My childhood friend grew up swoonworthy.

Last Christmas, I came home for a quick visit and we reconnected. Intimately.

It was just a little romp, no strings and all sorts of fun. We both knew it couldn’t lead anywhere. Baxter lived in McKay, Idaho, our hometown of thirty-five hundred, and I lived in Dallas, Texas. He spent his days serving coffee and his nights writing the next great American novel, and I spent my days and nights corporate lawyering like a boss.

We had one fabulous night. He wouldn’t remember me with skinned knees and a peeling sunburn, and I wouldn’t see him in my mind’s eye as the string bean who pulled my pigtails.

That was then.

Now, a year later, I’ve moved home to work at my family’s inn and maybe, if I could get my burned out brain to handle it, open a part-time, one-woman law practice.

Bax and I needed to clear the air. We needed to talk—about last Christmas.