I hesitated, trying to decide if I should tell him the theory I’d dismissed about his stepsister’s jealousy, but what was there to tell? I risked alienating him from her, and from me—and I wanted neither. “I don’t know what to make of that, Ash. I wish I could help, but for what it’s worth, I can’t imagine you ever hurting anyone.”

A beat passed, and another. I thought he might get up and leave again, but he gently reached for my hand, and said, “Tell me what I was like when we met.”

Despite everything, I couldn’t help but smile. “Very clumsy.”

His shoulders dropped away from his ears as he pulled a bemused face. “Clumsy, huh? In that case, maybe it’s a good thing I have zero recollection of making a total arse of myself.”

“You didn’t,” I said, grinning some more as I thought about the moment I’d first set eyes on him. “In fact, you were extremely gentlemanly.”

It had been a Thursday evening, the week after Thanksgiving. Monica, one of my colleagues from Beach Body, had insisted on dragging me out for a drink when I’d let slip I hadn’t set foot in a bar since the summer, and it had been twice as long since I’d been on a date.

“That’s it, sweets,” she’d scoffed in her thick, Texan drawl. “I’m takin’ y’all out tonight.”

I’d laughed when we’d arrived at what she described as her favorite place on earth. The Charlie Horse was an old, dusty shack, a relic plucked straight from a Spaghetti Western. As we sat down, I half expected a young Clint Eastwood to stride across the beer-stained, wooden floors and demand a shot of whiskey from the waistcoat-clad barman. Instead, Monica, who’d been named salesperson of the month every month for the past year, flashed me a smile as she pushed a pint of beer toward me.

“Drink up, now. There’s plenty more where that came from.” We clinked glasses and she leaned in. “Cute guy at the bar’s been checking you out.”

I’d noticed him, too. Tall, dark hair, a smile that made me want to get up, walk over and ask him for his number. If I had the guts. As I sneaked a glance at the stranger, he looked at me and grinned. Not long after, I made my excuses and went to the bathroom, and when I got back, Monica was surrounded by three guys, arguing the merits of standard transmission vs. paddle shift, and which was better for street racing, all of them googly-eyed at her expertise.

“She’s quite the gearhead, isn’t she?” It was the guy who’d been standing at the bar, his eyes twinkling as his lips curved into another smile that drew me in, his English accent charming and sexy as hell.