Page 43 of You've Got Male

“You need me to put the fear of God into him?” Jonah asked with a tone of protectiveness that had Evie’s heart taking a nosedive to her stomach. Here was someone who wasn’t even blood related doing something Camila’s own father had never done for her.

“Yes,” she said as the brake lights of Milo’s car disappeared into the night. She sighed. “Am I being too protective?”

Jonah walked up the steps to her porch, not stopping until his big body filled the frame of her doorway. He was dressed in flip-flops, cargo shorts with a million and one pockets, and a simple black T-shirt that clung to his biceps and a jaw-dropping chest she tried her best to ignore. Nothing even close to the kind of dress clothes her suitors at the shop had worn, yet he managed to light her south-of-the-border furnace. Then there was the full grocery bag he held in his arm, the neck of a wine bottle and a baguette sticking out the top.

“Do you feel like you’re being protective?” he asked.

She snorted. “What kind of therapy crap is that?”

He smiled and,oh boy,was she in trouble. “Crap my therapist says.”

For the first time that day, Evie actually laughed and, just like that, all the pent-up stress was replaced by something lighter. She pointed to the bag. “What’s that?”

“A thank-you for potty-gate.”

“I already said you didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to,” he said. “You saved my ass with Way. Again. And I haven’t thanked you for having my back with the board, even though I did sic rats on your grandmother’s roses. Our families have been friends for over a decade, we’ve been neighbors for over a decade, and I don’t want fruit trees and ClickByte to come between our friendship. ”

“Well, this isn’t public, so not part of the deal. And friends is all it can be.”

He seemed to think that over and nodded. “Deal. Then how about you invite me in for a friendly dinner. Ryan is on babysitting duty, and I have a bottle of red and a bowl of my famous spaghetti.”

“Famous, huh?”

“Well, it’s famous for being the only thing I can really cook without burning it.”

“Jar or homemade sauce?”

“A little of both?”

She considered the ramifications of inviting him in, then remembered what they’d just agreed to—friends. And he was right, there was a lot of history between them, and it would be a travesty to see it all go to waste.

“I already have a salad in the fridge.”

“Talk about a perfect pairing.” There was that smile again that set her furnace ablaze. Which was a problem because south-of-the-border blazes didn’t fit into this new “just for show” pact.

“A drama-free dinner sounds nice,” she said and backed up so he could enter.

“Are you saying the neighbor-war is over?”

“I wouldn’t say over.” She led him to the kitchen. “But we can put the feud on standstill for one night.”

“Then I better make the night count.”

He swept past her into the kitchen, the scent of testosterone and yummy male lingering in his wake. It had been a long time since she’d had a man over for dinner. Long as in, the last man she had at her dinner table—and she wasn’t talking about Paul with the receding hairline who worked mall security, Stan the steam cleaner salesman, or any of the other strangers her mom randomly invited to dinner as Evie’s plus-one—had been Mateo.

Oh, Jonah had eaten at her table in the past, but there was always family around. Tonight, it was just them. The girls were on a date and her dad had retired to bed, leaving just Evie and the mysterious single dad next door. Because that’s what he was to her—a mystery. She knew him as a husband, a dad, even as a neighbor, but she’d never known him as only her friend.

She looked at the table and then at Jonah and suddenly it all felt so intimate. Too intimate. The kind of intimate that could derail her carefully laid plans.

“Why don’t you grab the wine opener and take a seat at the counter.”

He gave her a knowing grin. “You afraid I’m going to whip some candles and flowers out of the bag?”

She swallowed. “Are there candles in the bag?”

“Do you want there to be candles and roses?”

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