“Guess how many sisters I have?” Kaylee asked him, holding her free hand behind her back.
Autry froze. There were more?
“One?” he asked, trying not to visibly swallow.
Kaylee shook her head and giggled.
She let go of Marissa and held out both hands, palms facing him. Ten? She had ten sisters? He was going on a picnic with a mother of eleven?
Earth to Autry, he ordered himself. The girl is three. Calm down.
Kaylee giggled again and held up two fingers like a peace sign.
There was nothing peaceful about this. He might not be dating a mother of eleven, but he was dating a mother of three. Not that an impromptu picnic counted as a date. This was just a friendly little picnic. After all, three-year-olds didn’t accompany their mothers on first dates.
Autry felt better. Not a date. Just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some fruit.
Still, he pulled at the collar of his polo shirt. It was strangling him. And granted, it was August, but was it a thousand degrees suddenly?
“There’s the park,” Marissa said, pointing down North Buckskin Road.
Autry glanced at the sign as they passed it. Rust Creek Falls Park. He didn’t spend a lot of time in parks or going on picnics. But it was eighty-one degrees and sunny, with a delicious breeze that every now and then blew back Marissa’s wavy hair, exposing her enticing neck. Perfect park weather. And it wasn’t very crowded. A few people walked dogs, a couple joggers ran on the path and a group of teenagers were sunbathing and giggling in the distance.
“Here’s a perfect spot,” Marissa said. “Right under a shade tree.”
“Hi, Mr. Autry,” Kaylee said, for absolutely no reason as she stared up at him. Gulp. She was looking at him with pure adoration in her twinkly brown eyes. She slipped her little hand into his.
Oh God. He wasn’t supposed to be charming the three-year-old! It was the elder Fuller he wanted to have looking at him that way. Instead, Marissa was focused on laying out the blanket she’d brought.
“Hi,” Kaylee said again. “Hi.” She rested her head against his hip.
“Hi,” he said, forcing a smile.
Yes. He had definitely entered another dimension of time and space. Where Autry Jones was in a park with a single mother and her three-year-old, about to eat sticky peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which, granted, were his favorite.
Make your escape. Any ole excuse will do. Bolt, man! Bolt.
But Autry’s feet stayed right where they were, his gaze transfixed on Marissa’s lovely eyes and a beauty mark near her mouth. Now he was staring at her lips. Wanting to reach out and—
“Mr. Autry, you’re lucky,” Kaylee said, snagging his attention as she sat down.
“Because I’m here with you guys?” he asked, tapping the adorable little girl on the nose as he sat at a reasonable distance. Did she have to be so stinking cute?
She tilted her head as though that was a dumb answer. “Because you get to eat dessert first if you want. You’re a grown-up.”
“Ah,” Autry said, smiling at Marissa. “But I always eat my healthy sandwich first. Then dessert.”
Kaylee shrugged, turning to look in the bags. Marissa pulled out a jar of peanut butter, strawberry jam and a loaf of bread, then some paper plates and plastic utensils.
“Allow me,” he said, taking the knife and peanut butter.
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, Autry, but you really don’t strike me as a man who eats a lot of PB and J.”
“You’ve never seen me at midnight, hungry for a snack while going over fiscal projections.”
Her cheeks grew pink. Hmm. That could mean only one thing. That she was imagining him at midnight, naked, eating peanut butter in his kitchen. Not that that was remotely sexy. Maybe she was just imagining him at midnight. Naked or not. She still wasn’t giving him any signals either way. She didn’t flirt. She didn’t laugh at every little thing he said, funny or not. She didn’t brush up against him to try to turn him on. He really had no idea if Marissa Fuller, mother of three, was interested in him in the slightest.
They ate. They had sandwiches. They had oranges. They had chocolate chip cookies. By the time Autry almost finished his sparkling water, Kaylee had fallen fast asleep on the blanket, using her little monkey backpack as a pillow.
“Three kids, huh?” he said. “That can’t be easy.”
Marissa took a sip of her water. “It’s not. But loving them is. Plus we live with my parents. In the house I grew up in. So I have backup 24/7.”
He noticed she kept her gaze on him, as if waiting to be judged.
“You’re the lucky one,” Autry said. “If you live with your parents, you must be close with them. And your kids and folks must be close. That’s gold, Marissa.”
She tilted her head. “I guess I’ve never really thought of it that way. But you’re right, we are close. Maybe too close!” She smiled. “Not you and your family?”
He looked up at an airplane high in the sky, watching it jet over the clouds. “No. We were never a close family. The Joneses were about business. Everything is about Jones Holdings, Inc. Interestingly, not even that managed to bring us closer. But I was never close with my brothers growing up. And there are five of us.”
“But you’re here,” she said. “Visiting Walker and Hudson.”
“I’m trying,” he said. “My father, the imperious Walker Jones the Second, feels like his namesake eldest son defected. Walker moved here. Opened a Jones Holdings office here. Is doing what he wants—here. And Hudson always marched to his own drum, which never involved the family business.”
“And you?” she asked. For a moment he was captivated by how the sun lit up her dark hair.
“All about business. But I try very hard not to be a workaholic. I never want to be like my father, who put the company above everything—family, birthdays, special occasions. He missed everything and still believes business comes first.”
“You just said you’re all about business,” Marissa pointed out.
“Because I don’t have other commitments or responsibilities. For a reason. No wife. No kids. When I work around the clock or fly off to Dubai for a month, I’m not hurting anyone. In fact, I’m making someone happy—my father.”
“But surely you want a family someday,” she said, popping a green grape into her mouth.
He reached for his water and took a long sip. Did he? If he were really honest, he didn’t know. He’d had his heart smashed, his trust broken, and all his tender feelings for that sweet baby he’d come to think of as his own had hardened like steel.
“So you’re divorced?” he asked, glad to change the subject. He wanted to know everything about Marissa Fuller.
“Widowed,” she said, taking a container of strawberries from the bag. “Two years ago in a car accident. My five-year-old, Kiera, has very little memory of her father. Kaylee here has none at all.”
“And the third daughter?”
“Abby. She’s nine.”
Nine? Marissa couldn’t be older than twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight. She’d been a mother a long time, practically all her adult life.
He watched her bite her lip, seeming lost in thought. “Abby was seven when her dad died and remembers him very well. A few times a week, when Abby is saying her good-nights to her little sisters, I’ll overhear her telling them about their daddy.”
Marissa’s