped my head as that knowledge filtered through me, knowledge I lay awake at night wondering about, knowledge that had been kept from me as I fell in love with an imposter.