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“Your dad too.”

Kate studied him. “He likes you more now that he’s stopped worrying you’re secretly judging everything he does.”

“He thought that?”

“At first.” Kate rested her back against the tree. “Not because of anything you did. Dad spent years being very good at what he did for a living, and now he’s started again at something where he has to ask basic questions. I don’t think he was prepared for how uncomfortable that would feel.”

Wes understood that. “He asks good questions.”

“I think he knows that now.”

For a moment Kate watched Penny moving slowly along the hedge. Then her hand settled in the grass between them. Wes looked down. Their fingers were almost touching. He moved his hand slightly. Kate hooked her little finger around his. The contact was tiny. It went through him anyway. Wes turned his hand until their fingers threaded together properly, resting between them against the grass.

Kate looked down at their joined hands. Then at him. The look lingered. Neither of them smiled this time. There was too much memory in it.

Wes’s thumb moved slowly across her knuckles. Kate shifted a fraction closer.

“You look tired,” she said.

“So do you.”

Her mouth curved. “I wonder why.”

Wes’s gaze dropped to her lips again. Kate’s fingers tightened around his. For one long second she seemed about to lean toward him. He almost did the same.

Then Penny whispered loudly from the hedge. “I saw something.”

Kate closed her eyes briefly. Wes bit back a laugh.

“What?” Kate called.

“I don’t know yet.”

“That sounds promising.”

Penny crouched again, entirely absorbed.

Kate turned back to Wes. They were still holding hands. “Maybe later,” she murmured.

Wes’s bear immediately approved. Definitely later.

Kate’s eyebrows lifted. For a second he thought she had heard his bear. Then she smiled. That smile did not help.

Wes picked up the pie before he forgot why they had sat down in the first place. For a while they ate in comfortable silence. Kate did not move away from him. Their shoulders touched now, her knee resting against his, their joined hands loose between them whenever neither needed the fork. Wes liked the ease of it.

Last night had changed something between them, but not in the dramatic way he might once have imagined. There had been no awkwardness when she arrived this morning. No need to ask what the night meant. She had come looking for him.

“I nearly messaged you when I got home,” Kate said eventually.

Wes turned toward her. “Why didn’t you?”

“I’d been gone about ten minutes.”

“That wouldn’t have stopped me answering.”

“I know that now.”

Wes watched her. “What were you going to say?”