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his presence this time. Max was the suspicious-looking one now.
    “I’m sorry for the way I acted at the viewing.” Which was true; he wished he’d had the sense to keep his anger to himself much like he’d managed to control his attraction to her.
    “Losing a parent would be hard. Losing a parent and not being able to feel sad about it must be harder, I think.”
    Is that what she thought? That it wasn’t that he shouldn’t feel sad, but that he couldn’t feel sad? He took a deep breath before he got distracted from his purpose. “Anyway, I was heating up some leftovers and wondered if you wanted any, though it looks like you’ve already eaten.” He gestured to her pajamas.
    “No.” She smiled, and the rigid air that usually surrounded her relaxed. “I’m just too lazy to put on another set of clothes after I clean up for the day.”
    “ Lazy is not a word I would associate with you.” Every time he’d looked out a window today, Max had been busy doing . Trey wasn’t always sure what—when she wasn’t disappearing into the fields of the greenhouse, she was lifting things out of the back of her truck or walking around making notes—but she and the dog were always doing. At least he could tell what the dog had been up to. Ashes’s job seemed to be to keep the Canada geese out of the fields.
    “You’ve not seen how tall I let the pile of dirty clothes get before going to the Laundromat.” She stepped back from the door and let him in.
    “Dad didn’t let you use the washer in the house?”
    “Sure, if I did his laundry, too.” That sounded more like his father than any nonsense about a cute chicken coop. “Hank and I got along better if he never saw me do anything that he might construe as ‘woman’s work.’ Though I think sometimes he said that phrase just to get a rise out of me.”
    “I’m sure he meant the words.”
    “Maybe at one time, but after your mother’s death, there was plenty of woman’s work to be done and no woman to do it. Hank got to be quite good at making biscuits in the morning. He would even share them. Though I’m not even sure he attempted to clean.” She seemed to be smiling at the memory of his father, which Trey still had a hard time believing. “What’s left for dinner?”
    “A little bit of everything. And I was going to watch the Carolina game, if you’re interested.”
    She appeared to give his invitation more consideration than he’d given it when the idea had hit him. Finally, she said, “Sure. Let me put some shoes on. Can Ashes come?”
    “Of course. Did Dad not let Ashes in the house?”
    “He did. Hank liked the dog quite a bit, but Ashes is always a little dirty. Just a warning.”
    “Whatever mess he makes, I’ll leave for you to clean up when the farmhouse is yours.”
    “Deal.”
    He waited for her while she exchanged her slippers for shoes, wrapped a purple scarf around her neck and shoved a bright green toboggan— the local word for a knit ski cap—over her hair. From the hat on her head to the red shoes on her feet, she was a mass of bright colors. Since Trey had only seen her in either her work or funeral clothes he hadn’t expected the rest of her wardrobe to be so vibrant. He found himself wondering if she wore utilitarian, white underwear—as he would have guessed if asked—or if her panties were as vivid as the rest of her. Betting either way seemed dangerous. She had messed with his odds from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.
    And he’d never get to find out the answer anyhow.
    His father hadn’t bothered to upgrade the electric baseboard heat in the house or add air-conditioning, but he had gotten a satellite dish so that even out in the country he could have ESPN. The man had had priorities, and Trey only disagreed with most of them. By the time Dick Vitalle’s annoying voice had started in with, “It’s Syracuse’s first time playing Carolina as an ACC team, baby,” Max’s food was hot and they were