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“Snack time?” Cam asked the terrier.

He sprang to his feet, and the two made their way into the kitchen where Cam found a treat for Parsley and a ripe apple and a block of cheese and some crackers for herself. As Cam sliced the fruit and cheese, with Parsley snuffling around the floor in an attempt to locate the last crumbs from his snack, her mind turned to Ian’s invitation to cook her dinner. He had been offering her more than just a plate of food, she knew. Ian McCabe might not be a professional cook the way she was, but he seemed to have intuited exactly what she had just been thinking. He wanted to make her happy, if only for as long as it took to eat a bowl of spaghetti. (He would use a jarred sauce, Cam was pretty sure, but that was okay.) And she had done what she had always done, which was to push him away.

Avery would have said yes to Ian in half a heartbeat. And what, Cam wondered dreamily, stacking the cheddar and apples into a sandwich and nibbling on it, would Ada have done? Did Ada love cooking her funny dishes for Marshall? Did they sip wine and hold hands over the dinner table? She tried to picture stiff Marshall Merriweather canoodling and couldn’t summon it up. But then Cam pictured Ada as she’d looked in the newspaper as a girl, grinning like mad over her zany prank. And she imagined her as a teenager, dancing the Charleston in front of an aghast flock of uptight townspeople.

Ada, Cam decided, would be bold. She would choose joy. And if she could, maybe Cam could, too.

She grabbed her phone off the counter and pulled up Ian’s contact information.

Hey, she wrote. Is dinner tonight still on offer? Sorry for the late notice.

Cam hit send before she could change her mind, and she instantly felt like a potent cocktail of butterflies and regret was being shaken up in the pit of her stomach. She watched the screen in agony until those little bubbles told her that he was texting back, which only made her more anxious.

Of course! Pick you up at 7? Ian wrote.

Was it her imagination, or had the kitchen’s temperature just gone up by a degree or two? She eyed Ada’s book suspiciously.

Cam went upstairs to her bedroom to find Avery stirring from her nap.

“Morning, Miss International Sleepyhead,” Cam greeted her cousin.

“Hey,” Avery replied, holding up her phone. “I just got a text from Birdie. We’ve all been invited over to Marcus’s for oysters.”

“Actually,” Cam said, knowing that Avery would be thrilled to hear about her plans for the night, “I’m having dinner with Ian. I asked him if his offer was still good, and he said yes.”

She looked at her cousin expecting a big reaction. Instead, Avery merely looked pained.

“We don’t have much time,” Avery said.

Cam looked at her, confused. “For what?”

“Well, we have to find you something better than that to wear.” She motioned to Cam’s ensemble of baggy sweatpants and an ancient sweater, whose hem was unraveling just a bit. “And we need to work on your hair.”

“Hey,” Cam said, feeling just a touch defensive. “I’m not a slob. I was going to change before going to someone else’s home for dinner.”

Avery threw a pillow at her, just like when they were girls. “Of course not, but Ian is not just anyone. You have to look sexxxxy!”

Cam tossed the pillow back and flopped onto her own bed. “It’s Silver Cove, and I’m going out with a man who drives a pickup that most likely is covered in sawdust and marsh mud. What am I supposed to do, climb into a pair of stilettos and a bandage dress?”

Avery pretended to consider this. “Hmm, yeah, that’s not such a bad idea,” she laughed. “All right, no bachelorette getups, but we can definitely get you looking SCH.”

“SCH?” Cam asked, confused.

“That stands for Silver Cove hawt!” Avery laughed as Cam groaned and pulled herself off the bed.

“You’re ridiculous, and I’m taking Parsley for a walk,” she said, afraid that, the longer she stayed, the more elaborate Avery’s plans for her makeover would get. “I’ll see you later.”

By 6:45, Cam felt, if not totally transformed, then maybe upgraded. Back in the city, she usually gave her appearance some thought, though she was by no means one of those sleek, high-maintenance women who lunched at Bergdorf in designer clothes and went in for daily blowouts. Here in Silver Cove, she typically found herself just pulling on a pair of jeans and a sweater and being done with it. But it felt nice to make a little effort again.

She had resisted Avery’s initial suggestions of low-cut tops that her cousin had fished, Mary Poppins style, out of her overnight bag. She had instead appeased Avery with fitted jeans and a cotton blouse with a subtle ruffle trim that she had brought with her from Brooklyn. Avery insisted that she undo the top button to show a little bit of collarbone. “Okay, now it’s perfect.”

Some makeup and a few minutes with a curling iron had left Cam feeling somewhat more polished than she had in a while. And she had even more reason to feel upbeat—Samantha and Lauren had returned her calls. Lauren was using the time off to visit family on the West Coast, but Samantha was free and willing to start Monday.

Cam came down to the kitchen and fished around in the cabinet for a bottle of wine. The Pack ’N’ Save didn’t have a great selection, but she had stocked up on the few bottles of decent French reds it offered. She was relieved that Avery and Birdie had already headed out to Marcus’s house because she could only imagine the last-minute fussing she might have been subjected to if they had been there. She pulled the wine out of the cupboard to bring to Ian’s. It was always a nice gesture, even if she was wishing she could down a few glasses before Ian arrived.

Cam heard Ian’s truck pull up and then saw him lope toward Birdie’s house. Of course he would come to the door. He wasn’t a guy who pulled up and honked at his dates. And as it always did, the sight of Ian’s sturdy frame made her breath catch in her throat.

Cam grabbed her coat and swung open the door.