Page 39 of Piece By Piece

They stood close for a moment, closer than necessary.

He walked her to the bottom of the stairs that led up to the apartment. The stairwell was narrow, and the light was dim.

Liza turned on the second step so they were nearly the same height.

“Thank you,” she said, “for the soup and, well, all the rest of it.”

He nodded, his hands at his sides. She could see him thinking, that careful, meticulous brain of his, turning something over, weighing it, calculating the risks. He almost reached for her hand.

She saw it, just the slightest movement of his fingers, the little shift of his weight.

But then he didn’t.

“Good night, Liza.”

“Good night, Grant.”

She went upstairs. Liza stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, her hand on the railing.

Outside, the rain had stopped, and through the balcony door she could see the fairy lights between the shops.

They had somehow survived the storm. They were still glowing, swaying gently in what was left of the wind.

She went to bed and lay in the dark, listening to the water drip from the eaves, and thought about the way Grant had said he would have loved you, like it cost him something.

She thought about the way he’d said maybe you just are, and about the way he had almost reached for her hand and then didn’t.

For the first time since arriving in Seagrove, she felt like two weeks would never be enough.

CHAPTER 7

Jake Brennan had very good teeth, perfect posture, and absolutely nothing interesting to say.

Liza sat across from him at a table outside the seafood restaurant, a basket of fried shrimp between them and a glass of white wine she was drinking faster than she probably should have.

This date had been Dixie’s idea.

Of course, she had introduced them at the bookstore that morning, appearing from behind the romance shelf like she was some sort of fairy godmother wearing reading glasses.

“Liza, now this is Jake. Jake, this is Liza, the daughter of a very dear friend. Jake’s a firefighter, and Liza’s from Charleston. You’ll have so much in common.”

They did not, as far as Liza could tell, have literally anything in common.

Jake was nice.

That was the problem.

He was so aggressively, thoroughly, relentlessly nice that he held open doors and pulled out chairs and asked her about her hobbies and then nodded so earnestly at her answers that she felt like she was being interviewed for a position she hadn’t applied for.

And then there was the truck.

“So I got the lift kit installed last month,” Jake was saying. “Four-inch suspension, has a custom bumper. There’s an LED light bar across the top. And I’m meaning to go get that brush guard replaced, too, but the guy I usually go to, well, he moved to Myrtle Beach, so I’m kind of stuck right now.”

Liza nodded.

She’d been nodding for almost twenty minutes. Her neck was starting to hurt.

She would need to make an appointment with the chiropractor or possibly a massage therapist.