He grinned. “I had to get special permission. It wasn’t easy.”

“Your neighbors must be reeling from the scandal.”

“You know, you may be on to something. My house has been toilet papered twice since I moved in.”

I laughed. “Completely justified. Driving around in Tar Heel country with a Duke plate on the front of your car is straight-up asking for it.”

“I get the feeling you’re much more Tar Heel than you are Blue Devil.”

I held up my free hand in a gesture of surrender. “My dad was born in Chapel Hill. The blood in these veins runs Carolina blue.”

“I’ll try not to hold it against you,” he said.

Simon bantered a lot like Jamie did, though he wasn’t nearly as flirty. A good thing, seeing as how I’d just gone on a date with his younger brother. But I got the impression he simply wasn’t a flirty kind of guy. He clearly wasn’t shy, but he wasn’t a show-off either. What Jamie had described as boring, I would call . . . subtle.

I held up the bags. “I should get these inside. Thank you for bringing them. You literally saved an entire wedding reception by doing this.”

He smiled, which made him look, just for a moment, a lot like Jamie. Oddly, it brought on a sudden pang of longing for my own brother. John and I had the same smile too.

“You need help getting them to the kitchen?” Simon asked.

“I can get it. Thank you though. I owe you big-time. Seriously.”

“Like I said, it’s no trouble.”

Something was weird. The way he was looking at me, or . . . something. I didn’t know. “Oh! How much do I owe you?” Maybe that was the weird thing. He was waiting for me to pay him.

“It wasn’t that much.” He pulled a receipt out of his pocket and held it out.

I shifted the bags so I could take the receipt, realizing as I did that I had no way to pay him back, not unless he followed me to my office, and I was on too tight a time line for that.

“Do you care if I pay you next week sometime? I’m sorry. I know this is totally rude, but these salads are literally going to be eaten in less than an hour, and I am already on the dirty list with our chef.”

“Next week is fine.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated.

Yeah. Totally weird. Not creepy weird. Just awkward. I backed up a few steps. “Thanks again, Simon.”