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sternly.
    “I’ll probably never get married again, anyway,” she said, finishing off her cake. “I’ve got too many kids to care for.”
    “And that’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, cutting another piece for himself. “How many children do you have? Because I found a picture of you in Hannah’s room, and I think I counted nine. Nine!” He looked at her, his heart in his throat. “Those weren’t your responsibilities, were they?”
    She looked at him for a long time, and he didn’t like the depth of her gaze. It told him all he needed to know, and he didn’t need the lie of a sugar boost to ease the strain in his jeans. His pants started fitting better instantly.
    “They’re all mine—nephews and nieces,” she said. “There are ten of us. If one doesn’t count Gran. And then there are my missing three siblings, which, if and when they ever come back into the picture, will make fourteen.”
    “You support fourteen people.”
    “Well, my brother and sisters are missionaries. They’re gone a lot, and they don’t make much. Gran used to be able to work, but now that she’s older, she gets tired more easily.”
    “Taking care of nine kids would tire me out.”
    “Yes, but we didn’t expect my family to be gone so long. They left for a weekend to take coats and blankets to a sister church in South America.”
    To his dismay, her eyes filled with the first tears he’d ever seen her cry. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Don’t do that. They’ll be back, I’m sure.”
    “I’m not so certain anymore.” She got up to wash her hands and dry her eyes at the washstand sink inher room. “We haven’t heard from them in almost three years. The government won’t tell us anything. And needless to say, Gran and I do not have enough money to hire an investigator.”
    And then he saw her shoulders shaking. Oh, boy. Putting the cake back into the box, he moved it back to the dresser. “Cissy,” he murmured, going to stand behind her. “You’ve got a great ass.”
    “What?”
    She turned to stare at him, and he prepared to dodge a slap. “It was all I could think of to make you stop crying,” he admitted. “I don’t have much experience with women’s tears.”
    She put her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t crying.”
    Now who was fibbing? And yet, he understood covering up. “My brothers say I have an intimacy problem,” he offered.
    Her eyes widened. “No man admits to something like that.”
    “I didn’t say I had one. That’s what they like to accuse me of. It’s not true.”
    “Is that why you’re here?”
    He frowned at her. There was a real reason he was there—to deliver the cake as Hannah had requested. And then there was the real-real, albeit inadmissible, reason he was there—to see Cissy. But neither of those reasons could be what Cissy had in mind. “What?”
    “Because of your intimacy problem.”
    “Why would I come here for that? Just saying I had one, which I don’t.”
    “Because this salon is the place men like to come to lose their intimacy problems. And a whole host of other problems.”
    His jaw sagged. “You’re suggesting that I—”
    “Not suggesting. Asking, cowboy. Asking.”
    No. The answer was no.
    And yet, he had to admit he was pulled to Cissy in a sort of strange, like-what-I-see-but-can’t-touch it way. It was a sexual paradox of sorts.
    Which would play into his brothers’ theory.
    “I’ve always espoused the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of life,” he said.
    “And yet you’ve asked plenty of questions about my life. My family.”
    “Yeah. That’s when I thought you were my kind of girl.”
    She stared at him. “And now you think I’m…?”
    He shifted uncomfortably. “I guess you’re a good girl. A good girl with issues, but I definitely see why Hannah likes you.”
    “And so that crosses me off your short list.”
    “I don’t have a list,” he replied.
    “But if I were a wild woman, I’d be on