“My dad left when I was younger,” she started. She could feel Gage’s eyes on her, watching every word fall from her lips as she began to spill out her secrets. “My mother was devastated. He broke her. Every day after he left was a struggle for her to live. I know that. But she tried. Put on a happy face for my sake. Was an amazing mother. But she was sad. Not a bummed out sad. This was…” She shook her head, remembering how every day she’d watched the light from her mother’s eyes fade more and more. As if every day she’d gotten further and further away from the hope that the man she’d loved would ever come back. He hadn’t.

And then her mother’s slow death had taken a literal turn. She’d discovered she had cancer. Which deteriorated her body while her father’s memory deteriorated her soul. On her last breath, she’d still wanted the son of a bitch that’d left them. All it did was make Chloe hate him more. Hate him for how he’d affected her mother until her last hour of life.

And she’d died knowing that.

“I can’t imagine how much it must have hurt her to lose him,” Gage said.

Chloe closed her eyes to fight back the emotions bubbling up in her. He didn’t know how close his words hit home for her. He couldn’t. He was just trying to be there for her now, but instead, he was emphasizing her point.

“This sadness ran through her like poison,” she said.

He inched closer and rested his big hand on the small of her back. “It sounds like she was a brave woman.”

That made Chloe drop her knife to the counter and look at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged and pulled her closer. “It’s brave to hold on to something, even when it hurts. It’s brave to acknowledge your feelings. She was sad, but she owned it. And she was still a good mother to you. She lived a full life. In part because she let herself love someone, even if that meant letting herself lose them.”

Chloe’s lips parted. She’d never thought of it that way. But Gage didn’t understand. He didn’t get it. How could he? He had no ties. He came and went as he pleased.

Her mother had set ties in this town. Set ties in Chloe’s father, too. She’d felt all the things that Chloe had seen leech her final years of joy. She’d felt a few years of bliss. And in the end she’d been left with sadness for taking a chance on love. She had to have known the risk, but she’d chosen to do it anyway.

And that was what Chloe held on to. What terrified her.

She looked at Gage, felt his comforting touch against her back, and wondered if she could be brave, too.

Chloe’s laugh made Gage’s chest do a crazy flip.

“You really got stuck in a tree once?” she asked around a smile, looking at him over the rim of her wineglass.

“Yeah, worse, the rope caught around one of my legs and left me dangling upside down like a damn possum.”

She laughed again, and he smiled.

He hadn’t been lying when he intimated he knew how much trouble Chloe had in the kitchen, but he knew something she didn’t. A good meal was half skill, half heart. And she had enough heart to feed the world—but she was afraid to let anyone get a piece of it.

So he helped her with the half he could. He wasn’t the world’s best cook himself, but he walked her through the simple pasta recipe he’d perfected over his years as a bachelor. And the hell of it was with her cooking beside him, the dish tasted better than ever.

Now, sitting at the small table, they drank wine and chatted, and every curve of her lips and flash of those green eyes had him going hard and filled him with warmth. She was gorgeous and guarded, but when those walls came down and he caught a glimpse of the real her, he couldn’t turn away. He loved her brazen sass, and this sweeter side? This was something he could get used to.

If she agrees to a long-distance relationship…

And that was the “if” he’d been struggling with for the last week. Whether or not he wanted Chloe wasn’t the question—it was the terms he wasn’t sure about. Coming back from S&R missions to a woman and a meal like this was all he wanted. The promise alone would let him face the risk of death without the fear of leaving this earth alone.

But would Chloe ever really want him for more than the occasional romp in the bedroom? When he’d started this whole thing, he’d been sure all he needed was for her to agree to one date. Then she’d see—they’d both see—how well they fit together.

He couldn’t lose hope now. Hesitation could make this whole thing fall apart.

“I’m sure you have a good-intentions-gone-wrong story,” he said.

She nodded and sipped her wine. “Yeah. When I was younger, maybe ten, I tried to make my mother dinner for her birthday. But I wasn’t allowed to use the stove.”

“So naturally you found a way around it,” he offered. If Chloe was half as stubborn as a child as she was as an adult, no rules could have kept her from her goal.

“Naturally,” she agreed with a sly smile. “We had this little electric grill we used for camping, so I figured I could use that. I brought it into the kitchen, plugged it in, and slapped some deli turkey on it.”

“Oh God,” he said. He had a pretty good idea of the kind of device she was talking about—it was strictly an outdoor grill.

“Long story short, the turkey burst into flames, the entire top of the grill had fire spitting out, and the smoke alarm went off. My terrified mother ran in and threw baking soda all over it. We were both a mess of white powder and smoke.”

Gage laughed. “You weren’t hurt though, right?”

“Just my pride.”

“I can see that.”

“Hey.” She tossed a piece of broccoli at him and laughed. “I’m learning.”

“You are. Dinner was wonderful.”

“Well, thanks for inviting me over and making me cook for you.”

“Oh sweetheart, I would never dream of making you do anything. We both know you wanted to.”

Her emerald eyes snared his and all seriousness laced her face. “True.” She hesitated, glancing at him, then the floor, then him again. She was going to tell him something, and though she was hesitating, he hoped—please God—that she’d go through with it.

She shrugged. “My mother cooked everything well, but crab cakes were her specialty.”

He nodded. “You’ve mentioned this. So tell me how you’re going about making them?”

“Not very well at all. You had me thinking, we made a whole meal with a few ingredients…and the crab cakes are the same. Not much goes in them. The whole process should be simple. I saw my mom do it a thousand times. But I still can’t get them right.”

He nodded. This was the closest to the real Chloe he’d seen yet, and he loved it. Speaking of love… “It sounds cliché, sweetheart, but your mother cooked with love. You cook with… vengeance.”

She laughed. “Shut up.”

He snickered and sighed. “Maybe try to relax. Stop fighting it. Open your heart to letting the dish be what it needs to be, then let it turn out the way it will.”

“You think it’s that simple?”

He smiled. “I know it’s that simple. That’s how it is with anything. You can’t force yourself…you can’t force anything to be something other than what it already is. You let it breathe. You accept it. You love it.” He touched her hand. “You do that with these crab cakes, they’ll be everything you remember them being.”

He let the unspoken words hang between them. They couldn’t force their relationship to be anything other than what it was, either. If only she would treat it with the openness he wanted her to use with the crab cakes.

Chloe looked at him. “Maybe,” she whispered. Then she stood and walked around to face him. She gently brushed her knee against his. “I had a good time tonight.” She ran a fingertip along his jaw. “Thank you.”

Just when he thought she’d kiss him…she turned and walked toward the door.

“Chloe, do you want to—”