“About dinner.” Aiden Jalbert tipped his head downward and glanced up at her with his catlike white-blue eyes, a crooked half-smile on his lips. He was sitting in one of the two wing-backed chairs in the reception area of her long-arm quilting studio. Harriet sat opposite him in the other.

She hated the term “boyfriend”-it sounded so high school-but she had yet to find a better word to describe the relationship status of a woman twenty years past high school and a man not long out of veterinary school. If the truth were to be told, boyfriend is exactly how she thought of Aiden, and she was okay with that.

He reached out and took her hand, pulling her toward him. She stood and shifted over onto his lap.

“Please don’t tell me you have to work,” she said, studying his face. As the new guy at the clinic, he often got stuck with after-hour duties when problems arose.

“No, it’s not work.” He sighed.

“But you’re ditching me,” she prompted as she stroked a stray strand of silky black hair from his eyes.

“I’m not ditching you,” he protested. “Well, I am, I guess. But not because I want to. Believe me, I’d much rather be eating dinner with you than talking to my sister.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Your sister? You’re ditching me for your sister?” she moaned into his fleece-covered shoulder. “You don’t even like your sister. She tried to sell your house out from under you, for crying out loud.”

“I know.” He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. “She said it was important.”

“And you believed her?” Harriet sat up straight. “How can you believe anything that comes out of that woman’s mouth?”

“I can’t. I don’t. But she’s my sister. I have to at least hear what she has to say.”

“You can’t do that over a quick cup of coffee? She has to ruin our dinner plans?”

Harriet knew she sounded like a spoiled child, but Michelle had made a bad situation much worse for Aiden when their mother was murdered earlier in the year. She had tried to steal his inheritance, and standing up to her, while necessary, had been very hard on Aiden.