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She blinked at him once again.
“Uh, sure, if you’d like.”
Yeah, not the most welcoming of statements.But was it due to her surprise or because, like her mother, she considered him the hired help?
They made themselves comfortable in the cushioned chairs and sipped their coffee, gazes avoiding each other for the most part.
“I keep thinking you look familiar,” Hadley said finally.“Have we met?Before last night, I mean.”
He took another sip and nodded.Maybe he shouldn’t be irked.It had been a while.
His gaze shifted from the ocean waves in the distance to the beautiful woman sitting in the rocking chair beside the love seat she’d left for him.“We went to school together.Middle and high school.”
Seven years in all—and while she might think him familiar, until last night, she’d never said a word to him.
“Oh.”Color flooded her cheeks.“I apologize.I’m sorry, I-I don’t… I’mhorriblewith faces.Please, don’t take offense.”
“We didn’t run in the same crowd.”So what was his excuse for remembering her?
He told himself not to go there, because after that fateful trip to her house with his father to repair a door at their pool house, he’d had more than a few teenage fantasies.The kind where she looked at him and actually saw him.Was friendly and flirtatious.
Hadley had been in a league of her own, one of the popular rich kids whose parents owned oceanfront homes and got cars for their sweet sixteens.She’d played lacrosse and was a cheerleader and an all-American girl, while he’d been invisible, working every minute of his spare time, trying to earn enough pocket cash to afford something that could eventually get him off the school bus.“I’m Bryson James.”
“Bryson,” she said in greeting.“That seems like a lifetime ago.I suppose itwasa lifetime ago.Wow.”
Two sips later, Bryson broached the subject of the house.“Look, Hadley, I don’t mean to overstep, especially in light of how recent Ms.Georgia passed, but I was wondering what you plan to do with her home?”
Hadley’s beautiful gaze was the color of the Atlantic in front of them, a mixture of blues and greens surrounded by a dark blue rim.She didn’t wear makeup at the moment, and he liked her looking fresh-faced.It made her more approachable.Less…hardened?
“Oh.I, uh, haven’t really given it much thought.I wasn’t expecting to inherit it, and the shock really hasn’t worn off yet since I’d only found out about an hour or so before I saw you last night.Why do you ask?”
“This is a great house,” he said simply.“I’d hate to see it bought up and torn down like so many of the older homes here on the island.”
“I would, too.”
“So you plan to keep it?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but gravel crunched in her driveway and drew her attention.
“Oh, no,” she murmured, closing her eyes and sitting forward in her seat.
“Something wrong?”The older woman in the Mercedes sedan didn’t exactly look threatening.Though she was giving him the stink-eye now that she’d spotted him.Wait, was that—
“My mother,” Hadley said, slowly uncurling her legs from the rocking chair to stand.
Bryson got to his feet, remembering Cheryl Dummit well from that hot summer day way back when.
He waited beside Hadley as the woman exited the car and approached them on the porch, walking as though she wore a book on her head like he’d seen in some movies.
She looked dressed for a ladies’ luncheon or something equally pretentious, her long necklace flashing in the sunlight over a dark red blouse and perfectly pressed pants.The kind that should’ve been wrinkled after sitting but wasn’t even though it was a muggy eighty-four already.Wasn’t she roasting in that getup?
“Hi, Mom.”
The woman greeted her daughter with a stiff hug, never taking her eyes off of Bryson.
“Hadley, you have company?”
“Bryson came over for a cup of coffee.The electric is off next door.”
