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“She had her hands where?” Noah had already told her once, but Gracie wanted to hear it again as she checked the oven to see how the brownies were coming along.

“Everywhere. She was all over him.”

“Oh my goodness.” Gracie closed the oven door with a giggle. She was so relieved that Matt was okay—well, other than a concussion and shoulder injury—that she felt downright giddy. Which must be why she was giggling and gossiping with Noah like a schoolgirl.

It certainly had nothing to do with their little kiss earlier. Not even a kiss. A peck. Minor lip contact, really. And who gets giddy over minor lip contact from her ex-husband? Nobody. Definitely not Gracie.

Nope, she was just happy that Matt was okay. They still hadn’t been able to reach Mona, but Gracie didn’t care. She felt better having Matt under her own roof where she could keep an eye on him anyway—and maybe find out what exactly was going on between him and Rachel. “You sure they weren’t just hugging?”

“I’m telling you,” Noah said, grabbing a coffee mug from one of the hooks hanging on the wall next to the baker’s rack. “When I got there, Matt had Rachel on his lap like she was his favorite teddy bear and he was never letting her go.”

“Well, see? That just sounds more like a hug. They’ve always been good buddies.”

“Mmm, I’m pretty sure there was a little lip action too. A car’s headlights got in my way, so I couldn’t tell for sure. But I do know this—buddies don’t look at each other the way they were looking at each other. Trust me.” Noah dipped his chin and hit Gracie with a tender, un-buddy-like gaze, before filling his mug with the coffee she’d brewed after he left when she needed something to do other than go crazy while she waited for an update. When that hadn’t been enough, she’d started baking brownies.

“Wow,” she murmured. “He was looking at her like that?”

“Like what?” Noah set the pot back on the burner.

“Uh, nothing.” She shook her head. Stop. One little tap of the lips that lasted hardly a millisecond, and now she was imagining smoldering looks from her ex-husband.

Husband!

No wait, she had it right the first time. Ex-husband.

“I’ve always thought those two would be perfect for each other,” Gracie said, needing to get her thoughts back on Matt and Rachel and far away from herself and Noah. “I was shocked when he asked Aimee to go to prom with him.”

“He didn’t ask her.”

“Of course he did. I took pictures of them before the dance.”

“But he thought he was going with Rachel.”

“Why would he think he was going with Rachel if he was going with Aimee?”

“Because Rachel set him up with Aimee. He thought she was setting him up with herself, but no, turned out to be Aimee. The whole thing was a disaster. He was crushed.”

“How do you know all this? He never said anything about Rachel or being crushed. I mean, good grief, he dated Aimee for what? Five years? He couldn’t have been that crushed.”

“He told me about it the other day. Said he never loved Aimee. He’s always loved Rachel.”

“So then why isn’t he doing anything about it? Rachel’s wonderful.”

“He is doing something about it. Or at least he’s trying to. Sometimes these things take time. Especially when there’s a strong-willed woman involved.” He hit her with another one of his smoldering, un-buddy-like gazes.

She really needed to figure out how to make him stop doing that. The smolder. The lip contact. All of it.

Maybe if she treated him more like a buddy, she’d douse these unwanted sparks.

Maybe the buddy system would also help them navigate the rough terrain they still had to cover in his memoir too. Instead of arguing, they could just be two platonic friends on a sole mission to finish the memoir.

Well, maybe their sole mission tonight could be to finish making brownies and work up a plan to help Matt and Rachel move beyond the platonic to something special.

But after that, first thing tomorrow—the memoir and only the memoir.