He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But I’m just following Tess. We don’t need to walk at all. She’ll take herself into the wood and come back when she’s ready…I mean if you’d rather sit instead of walk.”

“Oh, I would actually. Truth to tell, I’ve had quite a ramble already.”

He nodded to the log on which he himself had been seated when she’d first emerged from the trees. They sat a careful few feet from each other, but Tess didn’t leave them, as he’d thought she would. Rather, she settled next to Gina. She sighed and put her head on her paws.

“Likes you,” he noted. “Empty places need filling.”

“How true,” she said.

She sounded regretful, so he asked her the obvious. It was unusual for someone her age to move into the country. Young adults generally migrated in the other direction. She said, “Well, yes. It was a relationship gone very bad,” but she said it with a smile. “So here I am. I’m hoping to work with pregnant teenagers. That’s what I did in Winchester.”

“Did you?”

“You sound surprised. Why?”

“You don’t look much more’n a teenager yourself.”

She lowered her sunglasses down her nose and looked at him over their tops. “Are you flirting with me, Mr. Jossie?” she asked.

He felt a rush of heat in his face. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to. If that’s what it was.”

“Oh. Pooh. I rather thought you might.” She shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head and looked at him frankly. Her eyes, he saw, were neither blue nor green but something in between, indefinable and interesting. She said, “You’re blushing. I’ve never made a man blush before. It’s rather sweet. Do you blush often?”

He grew hotter still. He didn’t have these sorts of conversations with women. He didn’t know what to make of them: the women or the conversations.