Page 22 of The Party Line

I stepped back and motioned for him to come inside. “Now, that’s a real friend, for sure. Thank you so much for doing that. The coffee is ready. You will eat with me, won’t you?”

“Unless you plan to eat a dozen muffins for breakfast,” he answered. “I have to admit, I only bought six orange-cranberry. The other half dozen are blueberry.”

“I like them, too.” I led the way back to the kitchen. “Maybe we’ll share some of each.”

While I poured coffee, he opened the box and laid out a napkin at two places. He was dressed in camouflage pants and an army green T-shirt that stretched over his broad chest like it had been sprayed on with a can of paint.

“What did you do in the army?” I asked.

He wiggled his eyebrows. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. What I did was classified. How about you? What was your job?”

I picked up an orange-cranberry muffin, peeled the paper back, and took a bite. “Oh. My. Gosh. These are even better than the ones I got in Austin. To answer your question, I did taxes, payroll—all those things that big corporations need someone to do for them ... but I quit.”

“Really?” His voice couldn’t hide the surprise.

“Really. But I’ll go to work for my mama and Annie this next week.”

“Are you going to be a cook?”

I shook my head. “No, but I will take care of the finances for them and organize the catering jobs so that they can do the cooking. Think you will be bored by the change from the military to selling strawberries and learning about the oil business?”

“So far, so good.” He flashed a smile that lit up the room. “Grandpa keeps a calendar on his phone, and every day there’s something for us to do. It amazes me how quickly he learned how to use a cell phone.”

A faint whiff of his shaving lotion—something woodsy—drifted across the table. I caught myself before I took a deep breath to get an even better sniff of it. “Aunt Gracie never would have one. She said that her landline was good enough, and she wasn’t going to carry the world around in her apron pocket.”

“Smart woman,” Connor said with a nod. “All this techno stuff is going to be the ruin of the world, for sure.”

“That sounded like something Jasper would say.” I reached for a blueberry muffin at the same time he did, and our hands got tangled up inside the box.

“Our hands have got to stop meeting like this,” he flirted.

“But my hand enjoys it so much,” I teased right back.

His eyes sparkled. “So does mine, but we are friends who have muffins together on Saturdays. Our hands will be disappointed, but we shouldn’t ruin a good friendship.”

“Oh, then this is not a one-time thing?” My hand was still tingling from the heat that had passed between us.

“Oh, no!” he declared with a shake of his head. “Now that the strawberry picking is done, we might both be so busy that we can’t catch up except on muffin mornings. And since we are friends, maybe I could enlist your help in getting the strawberry pavilion folded up and put away until fall?”

“Sure,” I agreed with half a giggle, “but only because we are friends.” If he could pretend to ignore the sparks, then so could I.

“And you get muffins on Saturday?” He wiggled his dark eyebrows.

“Well, there is that.” I peeled the paper off another muffin and bit off a chunk. I needed time for my mind to catch up with my heart, which was a mile ahead of it. Yes, Connor was handsome. The scar on his cheek jacked that up to downright sexy. Yes, his eyes mesmerized me. Yes, he had admitted to feeling chemistry between us.

But was that just one of his many pickup lines? Was he playing me to get me to fall in love with him so he could talk me out of my house and land and leave me with nothing but a broken heart? Those questions sobered me up—or maybe, I should say, they cooled me down. The last words in Aunt Gracie’s diary came back to me, along with a question. If I fell in love with Connor, would I find out whether a broken heart could kill me?

“So, we have a muffin date every Saturday morning?” I asked.

He stood up, crossed the room, and brought back the coffeepot. He topped off my mug and then filled his. “A muffin friendship catchup on Saturday, then, and a friend that helps me tear down canopies.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

Does it really?Aunt Gracie’s voice was back in my head.Remember what I told you to do when opportunity knocks on the door?

Invite it in and feed it chocolate cake. What makes you think Connor is an opportunity for anything other than a friend that’s close to my age?

“Earth to Lila ...” Connor’s deep drawl took me away from my visit with Aunt Gracie.

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