“I climb whenever I get the chance.”
“With ropes and stuff?”
“When I’m working, the ropes are necessary so I can get my shots. If I’m climbing for fun, I do a little freestyle here and there.”
And that’s where the muscled forearms came from. She closed her eyes and pictured him leaning on her island counter again, his defined arms tan against his white shirt sleeves.
“Is it dangerous?” The idea of him hanging onto a rock by nothing more than his fingertips made her heart thump with apprehension.
“I’m careful.”
“I’ve never done anything like that,” she admitted.
“Would you like to?”
“Oh, I don’t know if I’m brave enough for that.”
“Sure you are,” he countered. “I’ll take you some time and keep you safe. Better yet, I’m skydiving end of June for a job. Start there and everything else will be a piece of cake.”
The thought of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane made her stomach drop right out from under her. “Yeah, that’s gonna be a hard no.”
“Why?”
“I’m not a risk-taker.”
“I don’t know about that. You started a business by yourself. You bought a house by yourself. You called me.”
She smiled at that last part. “It took me four days to call you. As for the house and my business, depending on my skills didn’t seem risky to me. I know I can depend on myself. The closest I want to come to anything like what you do is the proposal I arranged last year at the top of a mountain for a couple who were climbers.”
“That wasn’t the one no on your record, was it? Cuz that would’ve really sucked to get all the way up there and get shot down.”
“No, it wasn’t the no. Thank goodness.”
Another low, sexy chuckle from him curled her toes.
“You are quite the contradiction, Honor Hartman.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You supposedly don’t believe in love, but you help people get engaged and bake their wedding cakes.”
“Yeah, because it’s what I do,” she rationalized. “I get paid for it.”
He made a noise that could’ve been agreement or not. “And that one no bothers you even though you had absolutely nothing to do with the woman’s answer.”
This time, she made the noncommittal noise, though it did bother her. A lot. Didn’t mean she believed in love, though.
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“Also, I heard you’re baking cupcakes for Roxanna, but I thought you were mad at her.”
“No, she’s selling my cupcakes. It’s the least she can do—especially since the blog writer isn’t interested in what I have to say, and she still refuses to admit she had it all wrong.”
Says the girl who one second ago silently insisted she doesn’t believe in love.
That damn voice inside never knew when to shut up.
She quickly added, “Besides, it’s a long way from making up for all my cancellations after that stupid post on the society blog.”