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“Sorry?”

“This is Daisy three.” He moved a hand toward my bike. “What happened to the others?”

I followed his gaze to the sign hanging off the back of my saddle and my cheeks heated. He’d probably taken a hefty eyeful of my ass while he examined it. I’d painted the plaque myself, but I hung back when Brody’s eyes drifted toward it again. My work shorts were high cut, and I couldn’t remember if I’d de-fluffed my thighs this week.

“OG Daisy met a terrible end,” I told him.

“This, I’ve gotta hear.”

Under his blue-eyed gaze, how could I resist? “I was at the medieval fair and got a bit carried away in the bicycle jousting. Daisy ended up wrapped around a lamppost after my trash can lid got tangled in her spokes.”

He huffed a gentle laugh, his brows raising.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine. I put her to good use in the community garden. She’s currently growing chives out of her handlebars.”

Brody grinned at me. “A trash can lid? Chives? Only you, Ro.”

“The lid was part of my weaponry. You know, like a shield.”

He chuckled, and the sound made my insides flip in delight. “Listen, buddy, when someone’s charging at you with a vacuum nozzle, you’re grateful for anything solid. I was just unlucky, and it slipped out of my hands.”

He shook his head, running a hand over the back of his neck. “Okay, point taken. So how about Daisy Two?”

I gave a theatrical sigh. “Losing Daisy Two was a little more traumatic.”

The corners of his eyes did that crinkling thing they did when he smirked. “Dare I ask why?”

“They kidnapped her.”

“What? Kidnapped her? Who?”

A breeze whipped the end of my ponytail into my mouth, and I blew a raspberry to get rid of it. “Coop and a couple of friends played a trick on me. They stole her after a night at the CrowBar. Wrote me a ransom note and everything.” Nights out at the Crow, Tuft Swallow’s only watering hole, often ended in shenanigans.

Brody curled a perfect, fair brow at me. “What did they demand?”

“Three cases of beer, the phone number of one of my friends, and breakfast in bed for a week.”

“For all three of them? Wouldn’t that involve a lot of cooking? A lot of coordination? Did they assign you a schedule for overnight stays? Kind of like a timeshare plan?”

I tried hard to glare at Brody, but his grin had my lips tugging at the corners.

“The breakfast was just for Coop. Anyway, I caught the measles and had to stay in bed for days, so I forgot. I figured Coop would get bored and bring her back.”

“And he didn’t?”

“No. I found her chained up in the branches of a tree two weeks later, covered in rust.”

Brody scoffed. “Did you make her useful as well?”

“Not really. I couldn’t think of a safe way to get her down on my own, so I abandoned her. It’s okay, though. A family of Woodpeckers made a nest in her basket, so the town council declared her a site of ornithological importance. No doubt she’ll be up in that tree until the apocalypse.”

As I circled around him, Brody’s shoulders shook with laughter, straining against his T-shirt. Powerful, solid, and impressive. I sucked in my lower lip. How the hell had he even created them? Surely carrying a wooden stick around for a living didn’t result in the natural equivalent of a suit of armor?

When his shuddering subsided, he ran his hand through his hair and turned his eyes back on me. “I’ve missed you, Ro.”

The softness of his voice and those four simple words kicked my heart up a notch, and I sucked in a breath. Something stirred in the air between us, and I planted my eyes firmly on the road ahead. Could he hear my heart beating from the sidewalk? It was deafening to me.

He drew up closer alongside me, all lemon and mint. “Ro…”