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  from her and she didn’t get to spoil you. She wants to be the grandma who bakes. But she can’t bake, she burns everything, so she buys the brownies and reheats them.”

  “For me,” Troy said.

  “For you.”

  Troy chewed on that for a minute. “Mom doesn’t even try to cook,” he finally said. “So I don’t care that Grandma buys the brownies instead of baking them herself. I just love to eat them.”

  At this much of Tanner’s amusement faded. He really didn’t have any business judging Elisa. He didn’t care that she hadn’t baked their kid brownies. But he cared that Troy had been robbed of his mom’s nurturing company. “As much as you love to eat them,” he said, “that’s how much she loves to provide them for you. And she likes you thinking she made them, so pretend you don’t know otherwise.” He lifted a hand when Troy started to respond. “Look, I can’t explain the female mind to you. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

  Troy’s mouth quirked at the very corners in an almost smile and Tanner felt like he’d been given a winning lottery ticket.

  An hour later, he dropped Troy off at school with a “Try to stay out of trouble.”

  The teen slid out of the truck and had to hike up his too-loose jeans or lose them.

  Tanner shook his head. Been a damn long time since he couldn’t walk for risk of mooning everyone around him.

  Troy vanished inside the school, and Tanner sat there watching him go, feeling everything his own mom must have felt every single day—a terrorizing love and an equally terrorizing fear that he’d somehow screw up this parenting gig.

  Finally he pulled out of the school and headed to the bakery. He needed his day’s fix of coffee, and possibly a lobotomy for his inexplicable desire to see Callie again.

  Up until a week ago he could’ve gotten coffee in the hut, but Cole and Sam had gotten into a paintball fight and the machine had been the only casualty. There were other, closer places than the bakery to get coffee.

  Eat Me Diner, for one.

  The town’s bar and grill, the Love Shack, for another.

  But Tanner took the extra block, parked, and strode into the bakery, unable to pretend he was doing anything other than hoping for another glimpse of the awkwardly sexy strawberry blonde who’d made him smile for two mornings running.

  The tables were all filled, even the back corner one that he already thought of as “their” table. A woman was seated there, head down, eyes glued to her laptop.

  Callie.

  She was in real pants today, skinny jeans tucked into black leather boots that revved his engines, and a long, soft sweater the exact color of her jade-green eyes. She was chewing on her lower lip, staring at her screen, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world.

  But thanks to the military Tanner was a master of reading the tiniest minute details, and he caught on to the fact that she was watching him out of the corner of her eye. Not so oblivious to him at all, a fact that was somehow both cute and hot at the same time.

  As he watched, a guy walked up to her, gesturing to the empty chair at her table, clearly asking if he could sit.

  Callie blinked up at him and shook her head.

  The guy moved off.

  Someone else immediately moved in, and she waved them off as well, a frown on her face.

  Most definitely a lobotomy, he thought, and drawn to her like a magnet, he bought two coffees, four doughnuts, and moved in close. “Morning.”

  She jumped and looked at him, her cheeks going pink. “Um. Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  She paused and, looking endearingly nervous, offered him a rather self-deprecatory smile.

  And he realized…

  She’d been saving the chair for him.

  He liked that.

  He liked that a whole hell of a lot.

  And that’s when he thought maybe his day was going to get better after all. “That guy you turned away wanted to buy you a coffee,” he said.

  “He would’ve had more luck if he’d been offering doughnuts.”

  Yep. Definitely getting better, he thought, and handed her his bag of doughnuts.

  Chapter 7

  By the time Tanner grabbed the empty chair and pulled it out for himself, Callie’s heart was knocking hard against her ribs in panic.

  And okay, a little bit of lust as well. Or, you know, a lot.

  In checking up on her grandma, she’d been through Lucille’s social media pages. Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter…and she’d inadvertently learned a lot about Lucky Harbor’s citizens.

  One in particular.

  Tanner Riggs was Lucky Harbor’s current most popular bachelor. Actually, Lucille had called him the Last Hot Single Guy for Two Hundred Miles. Callie wondered if he knew. Not that she was going to be the one to tell him if he didn’t.

  “Real pants today,” Tanner noted. “I like the boots.”

  She’d argued with herself earlier when she’d gotten out of the shower and stared into her closet. Yoga pants or jeans? Don’t care or care?

  Turned out she cared. Hence the jeans.

  And the boots. “They’re my kick-ass boots,” she said.

  He smiled and she forgot how to breathe. Just plain forgot.

  “You plan on kicking any ass today?” he asked.

  “Too early to tell,” she responded. Look at her, all smooth and cool. “But I wanted the odds balanced in my favor if anything comes up.”

  “I like the way you think.” He straightened out his leg, letting out a long, careful exhale as he did.

  “You okay?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes.” He drank deeply of his coffee and her gaze was drawn to his throat as he swallowed.

  And then his broad chest.

  And flat abs.

  And the way his jeans—faded and threadbare in some of the good spots—fit him. Which was perfectly. “I meant your leg,” she said.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Huh,” she said.

  He slid her a look. “Huh what?”

  “Well, it’s just that ‘it’s fine’ is a typical guy response. Men tend to use ‘fine’ as a catchall.”

  “A catchall.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You know, a noun, adjective, adverb, whatever. Tell me the truth—your leg could be literally falling off and you’d still say it was fine, right?”

  “Nah,” he said. “When it was actually threatening to fall off, I was most definitely not fine.”

  Her smile faded and she regretted her flippancy. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Shit happens. You were saving me a seat,” he said, back to teasing.

  “No,” she said in automatic denial. “I—”

  He flashed her a knowing grin that was so innately Tanner-Riggs-of-the-Past—all cocky, popular football star, aka the guy she’d never been able to say two words to without tripping over her own tongue—that she once again found herself momentarily tongue-tied.

  “What are you working on?” he asked, gesturing to her laptop. “Ordering a litter? Designing three-D wedding invitations?”

  “Both,” she managed to say in what she hoped was a perfectly normal voice.

  Because you are perfectly normal, she reminded herself. You are not just a computer geek. You are so much more. You…ah, hell. She couldn’t think of a single thing when he was looking at her like that, like maybe she was amusing him again.

  “Your job suits you,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You have this sort of…” He waved his cup at her. “Dreamy, romantic air about you.”

  She let out a low laugh and he set his cup down, sitting forward, at attention. “You going to start choking again?” he asked.

  “No,” she assured him. Or she hoped not anyway. “And it’s not a romantic job. It’s a technical job.”

  “How are hearts and flowers and chariots technical?” he asked.

  “Okay,” she conceded. “Maybe it’s romantic for a minute or two, if