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“I do. I really do. It finally looks like someone is living here. Aury, you did a bang-up job with this.”

“Bang up? I don’t know that one…” she said, her hands on her hips.

He laughed.

“It’s a good thing, Aury. It means you killed it.”

“Killed it?” she asked, her perfectly manicured eyebrows halfway up her forehead.

“Never mind. I love it. So, here’s the pan,” he told her, handing the offending cookware over.

“Thank you. I’ll make sure she gets it.”

Owen nodded, tipped his hat, and started walking back down the stairs when she called him back.

“Owen, come here. Sit. I will pour the rum.”

“Oh, well, I’ve got to cook…” he started. She shook her head, telling him he didn’t have that option.

“No. You can sit for at least a drink. We need to talk.” He didn’t like the sound of that one bit, but he wasn’t getting out of there until he acquiesced.

So, he sat, pulled his chair up to the table and in half a second he had a glass full of ice and rum in equal parts. She joined him with one of her own and leaned in for the kill.

“You and Paige need to work this out.”

He sighed. Of course, she’d go there right out of the gate.

“We’ve tried,” he told her. He followed it with a long pull from his glass, figuring if he was going to have this conversation there wasn’t any way he was going to do it sober.

“No, you’ve done nothing of the sort. You need to sit, to drink, to listen without speaking.”

“But—” he started again, but her finger was up before he could get another word out.

“Listen.Withoutspeaking. Start now, yes?”

He nodded.

“Good. You understand.” Aurelie drank half her glass in one swallow and didn’t even flinch. “Paige loves you,” she added.

He was glad he wasn’t sipping on his own drink because he would have spat it back out. He went to open his mouth to reply but she gave him a look that told him he’d better not.

“She loves you, but she’s stubborn like you.” He shot her a look of his own but she ignored it. “Paige is going to leave, Owen.”

He couldn’t let this one go. “I know, damnit, I know.” He ran his hands through his hair, letting his hat fall to the floor.

“Stop,” she commanded. “She’s going to leave because she thinks you don’t want her. You cannot let her leave, Owen. You need to listen to her, ask what she is thinking.”

He swallowed back the urge to beg Aury to tell him where Paige was just then so he could chase her down, listen to everything she wanted to tell him so long as she kept talking and didn’t leave Banberry, but his pride won out. Regret stung the back of his throat like bile.

“You love her too, and you want to go to her but you’re stubborn, see? Like her.” Shit. She really had his number, didn’t she?

“Even if I go to her, what’s the chance she has anything to say to me I haven’t heard before?”

“If she doesn’t talk, then it’s your turn. Only then. And Owen, you had better figure out what to say because you only get one chance.”

“When?” he asked. She’d bought her ticket, that much he’d worked out. She was already packed, had never really unpacked, actually. What was left but for her to drive off into the sunset, alone?

Shit. What should he do?