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“Like he wants to murder me?”

Marc chuckled and offered me the two red beanbags. “There’s a fine line between hate and horny.”

So fine, apparently Blaze was the only one who could see it. But I didn’t say that.

I took the bags, feeling my cheeks heat. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about Blaze being horny but apparently not horny enough for him to agree to my proposal. It was only the smallest kindness Frankie afforded me by not telling Marc that I’d already proposed a no-strings-attached fling. All she’d told him was that Blaze had a thing for me but was fighting it and needed a friendly push in the right direction.

“You guys ready?” Nox called from the other side of the playing field. He’d paired up with my cousin Kit, the middle Kinkade sibling between the oldest, Jamie, and the twins.

“Yeah,” Marc called back just before he turned to me. “All right, so how do I do this?” He tossed a beanbag in the air, caught it, and then held his arm like he was pitching a baseball.

“Wrong sport,” I said, unable to stop myself from laughing. “Here. I’ll go first, so you can see.”

I stepped to the edge of the board, focused on the opposing one, and then carefully underhand-tossed my bean bag. It landed on the board and skated into the hole.

“Wow.” Marc stared. “Nice job.” He held out his hand for a low five. I wasn’t surprised when I felt the ripple of Blaze’s stare on my skin more than the slap of my hand against Marc’s. “So, is that a hole in one?”

“Wrong sport again.”

“Not a sports guy.” He grinned and winked at me. My brows crunched, confused why he was winking now. “Blaze was watching.”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and focused on Nox and Kit. “Your turn.”

My brother had a rare smile on his face, though I was sure some dry comment or sarcastic joke was soon to follow. I missed the days when his smile was easy and he was as much of a jokester as Frankie, but those days, and my lighthearted brother were gone.

“Your turn, Sunshine.” Marc held out the red beanbags, and I realized I’d missed not only his turn, but Nox and Kit’s, too.

“Thanks,” I murmured and lined up to throw. The first bag landed on the far corner and then slid off the board—a far cry from my first two throws.

I turned my head and found Blaze watching me from the patio. He stood with Wade and Jamie, but seemed sequestered from their conversation solely by his focus on me.

“I saw you’ve been posting some of your photos. How have they been doing?” Marc asked, reeling my attention back to safe harbor.

“Great. My socials and engagement have exploded. I said…I told Blaze, it’s a good thing I don’t sell online because I could never keep up with the demand.” Part of me felt like I was missing a huge opportunity, but a bigger part of me wasn’t ready for that. I liked my apiary. I liked my extremely small business. Maybe one day I’d want to grow it into something like my aunt had done with Stonebar Farms, selling her jam in most major grocery stores across the country, but that day wasn’t now.

“You haven’t shared any of the ones I took of you,” he remarked, and I guiltily ducked my head.

“They wouldn’t do nearly as much as posting the ones of Blaze,” I said, laughing like it could hide the twist in my stomach.

Everything Blaze had said—had promised about this arrangement was coming true. The negativity was being drowned out. New followers and new engagement were flooding my profile, completely unaware of the childish drama Adam had started. It was working…and I started to resent it.

Which was horrible because it was literally like Superman coming to save my bees. But as I scrolled through the comments masochistically hunting for negative ones, I was instead inundated with hundreds of posts salivating over Blaze.

I’d salivated over him, too—but the way he finally looked relaxed instead of always on edge. The way he appreciated my bees because they’d given his daughter a shelter of light in a world with too much darkness. The way he’d agreed to do all of this—to do anything (and to not do certain things) all for his daughter. That was what I saw in those photos—a tormented, self-sacrificing single father. What they saw was a hot movie star with perfect muscles licking his fingers.

“You can’t stay behind the scenes in your own story, sunshine,” he chided. “Even the photographer has to step out from behind the camera and look into the lens every so often.”

I smiled at him and said, “I’ll get there.” Maybe once Blaze was no longer living with me.

The comments objectifying Blaze were bad enough, but when I started seeing people in the comments wondering why he’d done this campaign in the first place, theories cropping up about who I was and, more importantly, who I was to him, my blood went cold.

It was obvious my business was small and couldn’t pay him to advertise like the dozen luxury brands or Michelin restaurants he’d endorsed before, which meant the arrangement was personal. And that was the truth only the public preferred a more salacious version of the truth than family helping family.

We threw a few more rounds. Max swapped in for Kit when Aurora needed help with the baby. The conversation moved to lighter topics—how Nox’s business was going. If he’d seen the new season of Glassmaster. If he thought about applying to be a contestant. That got a hard no. Nox had a plan: make glassware to support a storefront, and then use the storefront to display his more artistic creations.

“Have you talked to Aria about commercial spaces yet? She could keep an eye out for you,” Max suggested, and I followed his line of sight to the deck where the gorgeous redhead chatted with Blaze, the image of the two of them together knocking the air from my lungs.

Aria’s brother, Andre, was Nox’s childhood best friend, though I wasn’t sure they’d seen much of each other since Andre moved to Boston. Maybe that was what turned my brother sour, the loss of his best friend.