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promise.
    He tried not to read too much into it.
    *   *   *
    She’d actually flirted with Grady Hart this morning.
    Annabelle wasn’t sure whether to be proud or utterly mortified, but she couldn’t deny that she’d purposely put a little more swing in her hips as he’d been walking behind her earlier, then pressed against him in the foyer of Nancy’s house.
    She hadn’t flirted in what felt like years. Maybe ever. Not like that, anyway, where she felt like she was someone else entirely. Someone sexy and in control.
    I want to be someone significant.
    Immediately after she’d said that to Nancy this morning, she’d been mortified at confessing something so deeply personal. The fear had taken hold and she’d wanted to snatch back the words. Tried, in fact, but before she’d been able to pretend it was just a joke, Grady had walked in and turned her world upside down. She’d barely been able to think straight when she’d seen him, looking like a more mature, more muscled, more … well, manly version of the guy she’d known seven years ago. He was as tall as she’d remembered, but his previously lean physique had grown into something bigger, harder, more dominating. There were small lines at the corners of his eyes, and his light brown hair was cut short, accenting his square jaw.
    His lips were the only soft feature on that otherwise chiseled face.
    When he’d held her, for that brief span of time that she’d hugged him hello, she’d felt every inch of her skin come alive, like it had been lit with millions of tiny sparks crackling like hot fire all over her body. She’d thought about those soft lips skating over the sparks, and her knees had nearly buckled.
    And then he’d noticed the pie she’d made. Right after she’d been thinking about how men never cared about that kind of thing—the only kind of thing she was allowed to be openly good at here in Charlotte—Grady had noticed. More than noticed. He’d commented on it in a way that had made her think he didn’t just mean the dessert, and her body had heated and expanded with want.
    She might not have as much experience as a lot of other women her age, but she wasn’t completely oblivious. Except she hadn’t been able to figure out whether Grady had also noticed her flirting with him. She thought maybe he had, but from the casual goodbye he gave her, she wasn’t certain.
    Even now, after replaying the whole thing in her head for the past ten hours, she couldn’t figure out whether he was into her or not.
    It doesn’t matter. Stop thinking about it.
    This potential job at Hart Racing was her ticket to independence, after all. It wasn’t a mechanic’s position, but it was a step in the right direction. Team managers at least got to be around cars, even if they didn’t get to work on them. Either way, getting involved with Grady would be a terrible idea.
    A sexy, hot, terrible idea.
    She sighed and finished buttoning her blouse, then walked out into the front room of her mother’s house, about to announce that she was ready to leave for the church potluck. But Momma gasped, “Annabelle!” so loudly that Annabelle startled, nearly tripping over her own feet, at the harsh sound.
    It was like a reprimand in and of itself.
    Her name coming from her mother’s lips usually was, anyway. Annabelle suppressed the urge to sigh in disappointment. She already knew what was coming. Of course she’d known. Hadn’t a small part of her chosen this blouse for precisely that reason? Almost because she’d wanted to get a rise out of Momma, to needle her mother just a little for siding with Donnie over her. For holding her back, holding her down.
    It had been a childish urge, but after the faith that Mrs. Hart— Nancy —had shown in her this morning, and the interest in Grady’s eyes … well,