After a few days pass without seeing Katie, Alex misses her. Katie, too, finds herself thinking about Alex a lot. She is grateful to him for the bike because it makes her life easier. However, she thinks about other things, like the fine wrinkles that appear next to his eyes when he laughs. She worries that “it was irrational and illogical and it went against everything she’d promised herself when she’d moved here” (103), but she also recognizes that she wants Alex to be a part of her life.

After Katie eats dinner with Alex and his kids, “she had the sense that he was about to ask her out” (110), but he doesn’t. The next morning, Katie arrives at the store early and Alex asks her out. Katie instead invites him to her cottage for dinner.

Katie spends the next day getting ready and preparing the meal, excited by the idea of seeing Alex again. When Alex arrives, he is struck by his reaction to seeing Katie, admitting to himself, “[H]e was falling hard for this woman” (118).