As he sets the table for dinner, Brendan thinks about what he will have to do to interest Piper: “She’d make him work to keep her content, and he wanted that challenge” (167). He is ready to try new things for her. When he picks her up, he recognizes that Piper is going to try to keep things casual between them and make the night just about sex. But “what she made him feel wasn’t casual. Not one bit” (169). He looks forward to growing closer to her.

Brendan serves her champagne and fish he cooked himself, and Piper is touched but also scared by her interest in him, and his in her. “She actually didn’t even know how to be more than a temporary hookup” (178), she thinks. She supports Brendan when he says he is building a second boat and plans to give the Della Ray to Fox, which he thinks will help him move on from the past. As they talk, Piper worries that she’s revealed too much; “the sexy smoke screen she’d been hiding behind had dissipated, leaving only her” (183).

She seduces Brendan by taking off her dress but is unsettled to realize that “this attraction was even more dangerous than she’d originally thought” (186).