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His smile appeared slowly. “I’m glad you did.”

That was all he said, but it was enough to make her absurdly pleased she had come.

Wes glanced back at the packing barn. “I’ve just finished. Or finished enough that anything still waiting can survive until morning.”

“You look tired.”

“I am.” He did not bother pretending otherwise. “Harvest has a way of making six o’clock feel a lot later than it is.”

“Then I shouldn’t keep you. I really was only walking.”

“I didn’t say I wanted you to go.” He nodded toward the house beyond the yard. “I was going to make coffee. Come in, if you want.”

Kate hesitated only because accepting felt more significant than it should have. She had been in his packing barn. She had walked through his orchard, danced with him, sat beside him in his truck. His house was different. “I’d like that.”

They crossed the yard together. Wes used the back door, which opened directly into the kitchen, and Kate smiled to herself as she followed him inside. Her parents had been in their farmhouse only a few weeks and already everyone ignored the front door there too.

“Sorry about the boots.” Wes glanced down at his.

“This is an orchard. I’d be worried if your kitchen floor had never seen mud.”

He kicked them off beside the door anyway and pushed them neatly against the wall.

Kate took off her jacket while he filled the coffee maker. She tried not to look around too obviously. She failed.

The kitchen was not large, but it was comfortable. A wooden table stood near the window with four chairs around it, one pushed back as though Wes had left it that morning and never thought to straighten it. Orchard paperwork occupied one end of the counter. There was a bowl containing three apples, a loaf of bread beside the toaster and a faded grocery list held to the refrigerator with a magnet. Nothing had been arranged for anybody else to admire. People actually lived differently from the way they imagined they did. Kate had built most of her career around noticing the difference.

Wes looked over his shoulder. “How bad is it?”

“What?”

“My kitchen. You’ve been in here for thirty seconds and you’ve already looked at every wall.”

Kate laughed. “Occupational hazard.”

“I was wondering whether you were mentally knocking anything down.”

“Not yet.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It isn’t.” She moved toward the table. “Actually, it works.”

Wes leaned back against the counter while the coffee brewed. “High praise.”

“You joke, but you’d be surprised how many kitchens don’t. People spend a fortune putting things where they look good on a drawing and then discover the coffee cups are six feet from the coffee maker and the trash can blocks the cupboard they use most often.”

He glanced toward the mug cupboard above his head. “Mine are right here.”

“I noticed.”

“And the trash is under the sink.”

“I noticed that too.”

Wes shook his head, smiling. “I’d hate to have you visit after I’d forgotten to put something away.”

Kate looked toward the paperwork. “This is putting things away. You use that counter for orchard work, so the paperwork lives there. If I made you hide it in an office every evening, you’d just carry it back here the next morning.”