"Lazy is the last word that comes to mind when I think of you, you know," she says. "Although you haven't told me what it is that you do, exactly."

"I already told you. I bring unsuspecting women to the cabin and chop them into pieces." I turn on the oven to preheat, then pull the flatbread topped with rosemary and honey from the refrigerator and set it on the counter beside the stove before turning around.

"Funny. I meant, for work." She pauses, running her hand along the top of the island in the center of the kitchen. "Wow, this island is really beautiful."

"I made it."

"You made the island, too?"

I shrug. "It's pretty easy when you're already building a cabin. What's one more project?"

"I guess so." Lily pulls out one of the tall stools and sits down. "How long did it take you to do all of this?"

"A couple of months. Since I came back." I turn to slide the flatbread into the oven because it needs to go in, but also because I'm not sure what I want to tell her. Or how much of my fucked up life and my fucked up family she'll be able to handle before she high-tails it right the hell out of here. I'm enjoying having her here; I'd rather not have her go running just yet.

"You did all of this in a few months? That's incredible. I mean, I don't know how long it takes to build a cabin, so maybe that's just par for the course. But it seems pretty awesome."

I take the pre-prepped ingredients for the two side dishes jasmine rice with lemon and sauteed vegetables with a butter something-or-other sauce from the refrigerator, followed by everything I've prepped for the main dish rainbow trout with an orange saffron sauce. I set it all out on the counter. Luke gave me specific instructions for which order to make all of this stuff in, and I'm trying to be sly about not relying on the notes I scratched on a piece of paper that's folded in my back pocket. I'm trying to impress her with my culinary skills.

I'm trying to impress her with a lot of things.

"Nah, it's pretty awesome," I joke. I pause for a minute, surveying the ingredients, but really gathering up the courage to actually talk about myself. I don't talk about myself. The last time I talked to anyone about anything significant was telling Silas why I left West Bend when I did. "I worked the rigs out in Texas. I'm an oil rigger. That's what I do. Or did, anyway."

Why is it so hard to say that? I've never cared one whit about what anyone thought about me, but I'm suddenly holding my breath, expecting her to wrinkle her nose and call me a white trash hillbilly or something.

Instead, she takes a sip from her glass. "Cool."

32.

Lily I think he's nervous. Hell, I'm nervous. I need something to do with my hands, so I keep taking the tiniest of sips of the scotch, nursing the drink so it lasts forever. I don't know why this "date" seems like such a big deal. Killian worked at the bakery. He's been to my house. Shit, he even hung out with Chloe. And we fucked.

God, did we ever fuck. In my bed. Killian Saint was in my bed. He was inside me. Yet now we're both fumbling around awkwardly as he cooks dinner.

He's just as nervous to talk about himself as I am to talk about me.

I wonder if he's hiding a dirty secret as big as mine.

"What?" Killian turns around, his back to the stove where he has two pans of something cooking. He hasn't given me any clue about what he's making. He's just puttering around the kitchen like he does this all the time.

I'll admit, having a man cook for me is pretty much the best thing any man's done for me in a long time.

Other than the sex.

The toe-curling sex.

Oh yeah. Killian just asked me a question.

"Huh?" I ask.

Killian chuckles. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were sitting there staring at my ass."

"I told you. There's something about a man in an apron that I find irresistible," I lie. Yep, I totally wasn't just thinking about how damn nervous I am.

"Remind me never to take this off," he says, turning back to the stove and stirring something in the pan. He's silent for a minute, the sounds of vegetables crackling over butter in a saucepan and the music on the stereo being the only sounds in the cabin.

I wonder how Chloe is doing. I should text Opal.

I pick up my phone, then set it back down on the counter, because Opal will lecture me about how I should be enjoying myself with Killian, and there's nothing worse than a text-lecture.

As if it read my mind, my phone beeps loudly and I turn it over.

"Is it about Chloe?" Killian asks over his shoulder.

I read the text message and set the phone back down on the island. "It's my mother," I say with a sigh.

"Is everything okay?"

I laugh. "Chloe ratted me out."

"About us?" Killian slides a piece of toasted flatbread in front of me. "Voila."

"Yes." He says us like it's official. Is there an us? Do I want there to be an us? "That was my mother texting me because I've been avoiding talking to her."

"About me?" Killian says, his eyebrow arched.

"She's used to me being single." Nervousness rises in my chest, and I search for a way to change the subject. I take a bite of the flatbread and close my eyes, savoring it because it's that good. "Oh my God, you can cook."

"It's good?" Killian asks. When I open my eyes, he's watching me expectantly.

"It's... orgasmic."

Killian laughs. "Well, I was hoping to make you come during dinner."

"Whatever you have on the stove smells so good I might be close."

"Don't tease a man," he says, turning back to the stove. "This is all Luke's doing. He's the chef of the family. He helped me out here."

"Luke is your brother?" I ask, even though I know the answer, because I've committed to memory each little piece of information he's told me about himself, little breadcrumbs thrown out here and there.

"Yeah." He's silent for a long minute as he stirs stuff on the stove. "I'm taking a break."

I don't quite follow. "Okay. . . ?"

"From working," he clarifies. "I mean, I was working the rigs that's all I've done since I was eighteen and I came back because of... some shit that happened with my family." He sets down the spatula with a heavy sigh. "Do you want another scotch?"

I nod mutely. The prospect of actually talking about The Thing that I'm sure he's going to ask about my dead husband makes me anxious as hell. Another shot of liquid courage might be just what the doctor ordered.

When Killian returns, he takes a sip from his glass before setting it down and reaching into the refrigerator. "I hope you like trout."

"Did you catch that yourself?" I tease.

"This morning."

I laugh. "I was joking, but of course you caught your own meal."

He's silent as he pours white wine and orange juice into a saucepan. "Aren't you going to ask me what shit happened with my family?"

"Is that what you want me to ask you?"

He turns around and leans back against the counter. "Not really."

I shrug. "Then I won't ask you."

"Well, I'm going to tell you anyway, because you ought to know. If there's going to be more of... this or whatever." He pauses. "I'm surprised the fucking gossips in town haven't told you my whole life story already."

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly popular with the gossips."

"Yeah, well, neither is the Saint family. I guess maybe we're more acceptable now, to some people here anyway mostly on account of the fact that we helped bring down the town sheriff and got the mining company out of here. Luke's girl, Autumn she owns a cider orchard on the other side of town she shot the sheriff."

I take another sip of scotch, butterflies dancing in my stomach. His brother's girlfriend shot the town sheriff? What the hell am I getting myself into here?

My face must be pale, because Killian shakes his head. "Shit, this sounds worse than it is. I'm not very good at this."

"You're not very good at talking about how your brother's girlfriend shot the sheriff?" I tease.

"Hell, talking about any of it." He pauses to put trout filets into the pan, sending up a plume of steam from the stovetop.

I shrug. "I'm not really good at talking about shit in general." He turns around, stirring the pans on the stove and turning off the burners for everything except the fish, which he focuses on intently. "I want to tell you this, though. It's something I want you to know."

I take a gulp of the scotch in the tumbler this time, waiting for him to drop a bombshell. He's about to confess he's shot someone, too. Or that he's been married fifteen times.

Killian's voice interrupts my panicked thoughts. "People in this town hate us. Not necessarily hate us, I guess. They look down on us. A lot of them still do, I think even after Elias married River Andrews and everything "

"River Andrews?" I interrupt.

Killian's back is still turned to me as he slides food onto two plates. "Yeah, the movie star," he says nonchalantly. Like it's no big deal that one of the biggest actresses in Hollywood is married to his brother.

I can't choke back my laugh.

"That's funny?" he asks. He sets the plates down on the island. "I present to you Rainbow Trout with an Orange Saffron sauce, lemon jasmine rice, and... vegetables with some kind of fancy butter shit on them."

"Are you sure you're not a cook? This looks amazing."

Then he whisks the plates from under my nose, which is good, because in another second I'd have probably drooled on them. "Come on, I set us up outside."

"Let me grab my sweater." On the way back through the kitchen with my cardigan, I grab the phone, double-checking to make sure there are no text messages from Opal. Even though I know that Chloe is having fun, a nagging pang of guilt races through me. When I text Opal to make sure everything's okay, she replies almost immediately.

I'm surprised by your restraint. I expected a frantic text an hour ago.

I text her back.

Haha. How's Chloe?

She responds by sending a photo of Chloe in the backyard with a huge grin on her face and a watering can in her hand.

She's just fine. We're about to eat pizza and watch a movie. Get back to your date. I'll text you before she falls asleep so you can talk to her.

I reassure myself that I can do this. I can spend a grown-up evening away from my child and it doesn't make me a bad parent.

Then I go outside and see what exactly Killian set up, and I forget the mom guilt.

"Killian." I stand there, taking it all in, disbelief painted across my face. The deck behind the house is now bathed in soft light by the strings of bulbs that crisscross back and forth over the deck. In the middle is a wooden table and chairs with place settings and the dinner Killian cooked. Heaters on the corners warm the rapidly cooling early evening air, and music from inside the house softly wafts outside.

"I told you I was going to take you on a proper date."

"This is... more than a proper date." The butterflies in my stomach that had been erased by the scotch seem to have made their way right back to their place again, and I sit down wordlessly, still taking it all in. But once I'm sitting there with him, I begin to relax as Killian and I go back and forth with easy banter.

I'm still relaxed even when he starts talking about his family. It helps that dinner is probably the most amazing meal I've had in years, probably ever mouth-watering, nearly toe-curling, a prelude that only whets my appetite for dessert.

"The details are sordid," he warns me.

I choke back a laugh. "I know sordid."

You have no idea.

"Really?" he asks. I don't think anyone else would notice that he was nervous, not on the outside. But I can tell by the way his muscles twitch around his temple and by the wariness that crosses his face.

"You don't have to tell me, you know." When I speak the words, I know they're true. I think I just might be starting to trust him, and trust from me is a hard thing to come by.

"Well I want to." Then he opens his mouth and words spill out like he can't seem to stop himself once he starts. He tells me about his father, the town drunk who beat his mother and him, I think, even though he doesn't say as much. He tells me about growing up in West Bend as pariahs in a town so small that the residents decided who you were before you could even walk and the residents of West Bend had decided a long time ago that the Saint brothers were no good. He tells me about his mother killing his father, and then being murdered because of a corrupt town and a mining company that tried to defraud West Bend residents out of their property.

Judging from the nastiness of the old ladies gossiping outside of my store that day, I'd wager that many of the residents of West Bend hadn't changed their minds about the Saints, either, not even after Killian and his brothers basically saved residents in the town from ruin.

I listen and listen and when he finally finishes telling me everything, he gives me a sheepish look. "So, you know, that's all of my shit. Pretty much. In case you hear the old ladies in town gossiping about what a no-good son-of-a-bitch I am."

I shrug. "I'm perfectly capable of deciding you're a no good son-of-a-bitch on my own."

"Yes, you are."

"Besides, even if you're an ass, you're a good cook."

"And I have a big dick."