Page 79 of Backlash

Her lip sticks out. “And who is getting your sausage?” When I don’t respond, she groans. “Not fair! I came all the way from New York to see you!”

“Without calling to tell me you were coming,” I point out.

“As a surprise!” She feigns devastation. “Only to discover I’ve been replaced by MacBitchFace.”

She watches, faux-wistfully, as I use a mortar and pestle to grind fresh za’atar, a dizzyingly fragrant mix of thyme, sesame, and a dried berry called sumac.

“No one can replace you,” I tell her, and I mean it.

“Unless it comes to dinner,” she mutters.

Adair opens the door to her suite just wide enough to slide through, purse in hand, wearing a loose linen sundress. Her hair is pinned into an artful mess on top of her head, revealing her long porcelain neck. The straps of her dress are thin enough that I can see every delicious freckle on her shoulders.

“Something wrong with your door?” I ask, leaning in to kiss her. It’s swift, a brush of my lips, before she can stop me. When I pull back, her cheeks are flushed pink.

She swallows before saying in a business-like voice, “I thought it best we keep a safe distance between us and a bed.”

“If memory serves, the wall suited you just fine.” I pat the wallpaper for good measure.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warns me, “or I’ll start bringing a chaperone with us on all our dates.”

Dates? As in plural? That’s a good sign. I try to keep my face blank, but she must see something hiding there, because she sighs.

“Keep it in your pants, okay?”

“Happy to,” I promise, offering her my arm. I’m already dreaming up all the things I can do to her with my pants on. I don’t mind being generous.

“I don’t like the look on your face,” she says, but she loops her arm through mine, anyway. “So, where are we going?”

“Guess.”

“Hennie’s,” she says.

“As much as I will live and die for hot chicken,” I say, “—and I will—I thought something more romantic might be in order.”

“I thought we were going to talk.” She stops in the middle of the Eaton’s lobby so abruptly that a bellhop nearly runs over her with a baggage cart.

“We are.” I tug her forward, calling an apology to the guy who’s collecting suitcases from the floor and shoving them back on the cart.

“About you,” she says, “not us.”

“There’s not a me without you,” I say without thinking. She stops again and I turn to her. Cupping her face in my palm, I look into her green eyes. “I’m really trying here. I promise.”

Uncertainty flickers across her face, but she finally nods. “Okay, let’s go, but it better be neutral territory.”

“It doesn’t get more neutral,” I promise her, closing my free hand over the one hooked around my elbow. Neutral or not, she’s not getting away again.

It’s a typical, sultry summer night in Nashville. Neon signs glow under the waxing sun. There’s still a couple of hours until sunset, but the light has already begun to fade to the rosy glow of twilight as we drive away from the city and towards Valmont.

“Neutral territory?” she says with a raised eyebrow when we pass the first mile marker.

“There’s not a lot places in Tennessee that are neutral for us,” I remind her. If I was doing this perfectly, I would take her out to the far reaches of Windfall’s grounds like we did on our first picnic. That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to risk going anywhere near her family estate at the moment. Besides, the last time we did that, we rode horses, which Adair doesn’t do anymore. The thought jogs my memory. “Why don’t you ride anymore?”

“There was an accident,” she says tersely, suddenly taking an intense interest in the scenery outside.

“You said that.” I wait for more of an explanation when she doesn’t continue, I add, “If you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t.” I can tell by her tone that she means it.