“Why?”

“What have I done with my life? What mark have I made?”

“Well, you don’t have fairy godmother debt to pay off, so…”

He laughed at my unexpected reply. “You always keep me on my toes.”

I sighed. Yeah.

We backed up, facing each other, ready to start tossing the ball, our warmup routine already an unspoken, shared habit.

“Try not to hit any windows today.” His smile was lopsided, teasing and entirely the sexiest thing I’d seen all day.

“You threw that ball, I’ll remind you.”

And I was paying dearly for it in an alternate universe filled with ogres and fairies.

James lobbed the baseball my way.

Thunk. I caught it in my glove.

“And you, superstar, failed to catch it,” James retorted, his goofy smile making me want to grin even though he was busting my chops.

I tossed the ball back with a bit more heat than I would normally use in a warmup. “Because you distracted me.”

His glove snapped shut around the ball. He underhanded it back to me, loose and easy. “How so?”

“By being gorgeous.”

He laughed, head back.

I waited for him to react further, but all he did was take me in with a heated gaze.

“So what did your fiancée look like?” I asked, immediately embarrassed. Obviously, I’d been obsessing about her for the past week. I’d even tried a deep dive into his social accounts to see if I could find hints of her, but he wasn’t very active online. No fiancées. Lots of pretty girls, but none of them wearing rings that I thought might have been chosen by him.

“Blond.”

“Naturally. Make sure you keep your Norwegian genes pure.”

He chuckled. “Not Norwegian.”

“Doubtful. You look like a Viking.”

“Well, she was a Viking, too, then. Blue eyes.”

“Slim?”

“Fit.”

Dang. That was even worse.

“What did she do? Like for a living or whatever? Do you still hang out?”

Why was I torturing myself with this info? I didn’t need it. He wasn’t ever going to actuallychooseme. I wasn’t a Suzy Homemaker like his sweet mom obviously was. But maybe he wasn’t totally the man I assumed he was, either. Hehadbroken up with his ex, after all. He wanted room for serendipity, just like I did. And hanging out with him was so easy. That had to mean something.

Maybe I had to make space for the possibility of James, just like Estelle said I needed to do with my karmic plan. It was all about good energy, and that was one thing James had in spades.

His lips had curved into a small smile, and I wasn’t sure if it was amusement over my obsession with his ex, or in fond remembrance of her fineness.