He never reacted to this. Either he didn’t notice or didn’t care. Alison knew it to be the latter. Simon was always aware of his surroundings.

He took a long pull on the bottle before wearily setting it back down, as if maybe his day had been as rough as hers. “So. What’s the big 911?”

She doused a french fry in the bowl of ranch dressing Louise knew to always bring her.

“Ali.”

“Alison,” she corrected. “You know I haven’t been Ali since high school. And how do you always know when something’s wrong?”

“One, because you literally texted me 911 to get me here. And two, you’ve got on your power suit, kick-ass heels, and your hair’s practically sizzling. You’re clearly in pissed-off mode. Something happen on the job today I need to know about?”

“Mr. Barnes yelled at me for the sluggish plumbing still being sluggish.” She dragged yet another fry through the dressing.

“We were held up by yesterday’s surprise hailstorm.”

Yeah, hail in June. Welcome to the midcoast of California, where the only guarantees were unpredictable weather. Last year in June they’d gotten snow. The June before that the temps had climbed into the nineties. There was no telling what could happen. “He didn’t give a shit about the hailstorm. A direct quote, by the way.”

Simon shook his head. “We still came through within twenty-four hours of his call. Which is twelve hours faster than our contract states we have to be.” He ate some more. “I swear, I’ve got no idea how my dad handled all the crazy. I told you months ago you should cut Barnes loose as a client. With all his demands and complaints, he makes far more work for us than money.”

Simon had the patience of a saint—except when it came to dealing with assholes, which Mr. Barnes definitely qualified as. The problem was owning and operating a property management firm had never been Simon’s dream. Not even close. Nope, his passion was physical therapy. But when his dad had a stroke two years ago now, and then a second one a month later, all of Armstrong Properties had fallen to Simon to keep running, forcing him to give up full-time PT. Now he could only keep a few select PT patients for the two half days a week he could get home care for his dad.

It was slowly killing him.

“Barnes is just a blowhard,” Alison said. “But his money’s good. I can handle him. Now tell me why you put someone in your building and skipped all the vetting process. Plus I still don’t have a copy of the lease and they’ve been in it for three days.”

“I handled it.”

She gave him a long look, because one of the most annoying things about Simon was that if he didn’t want you to know what he was thinking, you didn’t get to know what he was thinking. “You voluntarily dealt with a new renter? Since when?”

“Since I live in the building too. It’s a friend. Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you the lease. It’s all signed, she’s good to go.”

“She?” Alison made the one-syllable word about a thousand syllables. “Who is this she?”

“Let it go.”

She smiled. “I’m not good at that.”

“No kidding.”

She studied him.

He just kept eating french fries.

“You doing her or something?”

Simon paused for a sip of his beer. “Keep asking your boss personal questions like that and you can forget next quarter’s bonus.”

“You are,” Alison said with a laugh. Sure, she was going down a dangerous road because Simon never made idle threats, but nothing was more fun than teasing him when she was miserable. And misery loved company. That was just a fact. “You’re totally doing her.”

“Drop it.” He pointed at her. “Stop deflecting. It’s not Barnes or my new neighbor upsetting you.”

Damn his perceptive ass, because just like that, she was suddenly struggling with tears. He leaned forward, putting a hand over hers. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I don’t tell you everything.”

“I wish that was true. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing.” But dammit, her eyes filled. “It’s Ryan.” She sniffed and struggled for composure. Knowing it was really over between her and the man she’d loved for close to a year, the only man she’d ever fallen for, was a direct hit to her heart, a pain that resonated so deeply she knew she’d never be rid of it. “He . . . broke up with me.”

“Because?” Simon asked with careful neutrality.

He and Ryan were tight. Several years older than Alison, they’d gone to high school together before she’d gotten there, and even now they played on the same softball rec league team. “Because . . . much as we try, it’s never been as good as it was in the beginning.”

“You mean when you two were stuck together, alone, for a week? No distractions from the real world?”

She’d gone on a rare Tahoe trip with the local ski club, and because the weather had gone bad at the last minute, only four people had gone. When the storm warnings went from mild to dire, two had left early, leaving just her and Ryan in the rental cabin. “It was twelve days.” And eight hours, but who was counting? “And no distractions? Are you kidding me? I didn’t know him at all and there he was, a total stranger who was about to find out what I look like without makeup, and how I sing ABBA’s songs to myself in the dark because I get nervous, and that the only thing I can cook is spaghetti and toast . . .”

But from the start, there’d been an ease between them. Ryan was an engineer and good at . . . well, everything, making her feel safe and secure in the cabin. Her sarcastic humor had made him laugh, and he’d told her he’d desperately needed that. Laughs.

And then there’d been their physical chemistry . . . Her hair started smoking just remembering how good they were together alone.

It’d been long after, when they were no longer alone, that their problems had set in.

Simon smiled. “I remember your panicked texts, which of course didn’t come through until after you’d gotten off the mountain, and then they all came in one big rush. ‘Simon! I’m stuck here with a guy named Ryan who says he’s your friend, but I don’t know him and we have no power, which means no blow dryer. He’s going to see my hair au naturel! No one sees my hair au naturel, Simon!’” He laughed. “Then the texts slowly shifted to things like ‘wow, he’s actually nice’ and ‘did you know he’s smart as hell’ and ‘I hope you don’t mind if I kiss him, because I already did . . .’”