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Cam smiled. Cooking food that people loved was nice. So often, when she was testing recipes alone in her New York apartment, she wound up with more food than she could ever eat. Sometimes she took paper plates down to the street to see if she could find an unhoused person who might want it. But often, she just threw it away. And it was pleasant to always have someone around to eat with. Not that Parsley was bad company. Just not much of a conversationalist.

“Is that incense I smell?” Francine asked as a musky scent from upstairs met the aroma of roasted vegetables. “I didn’t peg Birdie as the hippie sort.”

“We have a, ah, kind of a houseguest,” Cam explained. “I’ll tell you about her another time.”

“Okay,” Francine said, spearing a chunk of roasted eggplant with her fork. Before she popped it into her mouth, she paused. “Oh, I meant to tell you something interesting I read in that biography of Marshall Merriweather that we got from the library.”

“You read that whole thing?” Cam asked, recalling the brick-thick tome.

“What can I say? I needed something to help me sleep,” Francine said. “Seriously, the guy was boooring, and so is this book, unless you think that the shipping business is fascinating and want to know how many bushels of crops were loaded on every steamship on the bay. But this seemed like something notable. Apparently when Marshall wrote the book, the protagonist was the little girl—the sister. But in the version that was published, he had changed it to be the brother who ended up saving Stormy.”

“Did the biography say why they changed it?” Cam asked.

“Marshall requested the change from his publisher after submitting it,” Francine said. “Marshall Merriweather’s papers that the biographer used included a letter where he asked them to change it but didn’t say why.”

“Maybe he realized a boy as the hero would be more marketable?” Cam suggested.

“Probably. What was it that I said about the patriarchy?” she asked, stabbing another hunk of pepper. “Eff it.”

A short while later, after Francine had left, Cam squared her shoulders. She could do this, she told herself. She could look Ian McCabe in the eyes (those very, very sexy blue eyes) and tell him that she wasn’t interested in him. Which of course wasn’t true. She was extremely interested in him and what might have happened between them on Saturday night. But what she wasn’t interested in was trying to be a part of his complicated life.

And then she would ask him whether it would be okay to ask Paige to work with her. Simple, right? That’s what she told herself as she threw on a coat and headed to where Ian and Paige were working.

“Cam!” Ian called as she approached, his eyes searching hers. “Take a look. We’re making progress here.” He pointed to the wall, where fresh new lumber had taken the place of the splintered siding. “We’ve got this side framed up, and I’ll soon be able to put insulation in. Roof starts next week. I’ll get scaffolding up for that.”

“Great,” she said, barely paying attention to the details he was pointing out. Until now, she had taken a great interest in his progress and enjoyed hearing him talk about things he was obviously passionate about but were completely unfamiliar to her, from millwork profiles to period-accurate nails. But now she didn’t want to be near him a minute longer than she needed. It would only make her resolve melt like warm butter on a scone. “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Paige,” Cam said, “there are a few more of those oatmeal cookies in the tin on the kitchen counter if you want to go take a break. I’ll be done with your dad in just a minute.” I wish, she thought. It would take more than a minute to get Ian out of her system.

“Cool,” Paige mumbled, and made off toward the kitchen, obviously pleased to have a reason to escape.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Ian said. “What’s up with that? Look, before you say anything, I just want to say thank you for everything you did on Saturday night. You were great, keeping Paige on the phone like that, helping her calm down. I was out of my mind, and you were cool as a cucumber. And it was really, really nice to have somebody—to have you—with me. Not that I’ve had a scare quite like that before, but I usually have to handle any parenting crisis that comes up solo. So thanks.”

“Ian, I—” she began.

“Wait,” he interrupted her. “I just have one more thing to say and then I promise I will shut up, but I have to tell you, what happened before Paige called—it was amazing. And I’d very much like to do it again. All of it. More.” His eyes searched hers, and for a millisecond, Cam considered throwing her arms around him again and repeating that kiss. But that wasn’t what she had come here to do. And throwing caution to the wind had never been in the Cam Parker playbook.

“That can’t happen, Ian,” she said, choosing her words carefully and forcing a tone of clipped matter-of-factness into her voice, making it clear that the topic wasn’t open for debate. “It just seems like you’ve got a lot going on right now, and so do I. And then in a few days, really, I’m heading back to New York. So it’s for the best that we don’t start something.”

Ian opened his mouth, looking like he wanted to protest, but this time, Cam cut him off.

“Anyway, I really came out here to ask you something. Would it be okay if I offered Paige a job for the rest of the week?”

Ian looked puzzled, and rightly so. One minute she was breaking things off with him, and the next, she was acting like an HR director. “A job?”

“I need an assistant for catering the fete on Friday. I just need a set of extra hands, and I figured that rather than bringing her to work with you to keep an eye on her, she could work with me, and I could make sure she doesn’t go off on another adventure.” Cam kept her voice businesslike. “I’ll pay her above minimum wage, and the work would be nothing too awful, lots of peeling and chopping.”

Ian took off the work glove from his right hand and rubbed the stubble on his chin. Cam had noticed him doing that before when he was working out a problem on the jobsite, figuring out how to make something work or double-checking his measurements. “Sure,” he finally said, his own voice tight and more formal than it had been just a few moments ago. “That would actually be good for her. I think she knows that around here, with me, it’s more of a babysitting situation. She knows what she did was wrong, but I get the feeling that she still resents me wanting to keep her close.”

Ian turned away and picked up a piece of lumber. “Thanks, Cam.”

“That’s settled, then,” Cam said. “I’ll go talk to her about it now.”

As she headed back to the kitchen, she spotted a determined Izzy striding toward them. Izzy was wearing workout clothes topped by a long, cream-colored cashmere cardigan that instantly made Cam feel frumpy in comparison, in her jeans and the turtleneck sweater she’d borrowed from Birdie. Before Cam could make introductions, Izzy walked up to Ian and tapped the back of his thick jacket.

“Hiiiiiii,” she said with a flash of her famous smile, only this one read to Cam like more saccharin than sugar, as she motioned to the miter tool he had set up on sawhorses. “Can you, like, turn that thing down? I’m trying to meditate upstairs, and it’s totally ruining my vibe.”