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“Perhaps on the next leg of your drive, you can record your own podcast: the Art of Skipping Stones and other Masculine Zen Pursuits.”

“Why is skipping stones a masculine pursuit?” She struck a pose. “Not masculine.”

He choked on his spit, and Nico felt a spurt of triumph. “It just is. Father to son. Or in my case, grandfather to son.”

Her heart pinched a little. This man, so full of charm, whimsy, and sex appeal without the arrogant swagger hadn’t had a father as a role model.

What would she have become without her father, her mother, plunked down in an anonymous family? Would she still have played the same sports? Would she have studied the law?

Would she still have become a monster?

“And if you have a daughter?” she challenged.

Something changed. Well, everything. His energy. The easygoing smile. The light in his eyes. He closed up like the sea anemones she’d see on the tidal pools in the Hamptons.

“Well then, my daughter and I will stand on the shore of Miracle Lake and skip stones across its surface until she breaks ten,” he said, his voice a little rough.

It was the first time she felt he’d lied to her.

*

Bodhi relaxed inthe bed of his truck and leaned back, oddly at peace. Nico cuddled in his arms, asleep, her fiery hair caught in the stubble on his chin. She was slim, but soft and curved like a woman, and her light citrus and floral scent was addictive. He drew in another deep breath and tucked the blanket more closely around her body. She murmured his name, and her palm flattened over his heart.

He looked down at her elegantly slim hand. A sense of destiny warred with his usual caution around women. She was so refined, everything he wasn’t. And yet, she pulled some string he didn’t know he had, winding him up, reeling him in, and it didn’t have as much to do with her beauty or her body as he would have liked.

Sex was easy.

All he’d ever had with women.

All he’d wanted.

Yeah, keep lying to yourself.

He saw the first shooting star of what was supposed to be a spectacular meteor shower over the next few nights. Bodhi had intended to come out here on his own tonight to watch the meteor shower turn into dawn, but now he was with Nico. She’d wanted to watch, but she’d fallen asleep, instinctively cuddling into him, draped over his body the way women often did after sex even though he hadn’t even kissed her yet.

It was weird. He wanted to lose himself in her body, prove it was just sexual attraction, but he didn’t want to treat her like any of the others.

Why? Because she was an enigma? Was his curiosity driving him to poke the snake until it bit? He wanted to understand her, understand what created that cool watchful regard. He could see her thinking the entire time, analyzing, but then she would take joy in simple moments: skipping the stone, seeing a buck drinking at the lake, sitting in the back of his truck with a few blankets for an evening of stargazing without seeming to think that meant code for getting naked.

She seemed to have no idea how beautiful she was. Or how sensual.

And how the hell was that possible?

She moved against him, one hand sliding low around his body, causing his already semi-hard erection to push harder at his jeans.

It would be easy to lose himself in sex. Familiar. Something in him rebelled just a little, but he could shut that voice up. He’d done it his entire life. Except tonight.

Although it had started before now.

The end of last season. The letter from a dead man.

Ash losing her light.

Both his cousins pulling away but watching him like he was an unexploded bomb.

And now Granddad making noise about selling the ranch.

He had to do something. Tie up the loose ends so that everyone could have their happy ever after. Wasn’t that what all the romance novels Ash liked to consume promised? The HEA.