“What are you making for tonight?” she asked Jonah, leaning back and forcing herself not to check her email again.
Her brother’s face lit up. “Pan-seared grouper with a mango-habanero glaze, coconut rice, and roasted broccolini.”
“Sounds yummy and tropical.”
“It will make your tastebuds do the samba.”
“And will there be wedding cake?”
“No cake—too tradish for Tessa. I’m making key lime tarts because if Tessa isn’t a tart, I don’t know who is. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.”
“She’s a sweet…tart,” she agreed on a laugh.
Just then, Connor McCarthy stepped in from the deck, moving carefully so he didn’t bump his right arm, currently in a cast from wrist to just below the elbow. The car accident he’d been in after their Fourth of July party last month had broken his collarbone, too, but thankfully he didn’t have to wear anything on that.
Still, he looked like someone who’d been forced to learn patience against his will. A tall, good-looking dental student about the same age as Meredith, Connor had his father’s dark eyes and broad shoulders.
He moved toward the kitchen island where Jonah was working, peering at the ingredients.
“What are you making? It smells incredible and you haven’t even started cooking yet.”
Without him noticing, Meredith studied the young man from a distance. His skin looked tanned by the sun, and the ends of his chestnut-colored hair were tipped with gold. There was arestlessness in him that Meredith recognized—a kind of coiled energy with nowhere to go.
They’d chatted enough for her to know that he was beyond frustrated with the delay in his final semester, thanks to an idiot who’d had too much to drink and clipped Connor’s car on the way home late at night.
He was supposed to be starting his clinical rotations right now, he’d told her. Dental school was a grind under normal circumstances, but the accident had derailed everything.
The broken wrist and collarbone had forced him to put his education and training on hold until spring, which meant months of waiting and watching his classmates move ahead without him.
For someone who was clearly driven—and he didn’t get into UF dental school without discipline—that kind of forced stillness had to feel like a cage.
He looked right at her, making her shift her gaze to her screen and pray he didn’t think she was staring at him. Because she was definitely not.
“Your dad just took a call,” he said. “Seemed important enough to go to the office and ditch us in the middle of a heated discussion about Florida’s chances of beating Georgia this year.”
She stared at him, processing the words.
“In football,” he added, fluttering the Gator T-shirt he wore. “SEC.”
“He took a call? Just now?” And how the heck did he slip behind her into the office without her noticing? Because she was checking out Connor’s gold-tipped tendrils, that’s how. “Was it Lakeside related?”
“Didn’t say.”
Still, her heart did a small, involuntary thing. Itcouldbe Lakeside. Or it could be anything—a vendor, a subcontractoron another project, someone from the Atlanta office with a problem.
Peter came in from the deck next, heading into the kitchen. “Jonah, can I help with anything?” he asked, rolling up his sleeves.
“Absolutely. You can peel those mangoes.” Jonah slid a cutting board toward him. “And put Meredith out of her misery. Who called my dad?”
Peter gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry. He just shot off in a hurry.”
She held up a hand to indicate it was fine, vaguely aware of Connor drifting closer to the table, eyeing her laptop.
“You working on something important?” he asked.
“Always.”
He smiled at that, a half-smile that suggested he found her answer both predictable and amusing. It was an irritatinglynicesmile.
