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“Yes. To both.”

I kissed her again before she could turn it into a joke.

Her fingers tightened in my hair, and the kiss deepened until the studio around us blurred into warmth, paper, and the faint scent of the candle near the front window.

When we separated, she left one arm around my neck.

“My proposal still has to go out.”

“Finish it. I’ll stay out of your way.”

She caught my flannel before I could move toward the door. “Across the table counts as out of my way. I didn’t say you had to leave.”

I stayed beside her while she opened the laptop, but I took the chair across the worktable instead of the one at her elbow. She finished the last few lines, checked a date against the wall calendar, and sent the proposal without asking whether I thought any of it looked right.

A few minutes later, she closed the computer and reached for her coat.

I helped her into it, careful of her scraped palm, and she turned before I could step away.

Her hands settled on my chest.

“You know what I like about this version of you?” she asked. Before I could answer, her fingers curled into my shirt. “You came back.”

I bent and kissed her once, slowly.

Sybil switched off the lamps and locked the studio behind us. Beneath the glow of her name on the window, she threaded her fingers through mine.

“Come on,” she said. “You owe me dinner.”

We headed into town for our first date.

Epilogue

By ten-thirty on New Year’s Eve, Aunt Laurie had turned the long table behind The Sugar Basket’s counter into something between a family buffet and a personal challenge.

The bakery had been closed for hours, but the warm scents of chocolate, cinnamon, and sugar still clung to the air. Snowmelt darkened the bottoms of our boots near the back door, and every time someone went into the kitchen, another wave of heat followed them out along with the smell of whatever Laurie had decided we could not possibly survive the night without eating.

I had already counted three kinds of pastry, a platter of sandwiches, two bowls of something Angie’s mother had sent over, and enough cookies to supply a children’s party twice the size of the one currently taking place around us.

My best friend Angie was attempting to wipe frosting from her youngest child’s cheek while Frankie, her husband, stood beside her holding a napkin and looking like a man who understood he had been assigned a ceremonial role.

“You’re making it worse,” Angie told him.

Frankie lifted the napkin. “I haven’t touched anybody.”

Angie gave him a look that suggested this was exactly the problem and went back to the frosting.

Frankie looked across the table at me. “I’d like it noted that I offered assistance.”

I raised my glass in solemn acknowledgment. “I’ll include it in the official report.”

“See?” His grin widened toward Angie. “Sybil appreciates me.”

“I appreciate documentation,” I said, and Damien’s quiet laugh came from beside me.

I turned toward him, and the rest of whatever I might have said disappeared for a moment.

Ten weeks of dating him had not made that particular problem any less distracting.