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multicolored umbrella with a big beer logo painted on it. He’d agreed to meet Angie for dinner at the downtown restaurant to try to calm her down. The woman loved her psychics.
    He was nursing a longneck when he saw her, the girl he couldn’t get off his mind. He’d been wrong about her hair color. What had looked like blond in the artificial light of the studio and the gallery shimmered with a touch of strawberry in the sunlight. His mouth twitched. The woman got to him. He watched her stride down the sidewalk. She was leaving one of the office buildings that mixed in with the retail and food shops lining Main Street; he knew he needed to stay away. The woman screamed danger.
    Danger he’d love to unwrap. One piece of clothing at a time.
    A man dashed out of the doorway she’d just vacated and jogged to catch up with her. He must have called her name, because Taylor turned and stopped, letting the man catch up. The two talked for a minute; then, he put his arm around her and they walked down the sidewalk together. It never failed—Jesse could fall faster for an unavailable, off-the-market woman than anyone in history. And he never poached.
    Still, something kept him watching. Hoping for a sign that what he saw wasn’t what he thought it was. A small part of him hoped she would stomp on his foot or slap the man across the face. Then Jesse could run over and save her from the leech.
    “Who are you staring at?” Angie’s voice broke his concentration. He stood, greeting her with a kiss on the cheek.
    “Just people watching.” Jesse didn’t know why he lied. For some reason it felt like his mom had intruded on something extremely personal. He nodded to the bucket full of bottles on ice he’d ordered earlier. “Beer?”
    Angie glanced back up the street to where Taylor and the Leech were walking into a different café with sidewalk seating. They sat down, obviously having dinner. Jesse realized Angie was no longer looking across the street, but was staring directly at him.
    “Someone you know?” She nodded toward the other café.
    Jesse sighed, pulling a bottle out of the bucket. He wiped off the moisture, twisted off the top, and handed it to his mother. “The woman who just sat down over there?”
    “The one in the Michael Kors outfit?” Angie squinted. “Or, it could be a knock off, I can’t really tell from here.”
    “The one in the blue, she’s sitting with the man in the suit.” Jesse pointed, hoping she wouldn’t notice them staring. That’d be hard to explain.
    “So, who is she?” Angie took a swig from her beer bottle. “I love ice-cold beer on a hot day like today.”
    “Good to know.” Jesse wondered if Angie could handle helping out at the gallery. Her thought process wasn’t quite linear. “She is my new gallery manager.”
    “You mean, the one I’m meeting tomorrow?” Angie squinted, sighed, and pulled her purse to her lap. She dug around for a few seconds, coming up with a pair of red prescription glasses. She slipped them on and looked at Jesse, who stared at her like she’d grown a second head. “What? A girl has to have some secrets. My eye doctor says I have the vision of a twenty-year-old; these just help my farsightedness.”
    Long seconds passed as Jesse watched his mom stare across the street at his new employee. Finally, Angie slipped off her glasses and put them back in their case, returning it to her purse. “She’s pretty.”
    Freaking beautiful
, Jesse thought. He just nodded. “And from what I can tell, smart.”
    “You’re taken with her, Jesse Sullivan.” She shook her finger at him when he started to rebut her statement. “A mother always knows. I knew it the first time I saw James and Lizzie look at each other. Love, it’s hard to hide.”
    “James and Lizzie were always that way. Even back in high school, I used to rib him about being her puppy dog. But the guy had it bad. I shouldn’t have made him come on tour with me.”
    Angie laid her hand on