“Even as toddlers, you two were inseparable,” Dad continues. “Literally, on some occasions. You fought like cats and dogs, yet somehow ended up laughing and playing happily five minutes later. You always wanted to sit together whenever we sat down for a meal or a movie or anything like that. And if we tried to move you . . .” Dad chuckles. “Oh, the tantrums we’d get! When we went to the water park for your fourth birthday, Olivia, Bill tried to take Noah to the men’s room and you both nearly had a conniption. Your mothers had to take you together to the women’s and you held hands under the wall between stalls.”

What? How have I never heard this story before?

And more importantly, how is this relevant?

“That was over twenty years ago,” I protest. “I hardly see what it has to do with us now.”

From the pinched expression on Prescott’s face, he agrees with me. Neither of us expected a trip down memory lane.

But once Dad gets started rambling, he can’t be stopped. “Oh, but I’ve got dozens of great stories about you two. The first time our families vacationed at the beach together—all the summers before then, you were still too young to travel far from home—Noah accidentally sat on your sand castle and you started crying, so he built you a new one and found a starfish to decorate it.”

“I think I actually remember that,” Noah muses. “And you gave me your ice cream when I dropped mine.”

“Here’s one you might have been old enough to remember. Olivia, on your first day of elementary school, some boy was hassling you on the playground, and Noah punched him right in the kisser. Bought himself a one-way ticket straight to the principal’s office. And he marched the whole way there with a smile on his face, happy to take whatever punishment he was given. For you.”

Now that Dad mentions it, I do remember this story. I guess some things never change. That exact same scenario—Noah rushing to my defense—has played out with Brad not once, but twice recently. And he’d do just about anything for Rosita too. Noah still has the same strong sense of justice, the same streak of protective compassion.

He just cares so much about people. And he approaches life from his gut, not his head. That hot-blooded quality is something that I’ve come to appreciate, as a fresh perspective in the workplace, charm in an unconventional romance, and a sexy rush in bed. It’s not that I don’t care about people; it’s just easier for me to set aside my emotions in order to think clearly, whereas Noah feels so fiercely that he can never escape their pull.

From the way he talked about our duty to Tate & Cane, it was clear that the thought of laying off our employees ate him up inside. Bad enough, I guess, to paralyze him, to bar him from telling me the truth until desperation broke him free.

But that doesn’t change anything. Doesn’t erase his lies or heal my wounded trust. His general depth of feeling or capacity for caring isn’t the issue on the table here. If he really cared about me specifically, he wouldn’t have hidden the truth for so long and then scared the hell out of me that night. He could be the best man in the world to run this company and still be the wrong man for me.

“Don’t forget what happened the next day,” Noah says, unaware of my racing thoughts. “That same kid made fun of me for getting in trouble—when he got off scot-free, the little shit—so Olivia kicked him in the giblets and went to the principal’s office too.”

Dad bursts out laughing. “Really? I never heard that one. I guess Susie kept a few secrets from me after all.” He inclines his head at me. “But that only proves my point. At the first hint of someone messing with him, you came running, ready to teach them a lesson.”

How weird. I must have cooled down with age . . . because the only other explanation is that I’m more similar to Noah than I thought.

“That’s hardly the only time she’s saved me.” Noah turns his affectionate smile to me, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners, and I just can’t look away. “I’d wait until the last minute to start school projects, then panic and beg you for help, and you’d roll your eyes and scold me, but you always gave me advice and checked my work. I don’t even know how many times—”

“I can give you an estimate,” I remark dryly. “It was about fifteen, maybe twenty.”

“I admit, I had my head up my ass until after I graduated from high school,” Noah says with a sigh.

“Only until then? That’s not how it seemed to me.”

Noah turns up his palms with a shrug. “Okay, fine, after college. But who doesn’t?”

Dad interjects, “You had your silly moments too, sweetheart. When Noah first started dating—you were twelve, I think—you were so irritable for months. Out of nowhere, you would start ranting about how ‘I don’t care about that stupid jerk, he can do whatever he wants’ when no one in the room had suggested otherwise. Or even brought up the subject at all, for that matter.”

My cheeks flame red as Noah starts laughing. “D-dad . . .” I squawk.

“Oh my God, that’s perfect.” Noah chuckles. “I can just picture it. It’s exactly what you would do.”

I glare at him, still blushing. “Shut up.”

“But he made up for it,” Dad says. “For your fifteenth birthday, he gave you a framed picture of the first hundred digits of pi, written in binary.”

Now it’s Noah’s turn to go a little pink. “Jesus, that was so dumb. I just figured, hey, she likes numbers and math and stuff, right?”