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“Just that, if another man had brought you as much pleasure as that chicken just did, I’d have to kick his ass.”

Makayla licked her fingers and put the bones down. "My dad used to say we were like the mongoose and the viper. He never knew which one was going to kill the other."

"I don't know what that's like. My family has always been close."

Makayla's chest tightened. "My dad and I used to be really close, before he died."

"He died in a car wreck, right?"

A lump rose in her throat. She wasn’t ready to talk about him yet. "Yeah."

He grabbed her hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"It's okay. Do you want some dessert?" She gathered their plates and threw them in the trash.

"Sure." He followed her into the kitchen. "What have we got?"

"Well, I made a Dutch apple pie, and a peach cobbler. Cherry, blackberry, and brown butter pecan muffins. Then I made a blackout fudge cake and a carrot cake."

"Where did you learn to bake all this stuff?"

She shrugged. "It's just something I've always loved to do. And making a mess in the kitchen for the maid to clean up infuriated my mom. So it was a double win."

Caleb chuckled and sat on a stool. "Well, how about you start serving them to me one at a time, and when I burst, I'll stop."

"Okay." She pulled out a knife and cut a slice of the peach cobbler. "Let's start with the peach."

* * *

For an hour Calebsat at the counter trying all of Makayla's desserts and loving each one more than the last. The woman couldn't cook, but damn she could bake.

"So which ones for the picnic," she finally asked.

Caleb felt his stomach close to bursting as he popped the last of a muffin in his mouth.

"The peach, definitely. And the apple. The berry was great too, same with the cherry and the pecan."

She snorted. "Well that's all of them so..."

He smiled. "Honestly, with baking like that, you could take everything on the counter and smoosh them together, and they would still be better than any other desserts in this town."

Her cheeks tinged with pink. "You're just saying that."

"No. I'm not. I bet if you opened a bakery you'd be sold out every day by noon."

She smiled and looked down at the counter. She swirled her finger in the glaze from the apple pie and then sucked on it. Caleb's pants grew tight as he imagined pulling her finger into his mouth and licking all the sugary goodness off of it for himself.

He imagined dripping it down onto her throat and licking from her breast up to her earlobe. She looked up at him, and he dropped his gaze and coughed.

"Yeah, so make anything you want. Seriously, it will be amazing."

"Well, what's your favorite?" she asked.

"I really like Dutch apple myself. But the peach cobbler is right up there with it."

She nodded, and they stared at each other for a long minute. He'd not seen her that happy or relaxed since she'd arrived, and he wondered if she was finally beginning to feel like this was a place she could stay long-term.

"So, I was thinking maybe I'd go to town with you tomorrow and go to the library, and then we could have lunch at the diner, since we didn't get a chance today,” she said.