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She’d texted Lauren a simple apology and gotten no reply, not that she’d expected one.Lauren was so strong and so capable in so many areas of her life.Bea closed her eyes and sent up a prayer that her friend could find the happiness she wanted.
When she opened her eyes again, it was because of loud knocking on the front door.“Bea?”Grant called, and Bea realized she’d actually dozed off.
“Wow,” she muttered.“This heat must be getting to me.”
The front door opened as she stood from the couch.Grant poked his head into the house.“Bea?Oh, there you are.”
“Come in,” she said.
He did, his frown appearing and deepening as he did.“You’re right.The air’s off in here.”
“Yeah.”She ran her hands through her hair, getting a momentary shock over its length.The style was still so new, she’d forgotten she didn’t have any hair to push back.Having Grant in the house brought a new kind of electricity she didn’t quite know how to hold.One couldn’t contain such a strong current anyway, but Bea really wanted to try.
Let him handle the air conditioner first, she told herself as he went through the house and out the back door.She followed him at a safe distance, still getting plenty of musky, male notes of his cologne.
Bea honestly felt like a twenty-year-old meeting the man of her dreams for the first time.The racing pulse, the nervousness in her chest that reached up and clouded her thoughts.Her life had been a whirlwind of fun when she’d first started dating Nort.New places, different friends, a world of possibilities opening before her.
She felt the exact same way now, after a couple of decades of normalcy, with predictable—code forboring—days, generic conversations, and stale kisses.Her children had brought a new challenge every single day, but her romantic relationship had chilled quietly on the back shelf while the kids grew and then moved on.
She hadn’t realized Nort had done the same, and she wondered as she watched Grant kneel in front of the air compressor at the back of the house if anything would’ve been different if she had paid attention to how unromantic their relationship had become.
Maybe he wouldn’t have cheated on you with his secretary, she thought.The oldest situation in all the books and movies she’d watched her whole life had happened to her.She’d never given any thought to how the women in those fictional stories must’ve felt—until she had to deal with the crushing reality herself.
And crush it did.Hopes, dreams, plans, lists.
But she had a new list now, and while she’d only been on Hilton Head Island for just over a day, she felt wildly behind in accomplishing the items her friends had starred for her.
Visit the beach and listen to theocean.
Fly a kite you don’t think you can control.
She’d listened to the ocean this morning, and the waves whispered things like,Choose to be happy, andLet yourself breatheagain.
Not only that, but she sure had felt like she could fall in love again that morning, with the sunshine bathing her and her thoughts rumbling around how to text Grant and get another meal with him.
She had plans to visit a kite shop later that day, actually, and also on her list today was to ask Grant a very important question.
“I hope I didn’t cut your call short with Shelby,” she said.
He looked over to her as if he’d forgotten she stood there, his frustrated expression softening instantly.“Nope,” he said.“We had just finished when your text came in.”
Bea nodded and folded her arms across herself.“Is it bad?”
“I’m going to call my guy,” he said, straightening and stepping back from the compressor.“Two minutes, okay?”He walked toward her, his smile appearing and crinkling along the edges of those gorgeous eyes.
She returned the gesture and nodded.“I’m not starving or anything.”
“Clinton, hi,” Grant said as he went past her, his voice nothing like how he’d spoken to her.Her smile lingered, turning into one that knew more than it should.He spoke differently to business acquaintances, and that meant she wasn’t just the woman staying in one of his rentals.
She turned and watched him roll his neck side to side as he listened to whatever Clinton had to say.
“Fine,” he said.“I want a call as soon as you look at it.”He hung up, his shoulders falling.They lifted as he turned, but he couldn’t erase the discontent there before she saw it.
“He can’t come today,” she supplied for him.
“He can,” he said.“But not until after work, and that’s not until five-thirty.”
Bea looked across the yard, her mind buzzing.“I was going to go to the kite shop this afternoon and get a kite.I can just spend the day on the beach.”
