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She drew in a deep breath, trying to slow her racing pulse. She didn’t think anything would be able to calm her down, but he smelled familiar, of coffee and the pines behind his house. And now, because they were in a bakery and he’d just been carrying doughnuts, a little bit of sugar. It was that smell that eased her breathing, made her heart slow just enough that she thought it might not give out on her. “It was just one creak. Maybe it wasn’t—”

Creak. She went to jump closer to him, only she couldn’t possibly get any closer, so it was her cheek that nestled into the center of his chest, his chin tucked into her hair. She fit perfectly, she realized a little inanely. And pointlessly. Because William wouldn’t like her being this close to Leo, his warmth and his strength sending waves of heat through her. Understandably.

She broke away, taking in a deep shuddering breath, and was immediately seized with panic again. Fighting the urge to dive back into him, she squared her shoulders and called into the hallway, “Is someone there?”

No response. She went to take a step toward the hallway, steeling every nerve she had and telling herself that maybe getting arrested could be good publicity for her show—because there was no such thing as bad publicity, right?—but Leo stepped in front of her, taking the lead. “We’re not supposed to be here, but we don’t want any trouble,” he said, and his voice was deeper and more sonorous than Shira had ever heard it. It would’ve made her quake in her boots if she weren’t already quaking in her boots. “We just came to pick up our prepaid order. We’ll go right now.”

Still no response. Leo took another few steps toward the hallway. She couldn’t let him go alone—she followed.

They saw it at the same time, and he huffed out a breath as her shoulders relaxed. A squirrel. Nothing but a stupid squirrel who’d ventured a few steps in through the open door, probably drawn by the smell of all these baked goods, but who froze upon seeing them and darted outside before they could even say anything. “At least we scared it away,” Shira said faintly. “What if we’d locked it inside the bakery?”

“That squirrel would’ve thought it won the lottery,” Leo said, and she let out a breathless laugh. “Didn’t we close that door?”

“Clearly not all the way.” The only thing she wanted to do right then was flee, but they’d left the doughnuts behind, so they backtracked to the kitchen, where Shira was relieved to find, upon checking a few of the boxes, that their drop to the floor hadn’t damaged the goods too badly. She’d tell her family that they had to stick to the damaged ones and leave the pristine ones for guests. “Okay, let’s get out of here,” she said, but Leo stopped her.

“I thought you wanted some banana bread or something.”

She couldn’t admit that she was a chicken now. But her daring only went so far after her near heart attack; she didn’t take the time to scrutinize everything on offer, just grabbed a few of whatever was in front, tossed what was probably way too much money on the counter in exchange, and beat it down the hall, ready to get the hell out.

Once they were outside and Leo had relocked the door behind them, she let out another breathless laugh. “We did it!”

“I feel so alive,” he said dryly, though he was still smiling as he placed the order for the party in his back seat.

She was, too, and the feeling didn’t fade even after they pulled away.

9

Leo’s heart was still pounding as he drove away, but not because of the crime they’d committed, or even the moment when they thought they’d been caught. No, it was that moment when Shira had been tucked up tight against him, heart thumping so hard he could feel it vibrating through him like an earthquake, her hair up against his face smelling like lavender and something else that was quintessentially Shira.

She had a boyfriend. She didn’t have feelings for him the way he had feelings for her. That was okay. He had to accept that if he wanted to keep their rekindled friendship, which he one hundred percent did.

It was just hard to think that way when the scent of her hair was still in his nose.

He knew the best thing to do for his own sake was probably drop her home to her boyfriend, but the smell of banana bread was hard to resist, so when she said, “Can we please pull over somewhere and eat our spoils?” he replied, “Yes, of course,” and he pulled the car off into the parking lot of a drugstore.

As she unbuckled and turned to reach over the console into the back seat, her hair brushed up against his cheek again. He held his breath until she’d turned back around, brown paper bag clutched in her tight little fingers. “Should we start with the lemon thing or the banana bread?”

“The lemon thing,” he picked at random. He couldn’t stop watching her fingers as they flexed and cupped, pulled off a chunk of lemon tart. She didn’t need to make art. She was art.

Stop it, Leo. That’s not a friend-like thought.

The lemon thing, as he’d called it, was delicious, tart and bright, with a sweet buttery crust. They wolfed it down in about three seconds. “Banana bread?” he asked, then realized she was staring down at her fingers. Hopefully not thinking about licking them, because that might make him lose his mind. “You okay? You didn’t develop a lemon allergy in the last nine years, did you?”

Her eyes were pointed at a woman doing her hardest to detach a shopping cart without paying the twenty-five-cent fee, but Shira was clearly staring somewhere beyond her. “I think this is the first dessert I’ve eaten since last year.”

“What are you talking about?” Shira had always loved sweets—brownies, ice cream bars, whatever else was full of sugar and would make your dentist shake their head.

“My boss would never say it, of course. That would be highly illegal,” Shira said. “But if you spend all your time in an art gallery, you should look like art, too. Your clothes, your hair, your body. People should want to look at you.”

Leo hadn’t noticed before, but her hair did look smoother and shinier and straighter in a way it had always refused to as a kid. “I would think the opposite. That you would want your employees to blend into the walls so that people would pay more attention to the art.”

Shira’s bark of a laugh was short and tense. “I would think so, too. But it’s still a man’s world at the top, and what they want goes.” She was quiet for a moment. “I’m due for a promotion in the new year. Probably next month.”

“Wow.” Leo wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Uh, congrats?”

“Thanks,” she said in a monotone. She raised one hand to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, leaving a crumb or two on her cheek. “It’ll come with a small salary bump, of course, but more pressure. More hours. Part of my new job description will be fraternizing with emerging artists, so I’ll be scouting them out at smaller galleries and traveling to other cities in search of someone my boss can break out big.”

Leo wasn’t sure what to say to that, either, so he just said nothing. Waiting.