He traced the shape of her mouth, very delicately, not wanting to smear her lipstick. His stomach twisted for a moment, heat coiling and uncoiling as he tried to maintain some semblance of calm when he was tempted to take a half-cooked cake out of the oven and put the slow cooker on low for the rest of the evening.

"You should catch me up on other things. We talked a lot over dinner, but I'm sure we could have talked more about how you were settling in, the sorts of people you're meeting. Or you could ask me about things."