“I had my cholesterol checked when I turned thirty. Honest.”

She shrugged. “Eat whatever you want. They’re your arteries.”

With a grin, he picked up his jumbo-sized sandwich and took another big bite, right out of the middle of the bread.

Etiquette was evidently going to have to be added to Isobel’s list of things to go over with Dustin in their six weeks together.

She was amazed at how fast the sandwiches and fries disappeared, especially since Dustin was doing most of the talking during the meal.

He cheerfully talked about his childhood—about growing up in the Fairfax household, how he had felt having a controlling father and a competitive older brother like Addison around.

He glossed over the death of his mother, though Isobel thought it must have made a huge alteration in the life of a considerate, impressionable young man, both then and now. Certainly such a tragic event would have had a great deal of influence on the man Dustin had become.

Addison was Dustin’s only sibling, and according to Dustin’s many laughter-filled stories, they had done their share of fighting and wrestling when they were young. Addison had always been bigger, but Dustin was slick, smooth and, he told Isobel with a smile that could spark up a lighthouse, he could run faster. So the disputes had remained fairly even, and Dustin spoke of his brother with affection.

He asked Isobel about her family, but she said as little as possible, other than that she was an only child and grew up in a small town in Texas.

Since Dustin’s parents had been together forty-five years until his mother’s death, Isobel felt awkward discussing her own parents’ divorce when she was an infant, and the many ways that had affected her.

Besides, everyone’s parents got divorced these days. Why should she have been any different?

She didn’t remember her father, and though she’d made peace with that, it rose up to haunt her now. She felt overly emotional trying to discuss her childhood, though Dustin had been open about his.

Not that she’d had a bad life—her mother had become a Christian soon after her father had left, and Isobel had been raised healthy, happy and loved, with plenty of hard work to bind them together in strength and lots of support from their home church.

Still, she didn’t like talking about it, especially to a man she hardly knew. She didn’t even want to think about it.

When she said as much, Dustin seemed to take it in stride, though he tried time and again to engage her in talking about herself; if not her childhood, at least what she was doing now.

“I have a small condo in the city that I share with my best friend, Camille. Have you met her?” she asked inquisitively.

He shook his head vigorously. “No, but I’ve heard she’s a great girl.”

“Camille would have a fit if she heard you calling her girl,” Isobel replied. “We’re both twenty-eight, you know.”

“Oh,” he said, frowning as he strung out the syllable. “Old ladies, then.”

She couldn’t help it. She kicked him under the table, and thought she made good contact with his shin.

He didn’t even acknowledge that he’d been kicked at all, except perhaps in the tiniest widening of his all-male grin.

“I have the rest of the afternoon off,” he said with his usual casual bluntness. “If you want to take advantage of me, that is.”

Isobel choked on her tea. She knew her face was flaming, and it didn’t help that Dustin only chuckled mildly when he realized what he’d said, or rather, how it had sounded.

He shook his head and cuffed the side of his head to indicate he hadn’t been thinking. “What I was really trying to say was—”

“I know what you were trying to say,” she said, surprised she could speak. “And I’m going to surprise you by taking you up on that invitation, however awkwardly it may have been worded,” she teased, enjoying the way his attractive smile widened when their eyes met.

She fought a grin as she considered her plan. Oh, she would take advantage of Dustin, all right—or rather, of his easygoing nature.

Isobel was certain she could make him a changed man in a single afternoon. She thought even Addison would be impressed, not to mention pleased, with such a feat.

Maybe Dustin would get his inheritance after all, if she had anything to do with it.

And she did.

“Do you want to take a ride in my sports car?” Dustin offered, jingling the keys in his pocket as he held the deli door open for her and gestured her through ahead of him.

She glanced up at the dim sunlight. At least it didn’t look as if it was going to rain, or worse, snow. Colorado winters were unpredictable. “Tempting as the offer sounds, a ride won’t be necessary. We can walk where we’re going.”