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She simply smiled and nodded at him, but the attraction between them bubbled. Surely she didn’t feel that with all of herfriends.Maybe she doesn’t feel it at all, he told himself as he shoved everything into a big, metal trashcan next to the main RK building.
He glanced over to Sage and took his own iced tea from her, and they started up the boardwalk toward the parking lot. His time with her streamed away from him, and he couldn’t grab onto the grains of sand for anything.
“So, you’ll text me the details of the whale watching?” he asked when his feet hit pavement instead of landing on wood.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re sure you can go? I know you’re really busy.”
“It’s February,” he said by way of explanation. “I can go.” He’d do anything to clear his schedule, but he didn’t need to say that out loud. He wondered what he did need to say out loud, and as Sage came to his side in the parking lot, Ty relied on his fifty-three years of life experience to guide him.
He slipped his hand along her waist and leaned into her. He breathed, because that was a non-voluntary thing to do, right? He murmured, “It was great to see you, Sage.”
Then he pulled everything back to himself, because he wasn’t sure where she stood, or where she wanted him. For him, right now, that was okay.
She smiled at him and said, “Your hair is looking scruffy, Mister Big Shot Real Estate Agent.” She reached up and brushed her fingers through it, the heat of her touch practically causing an inferno to blaze through him.
“Yeah?” He could throw her flirt right back at her. “I guess I better stop by and get it cut.”
Sage pulled her phone from her front pocket. “I have…” She scanned and swiped. “A twelve-fifteen.” She looked up. “Maybe you could come in on your lunch hour.”
Once again, Ty found himself willing to cancel anything, chance anything, move anything, to see her tomorrow at twelve-fifteen. So he said, “Sure, I’ll be there.”
She nodded, typed into her phone, and ducked away from him. “Good to see you too, Ty.” He watched her walk back to her car, nothing really moving through his head. When her door slammed, he startled and turned to get into his luxury SUV.
He practically followed her home, but that couldn’t be helped, as they lived only a mile apart. By the time he walked in, the sun had started to paint rose and gold in the sky—and Brother and Sherman were none too happy about his late arrival.
Sherman, ever the black lab drama-king, actually nosed his empty food bowl off the plastic mat where Ty put it and barked.
“Yeah, all right,” Ty said as he bent to get the bowl. “Sorry, guys. It’s just…” Sage had texted. She’d come. They’d been together for less than an hour, but it had been time well spent.
So well spent.
He opened the back door for Brother, then got out the raw food he fed his dogs. After mixing it with some of their dry food, he put down Sherman’s bowl and kept Brother’s back. His mind seemed to be like a butterfly, flitting and flying wherever it wanted—but it always came back to Sage.
She hadn’t asked him about Gloria; he hadn’t volunteered any more information. She hadn’t said she wanted to go out with him; the meetings they were setting up couldn’t really be considered dates.
So he just need to be there, be present with her, and maybe he could find himself in a more serious boyfriend role. That thought made him smile, and Ty went through his evening paperwork the happiest he’d been in months.
All because of Sage.
5
Sage waved good-bye to Ed and made the turn to go down the sidewalk to her apartment. The sun had come up, and it blazed over the concrete already. A sigh pulled through Sage as she stepped inside, despite the blasting air conditioning.
“Morning,” Thelma said, and Sage gave her a quick smile. Yes, it was morning. And the fact that Thelma was up, dressed, and ready for work already told Sage she wasn’t getting out of talking about Ty.
She’d put her sister off last night, claiming to be tired and unsure of what had happened. Of course, Thelma had found something to eat on her own, and there’d be no lasting damage to Sage’s impromptu pseudo-dinner date with Ty Parker.
Unless she considered her heart. If she truly allowed the door to open to him again, she felt strongly that he could take her heart into his palm and crush it.
She pushed those thoughts away, because they led down dangerous paths. As she laid in bed last night, she’d actually been excited about getting her heart broken. It sounded like a thrill she hadn’t experienced yet.
And what kind of sick woman wanted to get their heart broken?
But to Sage, that meant that she’d have truly loved someone deeply, passionately, authentically. And they’d have loved her like that too, and all the angst and chaos of a breaking heart would mean she’dlived. She’dfinallylived.
She felt like she’d been merely existing on this planet for almost fifty years.
She bent to release Gypsy from his leash, and he trotted over to the big, green water bowl she and Thelma kept by the pantry door.
