Turning on the bedside lamp, Mason sat up, leaned on the headboard, and looked at her, “What do you think?”

Zoe had no answer for that.

Smiling faintly, he spoke. His deep voice sounded especially moving in the night.

“I’ve never loved anyone from the bottom of my heart, Zoe, and I don’t know what it feels like to be in love. However, this is the first time I've ever cared about someone. I care about you so much that I ditched my principles. I even followed you to your parents' place and fixed the leaky pipe in their kitchen.”

Pausing briefly, he kept going, “Do you think I did all that just to find someone to sleep with? I think you know that a lot of women would throw themselves at me if that’s what I wanted.”

Zoe refused to go along with it. “Well. I’m not stopping you.”

He chuckled in response. His eyes looked dashing in the glow from the lamp. His brows exuded a charm that only mature men possessed. She knew, deep down, that any woman would serve herself up on a silver pl