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nerds, I’m afraid.”
    “No, I think it’s amazing! You look like you’re in love.”
    “Oh.” He actually blushed. This tall, successful man standing in front of a log cabin in a flannel shirt. He blushed.
    “It’s sweet!” Lori assured him.
    “Yeah, great. Sweet. The ultimate nerd compliment.”
    She couldn’t help but laugh. When he scowled, she laughed harder. “Give it up, Quinn. I’m not going to feel sorry for you. Even if you could convince me you’re a nerd, you’re still hot and rich and successful. Poor baby.”
    Shaking her head, she set to work on removing the old starter. Maybe he was nerdy in the strictest sense of the word, but she knew plenty of girls in her junior high class who’d thought him tantalizingly mysterious before he’d gone off to college. Bookish and distracted took on a whole different meaning when the boy in question was also gorgeous and kind.
    “Hot?” she heard him ask, and looked up to see him leaning against the porch rail watching her.
    “Huh?”
    “Hot. You said I was hot.” He kept his mouth serious, but his hazel eyes danced with laughter.
    This time Lori’s face heated. She waved her wrench in his general direction. “I was just stroking your ego.”
    “Well, nice work. It felt good, your stroking.”
    She growled in frustration. “Go away. I can’t work with you staring at me.”
    “You mentioned a bonus earlier. What did you mean?”
    Something playful and husky had entered his voice, confusing her. And the word stroking was still echoing through her limbs. “Nothing,” she blurted out. “I just hoped you’d let me borrow the backhoe sometime. When you’re done with it.”
    “That’s all?”
    “Yes. Now could you please leave me alone?”
    “But you’re in my office.” The aspens shook in the face of a gust, as if confirming his words.
    “Fine. Look at your trees then. Not me.”
    “I don’t want to be inhospitable.” She thought his gaze flicked down her body in a quick caress, which was silly since she was in her standard gray coveralls.
    Suddenly, she really hated what she was wearing. It was Saturday. Maybe she should have arrived in a tank top and cutoff shorts with a plan to find many reasons to bend over while working. Of course, that would be before the frostbite set in.
    Lori turned her back. “Fine then. Work and talk.”
    “About what?”
    Shrugging, she made sure to sound casual. “Where was the first place you went in Europe? You studied there, didn’t you? Tell me about it.”
    After a long moment of silence, he did. His voice softened after a time, as if he were talking to himself, but Lori absorbed every word and stored it away for later.

CHAPTER THREE
    T HE BRIGHT RUBY PUSHPINS were reserved for special occasions. Shaped like faceted jewels, they made Lori smile each time she used one. She rolled the pin back and forth between her thumb and finger, then pushed it carefully into the word Córdoba.
    Quinn’s story deserved a ruby pin. He’d described the buildings of Córdoba with passion, eyes sparkling, hands shaping the arches and doorways of the ancient city. He’d spoken of domes and spires and mosaics like an artist speaking of love or sex. And Lori had gotten turned on listening to him, embarrassingly enough. Maybe her fetish was architecture.
    Once the pin was perfectly even with all the others, Lori stepped back to take it in. Pins covered most of Europe and spread out from there. Blue and black and yellow and green. Each pin representing a story someone had told her or she’d read in a book. Each color a measure of her desire to visit that place. The ruby pins…Those cities would be her first stops.
    Someday.
    She’d planned her escape from the first day of sixth grade, when the new teacher had shown pictures of her summer trip: sixty days of backpacking through Europe. Lori had felt her heart swell with lust. That passion had grown, building upon itself with every book she checked out from the library,