And then there was Cole himself…

But Penelope wasn’t ready to talk about Cole. Not to her prying mother or her mischievous sister. If anyone was capable of taking a simple kiss and turning it into wedding planning, it was her family.

Instead she changed the subject to another of her mother’s favorites: Facebook.

By the end of the phone call, she had her mother’s promise that she wouldn’t post any naked pictures of Penelope in which she was over the age of eight.

Hanging up with her mother, Penelope forced her attention back to golf stats.

Despite her lukewarm feelings on the thought, she supposed its rise in popularity was refreshing.

There was something very human about a sport that anyone could pick up, at any age. Baseball fans were limited to amateur softball leagues, basketball fans to picking up a random game after work at the gym. Football? Definitely not a layman’s sport.

But golf was a level playing field. Kids. Women. Retirees. Anyone could play.

And thanks to guys like Adam Bailey, it was now every bit as cool as it was approachable.

Penelope still thought the man was a slimebucket, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t slightly giddy about getting to meet him at the photo shoot next week. For some reason, when she’d decided to pursue the Oxford job, the potential perk of getting to meet professional athletes in person hadn’t occurred to her.

It was just one of the many perks about the job she hadn’t seen coming. The other unexpected perk?

She enjoyed working with a partner.

Working with Cole was…

Well, it was right. She didn’t know how else to put it.

It was early in their partnership, true, but other than the occasional squabble, they seemed to see eye to eye on most everything.

He challenged her when she got too attached to a pet project, and he was always open to her challenging him. Which she did. Often.

Penelope’s stomach did one of those grinding, growling things, and a glance at the clock showed her why.

It was nearly one-thirty. Way past lunchtime.

She pushed her chair back and stood, trying to muster enthusiasm for the turkey sandwich that awaited her, when Cole came strolling in the door.

“Looking for this?” he asked, holding up a brown paper lunch sack.

“Oh! Yeah, I was, actually,” she said, smiling in thanks as he set the bag in front of her on the desk.

He tapped the front of the bag where she’d written her name, first and last, in black marker.

“Really?” he asked.

“What?”

“This is so third grade.”

“Well, how else am I going to know it’s mine?”

“Maybe because nobody else literally brown-bags their lunch?”

“Oh,” she said, feeling a little foolish.

“Don’t fret,” he said. “It’s cute.”

Before she could register what that meant, he dropped something else on her desk. A white Styrofoam box.

She looked up in question, but he merely lifted his eyebrows.

Opening it, she breathed a sigh of delight when she saw the onion rings. “You brought me leftovers.”

“Nope,” he said, plopping in her chair and putting his shoes up on the desk as he made himself comfortable. “Ordered them special, with instructions not to cook them until we were paying our bill so they’d still be hot.”

Penelope paused in chewing the greasy, oniony goodness and looked at him in surprise, but he was busy typing something on his phone and didn’t notice her curious glance.

She chewed thoughtfully as she studied him, wondering, not for the first time, if there were depths to Cole Sharpe that he kept carefully hidden from the world.

Sure, it was common knowledge that he was nice. Friendly. Charming.

But did people see beneath that to the kindness?

“Quit looking at me like that, Tiny,” he said, not glancing up from his phone.

“Like what?”

“Like I just threw myself in front of a truck to save a toddler. They’re onion rings, not flowers.”

“I don’t like flowers.”

He glanced up at that. “What do you mean, you don’t like flowers?”

She shrugged and dunked another onion ring into the spicy mayo that came in a little side container. “I mean, I like flowers. But I don’t like to receive them.”

Not that she’d been on the receiving end of a lot of flowers.

“What do you have against a bunch of nice roses?”

“Don’t get me wrong, they’re beautiful,” she said, polishing off the onion ring and looking in dismay at her now completely greasy fingers.

Cole shifted his weight and reached into his pocket, pulling out a bunch of napkins.

It was her turn to lift her eyebrows, and he just shrugged. “Figured you’d need them. But back to the flowers thing—how can you both think they’re beautiful and not like them?”

“I don’t like that they’re cut,” she explained, wiping her fingers on a napkin. “I like flowers in their natural habitat. They belong in nature, not hacked up and sentenced to die in a vase somewhere.”

“Huh,” he said, looking at her. His feet came down off her desk, landing softly on the carpet of her office as he leaned forward. “Well, then, tell me, Tiny, how do you expect a guy to woo you if you don’t get all gushy over overpriced long-stem roses?”

“I don’t,” she said.

“What do you mean, you don’t?”

“I don’t expect to be wooed,” she said, picking up another onion ring, getting her fingers greasy all over again. “Don’t want it, really.”

“Every woman wants to be wooed.”

“Nope.”

He leaned back and tapped his fingers against the arm of the chair as he watched her eat. She supposed she should feel embarrassed about the speed with which she was finishing off the deep-fried goodness, but…nope.

“You know what I think?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you think, but I do know that I don’t want to hear it,” she replied.

He told her anyway. “I think that despite all your I’m just a simple girl next door charm, you’ve got walls.”

“Oh boy,” she said, dunking another ring in the sauce. “This should be good.”

He leaned forward again, smiling evilly. “I think that you pretend you don’t want to be wooed, because no one’s made the effort, and deep down, you’re terrified that nobody ever will.”

Penelope ignored the truth of his words and rolled her eyes. “This is good stuff, Cole. Do you accept credit cards, or should I write you a check?”

He ignored her dismissal. “I’ll drop it if you answer one question for me.”

“Fine,” she said with sigh.

His eyes locked on hers. “When was the last time you got flowers?”

“Two weeks ago,” she said, happy to have a ready answer.

Cole’s eyes narrowed. “Who were they from?”

She licked her thumb. “A friend.”

“And the occasion?” he asked.

She hesitated, wishing she could tell him they were of the romantic variety. But she was a terrible liar. “They were congratulatory for the new job.”

“Mm-hmm,” he said. “And which friend were they from?”

“You said one question,” she said primly. “This is turning into an inquisition.”

“Fair enough. I’ll rephrase my original question,” he said, as though this were a fair compromise. “When was the last time you got flowers from a man?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Her voice was defensive, and he knew it. “Aha, so these last flowers were not from a man.”

“My sister, Janie, sent them,” she admitted somewhat reluctantly. “But her husband’s name was on the card too. And he’s a man.”

Cole shook his head and looked disappointed. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?” she asked, even as she told herself not to play into his little game of goading.

“You’re so prickly that men are too scared to try.”

“Prickly!” Penelope said, outraged. “I am not prickly.”

“Not personality-wise,” he said, his voice reassuring, as though talking to a skittish horse. “But romance-wise…you’re prickly.”