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“Anyway, my list only sayskiss. So don’t worry. I can get a kiss and still make my goal.”

“There really is a list?” Quinn asked.

“Maybe.”

“Oh, Rory. You are a delightful little weirdo.”

The way Quinn said that made her feel not quite so bad. Made her feel like perhaps it was all okay. To be weird. She’d had the epiphany the other day that she was good with small groups.

But she would really like to be good with a crowd.

Do you? Or is it just how you imagine it would feel to be good with a crowd?

Well. Whatever.

She drove home, thinking about passion, and Jenga towers, and Gideon Payne’s thighs.

Somewhere in there, she felt like she could find the truth. She just wasn’t quite sure of all the particulars.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HENEEDEDAbreak from Rory. Some time to get his head on straight, and he wasn’t going to get it. Between the rope-climbing training and the upcoming hike, his world was pretty Rory-centric at the moment.

And you’re solving that by...taking her shopping?

Okay. Maybe he needed a break, but he was pretty consciously not taking one.

They were heading out to Mapleton to go to the outdoor store so they could find everything they needed.

That in and of itself would be kind of a trip.

She had her date tomorrow night. Fine.

Then the day after that they would go on the hike, and that would probably keep her from hooking up with that guy.

Gideon didn’t like the look of him.

If Rory had never been on a date before...

Well, that didn’t mean anything much about her sexual experience, he supposed.

She had to be twenty-seven. The idea that she might not have been with anybody seemed pretty ludicrous.

He got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Back when he’d picked her up from school, he never got inside. She had raced out the minute he pulled in, and that had been it. They’d driven away for school. But he figured since this wasn’t that kind of thing now, he might go to the door.

His footsteps seemed a little bit too heavy on the front steps. He felt like he was surrounded by metaphors he didn’t want to explore. So he didn’t. He just knocked on the door.

Fia answered. She was pretty; he’d noticed that the other day. Hell, he’d noticed it back then.

They were about the same age, and he’d seen her around town often enough. She was maybe a year behind in school but hadn’t gone to the high school in Mapleton.

“Hi, Gideon,” she said. “More time with Rory today?”

This must be what it was like to pick a girl up for a date and be confronted by an overprotective father.

He didn’t know because every father he’d ever dealt with had been thrilled to have him picking up their daughter.

Fia was clearlysuspicious.