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Moments later, they were seated on a bench outside in front of the shop.

Once again, she was leaning into him. “Tell me about what you were up to when you left town,” she asked between bites.

He tilted his head. “Like what?”

She shrugged. “Did you date a lot?”

He snorted. “That’swhat you want to know?”

“What?” She laughed. “I’m curious. I won’t be mad.”

Ash sobered. He could hear the ever-so-slight note of worry in her voice. Draping his arm around her shoulder, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “Honestly?”

“Honestly,” she whispered.

“I stopped going out on dates around the time I left town.”

She stiffened, craning her head around to look at him. “You’re joking.”

He shook his head, not a degree of amusement in his gaze. “I’m not. After…” He blew out a nervous breath. “After that night, I tried to forget about you—about how it felt to kiss you.”He shut his eyes tight, trying to clear his thoughts. “I shouldn’t have kissed you then. The guilt ate at me for years. Still does.”

Charlie continued to stare at him, and he fidgeted beneath it.

He cleared his throat and turned his head to choke out a cough. “I tried to forget because I thought—Iknewit could never work between us. Our lives were like two shooting stars, never destined to line up.”

16

Charlie

Charlie rolled out the dough that had been resting for the last thirty minutes. Ash stood next to her with his own. They were shoulder to shoulder, quietly working. To say it had been difficult to keep their relationship a secret was the understatement of the century.

Ash had to maintain the friendship he had with her brothers and the amount of time he spent hanging out with them or they’d start asking questions—like if he’d broken things off with his girlfriend.

On a similar note, her family knew she wasn’t dating. She rarely went out with anyone—friends or otherwise. If she suddenly spent all her time taking trips to the city, they’d definitely be giving her the third degree.

It was her lot in life, she supposed. Being the youngest sister in a family of mostly men—men who were now married but few who had children—they needed something to consume theirtime. She had no doubt that the second she mentioned she was seeing someone, they would demand an audience.

Ash nudged her slightly, nearly knocking her off balance.

She laughed. “I’m trying to roll out the pasta dough, and you should be doing the same,” she admonished.

He reached forward to pinch some of the flour from the pile they had and rubbed his fingers over the dough. He hadn’t needed anymore, and he definitely didn’t need the second pinch he reached for either.

“You shouldn’t do that?—”

Ash turned to her and rubbed his thumb down her nose.

Her mouth dropped open as she stared at him.

He snickered, then motioned to her face. “You’ve got a little something… just there.”

Her brothers had planned on being away for most of the day—none of them even coming home for lunch. It had been one of the reasons they’d done one of their cooking lessons on a Thursday rather than on their usual Wednesday of the week, and it was definitely the only reason Ash would have been so bold as to flirt with her like that.

Charlie reached for her own dusting of flour and tossed it at him, marring his black T-shirt.

He let out a low rumble of laughter. It might have even sounded menacing if she wasn’t so enamored of him. Ash shook his head. “You really didn’t want to do that,” he said.

“Oh, yeah? Why not?”