Aunt Crista’s voice floated up, too, calling something to her daughter. Her husband, Meredith’s uncle Anthony, had gone back to Atlanta, but her pregnant aunt and Nolie had decided to stay through August, since they’d purchased a second home in the area and were doing some renovations.
Grandma Maggie and Jo Ellen were down on the sand, too—no doubt huddled together planning their next adventure, proving every day that age was just a number.
Meredith couldn’t see, but she imagined Aunt Pittypat was settled on Grandma Maggie’s lap, her tiny Yorkie body trembling as she barked at seagulls and surf and anyone who dared get close. Jo Ellen probably had her iPad open, playing Wordle.
It was the kind of afternoon that should have made Meredith shut her laptop and join them. The Gulf was that impossible shade of emerald green it turned on clear days, giving off a breeze that tamed the August air to a comfortable temperature.
On a sigh, she looked back at her computer. Two minutes had passed. Enough time to check her email. She clicked, butoh. Nothing. Not a word from Pippin Lake Development Group and Friday was fast sliding into the weekend.
When would they hear something?
The last meeting with Dad and the developer had ended on a high note, with the assistant whispering to Meredith that they would be “in touch soon” about final firm selection for Lakeside. Meredith had learned long ago that “soon” in the architecture business could mean anything from tomorrow to never, but she couldn’t stop checking.
She sighed noisily, aching for the news that Acacia Architecture had been chosen as the lead firm for the gated residential community that would be built over the next three years. She wanted the win so bad she could taste it.
“Anything?” Jonah asked, not looking up from the cutting board where he was dicing a shallot with impressive speed.
“About what?”
He shot her a “get real” look. “Meredith. You click, you moan, you writhe in agony. Have you heard on the Lakeside thing?”
“Not yet.”
“Remind me what that is again?” Jonah scraped the diced shallots into a bowl with the flat of his knife, the move shockingly professional. “I know you and Dad have been talking about it, but I tune out when you guys start speaking architect.”
“It’s a master-planned community just north of here, at Pippin Lake. More than a thousand residences, a town center, a splash park, golf cart trails, the whole Florida thing. We bid to be the exclusive architect for one of the neighborhoods called Lakeside.”
“So you’d design every house?” he asked, sounding impressed.
“In that one gated development,” she said. “Acacia would create all of the elevations and floor plans, design the clubhouse and common areas.” She paused, trying to keep her voice even, trying not to let the hope leak through. “Dad would make me project manager if we get it.”
Jonah whistled low. “Sounds like a huge job. Would you stay here and not go back to Atlanta?”
She didn’t answer right away but surely her brother knew that after she’d made a complete mess of her personal life a few months ago, she had little to go back to except work. Her social life was non-existent, her apartment deeply lonely, and her old circle of friends were fast moving into marriage and motherhood.
“I can’t make any plans until we get the job,” she said, purposely vague. “Ifwe get it. Which we might not. There are bigger firms in the running, some of them local, and one that’s worked with this development company before on the first neighborhood. So, the competition’s tough.”
“But none of them have Miss Perfect.” He tempered the old nickname with a smile, but she still rolled her eyes. Not that it really bothered her anymore. However, there’d been a time when his pet name for her was a dig at her work ethic—and maybe an acknowledgement of his lack of one.
For years after Mom died, her brother, older by a little more than a year, had been so lost and angry. He spent the betterpart of his twenties getting high and living like a nomad in that disgusting van.
He’d ended up in California, where he’d met his girlfriend, Carly, conceived Atlas, and, at a particularly low point, had come here when Carly gave his loser backside the boot.
With the help of Kate Wylie—of all the unexpected sources—Jonah had gotten accepted in a local community college culinary program, and his life was finally looking up.
Then Carly had run out for diapers one evening and was tragically killed in a car accident mere weeks after having Atlas. Jonah had been in California for the birth, with plans to come back to attend school with his new family. Reeling with heartbreak and loss, Jonah had returned to Destin with Atlas and a desperate need for help, which of course, this family and the Wylies gave him.
Jonah had changed. Fatherhood had matured him. Dad’s influence had mellowed him. And finding his passion and purpose in the kitchen had transformed him.
He no longer seemed resentful that Meredith had taken a different and far more ambitious route in life, following in their architect father’s footsteps. In fact, he was proud of her—and himself for forging his own destiny.
Atlas slapped both palms against the bouncer’s tray and gurgled, and Jonah turned to him with the soft, unguarded expression that embodied all that transformation in one easy smile.
She watched him hand Atlas a teething ring and murmur something that made the baby giggle, and she felt the familiar ache that sat just beneath her ribs whenever she looked at them.
She didn’t feel grief anymore. Nearly six weeks had passed since Miss Perfect’s carefully constructed world had imploded. Her ectopic pregnancy, the result of a stupid andbrief relationship, had unraveled the life she’d so meticulously planned.
Now, she was healing the only way she knew how—by throwing herself into work.
