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She looked toward the window and nodded.

I set the chili on the stove and turned toward the table where a single chair sat pushed against it. I’d never needed another one. Nobody ate here but me. Unless I wanted Emmy to sit in my lap, I needed another one now. I went down the hall to the office, rolled my desk chair back to the kitchen, and parked it across from mine.

Emmy looked at the chair. Then at me. “Your desk chair?”

“It’s the only other one I’ve got.”

She sat, then pushed off with one foot and turned a slow half circle, like somebody had handed her a present. “This might actually be the most fun thing you own.”

CHAPTER 3

EMMY

The chili was excellent, which seemed unfair considering he already had the whole broad-shouldered, competent-in-an-emergency thing working in his favor. I took another bite and decided I was mature enough to admit when a man had done something well, even if that man had spent the past hour ordering me around like I’d shown up at his house specifically to test his patience.

“This is really good.”

Cole sat across from me at the kitchen table with one forearm resting next to his bowl. He looked up, completely unsurprised by the compliment. “You sound shocked.”

“I am. You don’t exactly give off a spends-Sunday-afternoon-testing-recipes vibe.”

“I don’t test recipes.”

“Of course you don’t.”

He tore open another packet of crackers and crumbled them over his chili.

I watched him for another second. “So you just woke up one day knowing how to make this?”

“My grandma taught me.”

The answer caught me off guard, not because there was anything strange about it, but because it was the first personal thing he’d offered.

I set down my spoon. “Were you close to your grandma?”

His gaze flicked toward mine before returning to his bowl. “She raised me.”

There was something in his tone that made it clear he wasn’t inviting questions.

I could recognize a closed door when I saw one. I’d spent the past six months closing enough of my own. “She must have been a good cook.”

“The best.”

His voice softened when he said it, making me curious about the woman who had taught him how to survive adolescence and make chili worth getting iced in for.

“My mom tried to teach me how to cook,” I said. “I can manage dinner without poisoning anyone, but I don’t have one of those meals people remember twenty years later.”

Cole lifted his eyes. “You cook?”

“I own a nice set of pots and pans.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Yeah, I can cook.”

A corner of his mouth shifted.

I pointed my spoon at him. “You don’t believe me.”