“Penny dropped them off earlier. She didn’t want to leave them out in the open. They’re for you.”

Penny Hodges owned the only flower shop in Black Falls and had always had a soft spot for Elijah. She and his mother had been best friends. Drew used to accuse both women of coddling his second-born son and had seen himself as the only one willing to impose discipline on him.

Ancient history, Jo thought, and now both Elijah’s parents were gone.

“Who’re they from?” she asked.

“What makes you think I know?”

“You looked at the card.”

“Ah. Well.” He sniffed an apricot-colored lily. “So I did. Are you armed?”

“Elijah-”

“It can be dangerous, having a badass Secret Service agent next door.”

Just her luck that Elijah would be the first person she ran into in Black Falls. Despite the ordeals of the past seven months-his father’s death, his own near death-he looked fit, as muscular and as physical as ever. But Jo didn’t fool herself. Elijah Cameron wasn’t the same small-town Vermont boy who had stolen her heart and soul as a teenager.

And she wasn’t the same small-town girl.

“If the flowers are a gag gift from one of my colleagues, you can dump them in the lake. Paddle your canoe out to a deep spot and give them the heave-ho.”

“They’re from your new best friend in Washington.”

Charlie Neal, Jo thought. That little bastard had the gall to send her flowers.

She contained her reaction and said tightly, “Take them inside if you would. My hands aren’t exactly free.”

Elijah tugged open the rickety screen door. “Did you pick this cabin for old times’ sake?”

It was the cabin where they’d made love night and day after her high-school graduation. He had graduated the year before and spent the year working at Black Falls Lodge-long before A.J. took it over-and avoiding arrest by Jo’s father, the local police chief.

“This one has the best heat,” Jo said, neutral.