Page 51 of Best Kept Vows

I hesitated before responding, not sure if he was teasing. “Not unless you count chasing my kids around when they were little.”

“Shame.” He gave me a slow, easy grin, and then looked me up and down. “You’ve got the legs for it.”

I blinked at him, surprised. Was he flirting with me?

I looked down at my simple sundress and sandals,then back at him. Lev’s expression was warm, not sleazy or over-the-top, just sincere. He said it like it was an obvious fact.

And it felt…good.

Reallygood.

Heat crept up my neck. “I’ve never played soccer in my life.”

He tilted his head slightly, his green eyes twinkling. “How about you join me next weekend if you’re not busy?”

Oh?

“You know, like a…date,” he finished.

I blinked.

“I…ah….” It had been over two decades since I’d been even half interested in a man who wasn’t Michael Fassbender, and he didn’t count because he didn’t know I existed.

“We won’t call it a date,” he offered with a soft chuckle.

“Why?” The word came out without my thinking about it. I was flustered. “No…I didn’t mean?—”

“Relax, Lia.” He tilted his head and studied me. “Luna told me you look a little like Audrey Hepburn, and you do.”

I wasn’t naïve enough to think it meant anything. Yet, I still wanted to preen.

“I better go,” I mumbled.

“So, next Saturday?” he asked.

Lev Steele was a charming, good-looking man, and I was certain that I wasn’t the first woman he’d casually complimented.

I licked my lips and shrugged. “That’s too far into the future for me to make a decision about right now.”

Was I flirting back?Good God!

“Alright, Audrey. I’ll come by next Saturday and see where you’re at.”

He opened the car door for me, like a gentleman, and waited until I was driving away before he took off. I watched him jog toward the park through my rearview mirror.

Talk about giving a woman a hot flash, I thought, amused with myself. Sure, it was surface-level, wasn’t it? Lev didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him. But who the hell cared? A little surface level was maybe what I needed.

That feeling stayed with me even as I drove on the long driveway to the Boone crypt, which was what I called Sebastian’s parents’ home. Coco had a similar but smaller house not too far away. When I’d refused to live in a place like this—opulent and impossible to run without a whole lot of people working for you—Coco and Dolly had insinuated it was because I was oh sobourgeois.

At least I was living within my means, I thought smugly. I knew enough about Boone Metals to understand that the company was struggling, and the family was living off of Abraham’s investments—and Sebastian fearedbeyondit. He worried that his father had taken on debt, which he hoped to pay through profits from Boone Metals, which wasn’t profitable, not right now.

Sebastian had been happy, he told me, that we had a lifestyle that we could sustain. I didn’tneed tobuy this season’s designer wear. Instead, I shopped at ThredUp, an online vintage store—not just to be mindful of money, but because, as Ada had once pointed out when she introducedme to it, it was a more environmentally sustainable choice. She had completely turned me off fast fashion.

“Hi, Pamela. How are you?” I said to Dolly’s housekeeper, who’d been working here since before I’d married Sebastian.

“The cook has made your favorite for lunch.”

“Collard greens?”