She. Was he expecting her? Talking about her? She felt a flush start.
And then Marshall stepped through the door and flashed that smile that seemed to light from somewhere inside him and take Gracie’s poor heart for a ride.
And the “shoulders for days” didn’t help matters.
“Gracie,” he said, with that jolt of pleasure that always sounded like he was happy to see her where he hadn’t expected to. “Hey. I was going to come find you today. I’ve got something.”
“I—me, too,” she said, and then nearly laughed at herself. Me, too? What was she, sixteen?
He jerked his chin toward the back. “Come on. You gotta see.”
She followed him through the door and into the Craving Clean kitchen, which looked much like hers—stainless steel, trays cooling, good prep lighting. It was smaller, definitely, but bustling and so clean.
There was a laptop open on a metal prep table, an image on the screen of a building that somehow looked like her shopand his, to scale, with measurements and notes about food and coloring.
Next to it were two square bakery boxes. “Okay, don’t laugh,” he said, sliding them toward her.
Inside one, stacks of perfectly square gingerbread panels; the other held something similar, only lighter and more textured.
“I figured we could test-drive the combo,” he said, his dark eyes hopeful. “Yours—sweet, classic g-bread, smells like Christmas. Mine—almond flour, protein powder, not as pretty, but it holds up. I thought maybe we could blend ’em—two entrances, two flavors, same structure—just like we talked about.”
Gracie blinked, then laughed softly. “You baked already?”
“I did.”
“You baked gingerbread with sugar and…real flour?”
He laughed, the sound somehow both boyish and deliciously masculine. “It didn’t break the oven, only my healthy heart.”
“Wow,” she said, looking down at the two samples, wishing she could do better than “wow” but, as always, words escaped her. Along with rational thought and her purpose for this visit.
“I wanted to make sure the walls don’t cave in the second a kid breathes on it. The oat version’s sturdier but yours is obviously prettier. So at some point they’ll have to”—he picked up one darker gingerbread and one of the pale oat pieces and fit them together like puzzle halves—“meet in the middle. Your beauty and my health.”
Why, oh goodness gracious, why did that sound like a flirtatious invitation to…
To not tell him the truth.
Her chest tightened, that dangerous combination of amusement and something else. “Marshall,” she said, half-scolding, half-melting.
He held up both hands, laughing. “I know, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself. I just thought if we’re doing this thing, we should be prepared for it to not go perfectly smoothly, but in the end, it’ll be something exquisite.”
Was he talking about a gingerbread house or…them?
For a second, neither of them moved. In that flash of time, she saw something in his dark eyes—a glimmer of attraction…the faintest flicker of hope.
It was almost as if…helikedher. The way Olivia and Benny had imagined.
Then he cleared his throat and nudged the boxes toward her again, weirdly awkward. “Anyway. That’s my play. Team effort. Sorry. You said you had something to tell me?”
Yes, she did have something to tell him. The speech she’d written in her head all the way down Main Street. The explanation that their hilarious and brilliant kids had tied them together like a pair of shoes and expected them to walk. The…
Helikedher.
And what was she going to do about that? Slam the proverbial door in his face, stay safe in her comfort zone, and hide behind a wall that she denied she had?
Gracie swallowed. She could still say it. She had thirty ways to tell the truth, and every single one of them began with, “I need to explain what Benny and Olivia did.”
He watched her with that steady patience she hadn’t expected from a man whose shoulders had carried stadiums’ worth of shouting. Football players understood fouls. Boundaries. Calling a play dead and starting again. He would understand if she told him the setup was wrong.
