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He appreciated her conclusion but couldn’t quite figure out how to respond.

“Are you trying not to brag right now?” Leslie said.

“It’s only our first date.”

She gave a quiet laugh. “I want to know. Come on, Ryker, I give you full permission to brag.”

“I love what I do,” he said, “and I’m very good.”

She blinked. “That’s it?”

He shrugged, but he couldn’t help how the smile took over his face. “I’ve worked for the FBI a few times.”

“A few?”

“I’m only thirty. I’m just getting started. I want to help send bad guys to jail for the next hundred years or more.”

“And how’d you get into this? Any connection to your mom’s job?”

“It’s thanks to her job I found out about forensic accounting when I was still in high school. And I’m definitely further along my career path than I’d be without the family name.”

“Maddox?” Leslie took a bite of cake, then nearly choked on it. “Wait. Isn’t there a Senator Maddox from Virginia?”

Here it was. He sighed. “Senator Laurence Maddox. My dad.”

Leslie sipped her water, blinked a few times. “Wow.”

“My dad grew up pretty poor, and he had this vision that I’d have it better. The original plan was that I’d grow up to be a CFO, make a million by thirty. To his credit, when I told him I wanted this, he supported me all the way.”

“So you’re not a millionaire.”

“No.”

She cocked her head. “What are you not saying now?”

If they dated, she’d know eventually. And he’d always believed there was no time like the present—another saying of Dad’s. “I’m financially comfortable. I have investments. Knowing how my dad grew up, I don’t take it for granted.”

“Hmm.” She forked the last bite of cake, then sat still a moment, studying it. She looked up and met his eyes, the final bite still perched on her fork. “It’s nice that you recognize what you have.”

She finished the cake as if the topic were settled. Then she set the fork down and began shaking her head.

“What?” he said.

“Compared to all that… I’m the worst cliché. I’m literally the small-town girl from every rom-com, making ends meet by day and making art by night, having dinner with the parents once a week, getting along with the town wolf pack.”

“I’ve never seen a rom-com that included a wolf pack.”

“Oh, stop.” A smile tugged her mouth, but the light-indigo of her eyes flattened to an even paler shade that looked somehow dingy, mixed with gray. “It doesn’t bother you that my life is so…small?”

“When you put it that way…”

Leslie cast her eyes down and bit her lip.

“…the main thing I’m worried about is that some human guy wearing surprisingly tailored flannel is going to walk through that door and remind you how smitten you were with him in second grade.”

Leslie gaped at him, then burst out in a musical laugh that made his heart thump hard again. “You’re right. In the rom-com, you lose, impressive city career man.”

“Every time.”