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Grant approached, and she let him move all the way in front of her before she looked at him.“I’ll comp you a night,” he said.“And if you want a hotel, I can get you one of those for tonight too.If he can’t fix it, you’ll want that.”
“It’ll be fine,” she said, not wanting to cause any trouble.Or pack up her unpacked things for one night.“I’ll open the windows.”
“Bea,” he said, giving her ayou can’t stay here without AC, sillylook.“I’ll get you a room right now.”He tapped and lifted his phone back to his ear.“Or you can stay in one of my unoccupied rentals.”His eyebrows went up as if he’d just thought of that.“Which would you prefer?”
“The rental,” she said.“If it’s as clean as this one was.”
He lowered the phone and hung up, a new gleam in his eye that spoke of a little boy who’d once kept a snake in his closet so his parents wouldn’t know he’d found it.Mischief.Bea had raised two sons, and she knew the look.“I know just the place.”
“It better be nice,” she said.
“It is nice.”He looked up at her, that charming smile she’d only seen him give to her on his face.“First you’re too cold here, now you’re too hot.You seem like a hard woman to please.”
Bea laughed with him, glad he’d initiated the first true flirting experience.“I have no defense,” she said dryly.“I want a hot shower and a cold room in the summer.”
“It’s mid-April,” he said, stowing his phone in his front pocket.With his hands empty, Bea looked at them, imagining how hers would fit there.
She slid her fingers along his forearm, then his wrist, and finally into his.All his laughter dried up on the first touch, and she let the sparks and pops fizz through her while their fingers intertwined and finally settled.
Only then did she raise her eyes to his.A new emotion sat in the deeper, darkest part of his eyes, and since Beawasn’ta twenty-year-old and meeting a man she really liked for the first time, she recognized it for what it was.
Desire.
“I think you said something about Greek food?”she prompted, her voice about half the volume it had been a moment ago.
“Yeah,” he said, the word really made of half of his voice and the other half a growl.He cleared his throat, and his voice sailed smoothly on, “It doesn’t start until eleven-thirty, so we’ve got a few minutes.It goes until two.”
She nodded, loathe to release his hand quite yet.But she did, forcing herself to pull her fingers away from his bit by bit.He let her too, and Bea wasn’t sure how to feel about that.“You probably have work to get back to,” she said.“We can go to the sampler when you’re ready.”
Grant looked torn for half a moment, and then he said, “Nope.I don’t have anything on my list today that can’t wait.”He took her hand this time, and Bea ducked her head to hide her smile, though she wasn’t sure why.She’d just revealed her whole game plan by holding his hand out of the blue.“Do you want to take a walk on the beach?’
“I already did,” she said.“But I’d go again.”
“Or we can go to the kite shop now.Or you can go pack your bag, and I’ll give you the address for the new place, and you can get settled over there.Then we’ll go to lunch.”
She eyed the back steps leading down from the deck.“Or we could sit right here in the shade and talk.”Bea took a few steps, and Grant came with her.She sighed almost in tandem with him as she sat, and their eyes met.
He chuckled and she joined in, thrilled when he claimed her hand once more and settled their joined hands on his knee.“Shelby’s going to stay with me for the summer,” he said.“She’ll be here at the end of May, before Memorial Day weekend.Only six more weeks.”
“That’s amazing,” Bea said, her thoughts winding to her own daughter.“I’m going to Austin to watch my daughter—she’s my oldest—do her last performance before her graduation.Then there’s that, and then I’m staying for a while to help her go through some wedding plans.”
“Oh, when is she getting married?”
“December twenty-seventh,” she said, the one piece of Meredith’s wedding she knew.“They’ve had that date on the calendar for a while.”She didn’t mean for her voice to sound wistful, but it certainly did.“That’s the day they met, two years ago now.”She smiled softly, the kind of smile that wasn’t built of happiness, but of fond memories and old times that seemed so good.
Grant’s hand in hers tightened, and he asked, “What are you doing tonight?”at the same time she asked, “Will you help me find some historical sites to visit?”
Bea’s words went longer than his, and it took her brain an extra moment to comprehend what he’d asked.Her emotions went into a frenzy, making everything buzz, and she gave the breeze a moment to babble between them before she said, “I hope I’m going to dinner with you tonight.”
He smiled as he gazed out over the back lawn that did have more dead patches than green ones.“I hope so too.Guess I better come up with a plan.”
“I do like plans,” Bea admitted, a new level of joy entering her system that she hadn’t experienced for a while.A completely new vein on the romantic front, which reawakened part of her heart which had long been dry and barren.
“I can definitely help you find some historical sites around the island,” he said.
“Okay,” she said like it was no big deal.“Cass said there’s some Civil War stuff here, and I love history.”
Grant looked at her again, that edge still deep in his expression.He’d covered over it with interest, and he said, “Really?I wouldn’t have guessed that about you.”
“Sure,” she said.“Museums, historical sites, plaques.I like it all.In fact, I putvisit ten National Parkson my love list.”
Confusion crossed his face.“Your love list?”
Embarrassment heated Bea now, and along with the sun and the humidity, she certainly didn’t need it.“Uh, yeah,” she said, hoping that would be it.She really didn’t want to explain more of her craziness right now.
Grant let a few seconds of silence pass, just enough to give her a false sense of hope that he wouldn’t ask.Then he slid his hand out of hers and asked, “Care to tell me what a love list is?”
