“It’s bad for you. It’s all flour and sugar and nothing much of anything else. You may as well be eating your sandwiches with cookies on either side of them.”

“That actually sounds pretty good.”

“Gavin,” she said, laughing, “I’m serious!”

“Am I allowed to buy cookies? Because I do like my cookies.”

“Only if you get some fruit, too.”

“You’re kinda mean, like my mom was when I lived at home.”

Ella hip-checked him as they turned a corner, nearly sending him into the row of mac ’n’ cheese.

Naturally, he zeroed right in on that. “Oh, I love orange cheese food. Can we get some of that?”

“Keep walking, Guthrie.” Never had grocery shopping ever been this fun or romantic. Not once had she ever gotten giddy over bread or deli meat, but she had never bought enough for two either. This was happening. It was actually happening, and it was all Ella could do not to break out in song right there in the meat aisle, where Gavin was pondering the difference between two kinds of pork tenderloin.

“That one,” Ella said, pointing.

“Are you going to cook this for me? Because you basically saw the outer limits of my culinary prowess this morning.”

“I’ll cook it for you.” I’d do anything for you, she thought but didn’t say. Dangerous thoughts. All the giddy hopefulness was messing with her better judgment where he was concerned. A tiger’s stripes didn’t suddenly change overnight, despite what the tiger would have you believe.

“What’re we having with this tenderloin?” he asked, snapping her out of her grim thoughts.

“My grandmother used to make these baby potatoes that I love and her own applesauce.”

“Am I drooling?” He pointed to his chin. “That’s drool, right?”

“Attractive.” They went back to the produce area to pick out the fruits and vegetables they needed.

Gavin got some bananas that met with her approval. “You’re going to be a good mom someday, Ella.”

She nearly buckled under the weight of that statement, coming from him of all people, the only man she could imagine fathering her imaginary children. On top of everything else that’d happened, it was almost too much to take in one twenty-four-hour period.

“El? Hello?”

“Um, oh, sorry. Those.” She pointed to the apples she needed to make her grandmother’s recipe.

“Was it something I said? About kids, perhaps?”

Ella shrugged, reluctant to let him see her emotional reaction to the subject of children. On their first official day together, he didn’t need to know how she’d once dreamed of having a big family like her parents had. Now at thirty-one, she would be perfectly thrilled to have one baby.

“We need ice cream.” She took off for the far end of the store without waiting for him. If they were going to talk about kids, she needed the kind of fortification only Ben and Jerry could provide.

Gavin caught up to her, reached around her and plucked a pint of Cherry Garcia from the cooler, dropping it into the basket. Then he went back and grabbed a container of Cake Batter for himself.

“You’re like a twelve-year-old.”

“Thank you.”

“You would take that as a compliment,” she said laughing.

“I was a cute twelve-year-old.”

You’re a cute thirty-four-year-old, too, she thought.

He trailed behind her as they headed for the checkout and nudged her aside when it came time to pay, sliding his card through the reader before she could reach for her wallet.

“I don’t expect you to pay for my groceries.”

“They’re our groceries, and you can pay next week.”

How could she argue with that? Even as her heart did a happy little leap at the mention of next week, his comment about kids and her future as a mother had popped Ella’s giddy balloon, leaving her out of sorts and not at all sure what she had to be out of sorts about. It was a nice thing for him to say, and it wasn’t his fault—entirely—that she didn’t have kids yet when she’d always hoped to be a young mother.

But wasn’t it his fault in a way? After all, she’d been waiting for him, whether actively or passively, for years. There’d been other guys. A few that might’ve been serious if the specter of Gavin Guthrie hadn’t hung over everything, larger than life and exactly what her heart desired, even when he didn’t seem to know she was alive.

No other man had a chance against the possibility of Gavin. How many times had she ended fledgling relationships with the words It’s not you, it’s me? And Gavin, she should’ve added, because he was always smack in the middle of her relationships even if he never met the guys she dated.

In the parking lot, Gavin loaded the bags into the back of his truck, which they’d retrieved from the biker bar, while Ella went around to the passenger side and got in. She watched him stow the cart in the corral before he got into the truck. For the longest time he sat there, looking straight ahead.

Ella was on the verge of saying something—she wasn’t sure what—when he turned to her.

“Tell me what I did wrong in there.”

She’d been unprepared for such a blunt question. “You . . . I . . .” Jesus, Ella. Get it together. “Nothing.”

His eyes flashed with the starting of what might be anger. “Don’t do that. Don’t say it’s nothing when it’s clearly something. I told you I’d give this my all, Ella. You’ve got to do the same. You gotta meet me halfway.”

He was right. She couldn’t even try to deny that he was absolutely right. But how was she supposed to broach this particular subject on day one of the relationship she’d dreamed about having with him?

Reaching for her hand, he curled his fingers around hers. “Talk to me. I want to understand. I want to fix whatever I did.”

“You didn’t do anything. You struck a nerve that you didn’t know was there.”

“The kid thing is a nerve?”

She was on the verge of saying sort of or kind of, but that wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t what he deserved from her. “Yes.”

“How come?”

In for a penny . . . “I used to think,” she said with a sigh of resignation, “that I’d have a lot of kids, the way my mom and my aunt Hannah did.”

To his credit, he didn’t blanch or recoil or jump out of the truck in horror. Rather, he calmly said, “A lot, huh? Like ten?”

“Aunt Hannah only has eight.”

“Not much difference between eight and ten.”

“Most people only have two kids. They’d tell you that’s a lot.”

“Do you know that in all the years since Caleb died, neither of my parents has ever reminded me that I’m their only hope for grandchildren?”

“Oh,” she said, caught off guard by the change in direction. “That’s nice of them.”

“My mom would be an awesome grandmother, don’t you think?”

“They’d both be terrific, and you know Hannah’s children will consider them grandparents.”

“I do know that, and so do they. However, the continuation of the Guthrie name? It’s all on me.”

“That’s a lot of pressure.”

“They’ve never pressured me, but I’m aware of it. I don’t want the Guthrie line to end with me.”

“That’s not a good enough reason to have kids.”

“I know it isn’t, and until recently, I’ve been too unsettled to even think about having a family. But now . . . Now, it doesn’t seem so far off in the distant future.”

“Now . . . What does that mean?”

“Now that there’s an us and the possibility that you could be their mother—”

“Gavin, please. I have to stop you right there. It’s way too soon for us to be having this conversation, and frankly, my fragile heart can’t take it. I just can’t allow myself to go there. Not yet.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to poke at a nerve or your fragile heart.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m glad to know you aren’t totally opposed to having kids someday, but I can’t talk about that someday today.”

“Fair enough.” He started the truck and drove them back toward her place in town, where they’d dropped off her car on the way to the store.