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He chuckled and steered her around a couple of dogs in a sniffing chain. Gypsy walked on by, his nose oblivious to other canines. For the first time, Sage thought he might be anosmic—unable to smell.
“I like to watch documentaries,” he said. “Sometimes, if I’m early to something, or I just want to be alone, I’ll get lunch and eat it in my car while something plays on my phone.”
“You’re early to things?” she teased. “You told me you ran late a lot.”
“It’s an occupational hazard,” he said.
They fell into silence then, and Sage didn’t mind at all. Ty led her over to the corner of the enclosure, and they faced the water. He slipped his arm around her waist, and she leaned into his chest, feeling like she really belonged there.
He got to listen to the waves as the sun went down, and Sage found two more things they had in common, for she enjoyed watching the last rays of light bleed from the sky and trying to figure out what the ocean was saying to her.
“Should we go?” he finally whispered, and Sage nodded. He whistled for his dogs again, and Sage didn’t have to look far for Gypsy. Despite his name, he sure didn’t wander. At the gate, she clipped on his leash, and she let Ty drive her back to the apartment with only the radio on low and the panting of dogs as background noise.
“So I’ll start looking for something,” he said as he walked her around the corner of her building. “But you and Thelma should come in and we’ll fill out the Perfect Property Survey.”
“Okay,” she said. Her feet ate up the distance to her door quickly, and she turned to face him. “Thank you, Ty. This was…really great. I had a fun time.”
“So did I.” He gazed down at her. “So the movie tomorrow. Do you have brunch plans on Sunday?”
She wanted to stop the smile that curved her lips, but she wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to do so. “No,” she said. “Who has brunch plans on Sunday?”
He laughed, his head tilting back a little as he did. “Well, we can, if you’d like to go. If you want a day off from me, that’s okay too.”
“I think I could stand to see you for brunch,” she said. “But let me talk to Thelma, okay?”
“Of course.” He leaned toward her, and Sage’s heartbeat banged like a big steel drum. Was he going to kiss her? Would she let him?
His lips brushed her cheek, moving from near her nose out to her ear. “I sure do like you, Sage,” he whispered, his lips practically catching against her earlobe. “You…rev me up and then calm me down in a very good way.”
Excitement pranced through her, because she wanted to be good for someone. She wanted to make a man’s blood flow hotter. She wanted to have every good thing a passionate, loving relationship had to offer.
“Good night,” she whispered, and then she slipped away from him by opening the door and letting Gypsy trot in first. She stepped into the apartment too, and then turned back to him, offering him one more smile she hoped told him that she’d let him kiss her next time.
Then the door closed, and Sage twisted the lock and leaned her back against it. She felt nineteen again, with her first hot and handsome college boyfriend, instead of forty-nine-about-to-turn-fifty trying for a second chance at happiness.
“How did it go?” Thelma asked as she came down the hall. “Oh, you’re leaning against the door.” She stopped and folded her arms, her silky pajama pants still fluttering after she’d paused. “Look at you.”
“What do I look like?”
“Like someone is falling hard, even though you told me you weren’t dating him.”
“Things change,” Sage said as she pushed away from the door. “And I’m not falling hard. He’s doing everything right.” She grinned as she approached her sister. “I’m not moving too fast, am I?”
“Who cares if you are?” Thelma asked. “Sometimes, you just know. Sometimes, it just feels right.”
Sage nodded, because that was something she’d told Thelma once-upon-a-time. They’d said that when they’d decided to move here. Of course, Thelma had needed to get out of Texas—and truth be told, so had Sage.
She missed the farms and cattle ranches sometimes. She craved a good Texas thunderstorm. She loved being outside with the hills, the puffy white clouds, the feeling of home surrounding her. But she wanted a patch of land here in Hilton Head, not Sweet Water Falls.
Ty would find her one, and then Sage would be able to start living a new way of life. As she went down the hall to her bedroom and changed into her pajamas, she murmured, “The waterfront way.”
A completely new, reimagined and reinvented version of the Sage Grady she’d been for so long. She’d be the same woman—only better.
9
Sage grinned at Ty with all the wattage of the sun beaming from her. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” She clutched the railing on the boat and tried not to picture herself falling overboard. “I’m a little scared of boats.”
“You’re a little scared of boats?” he repeated. “And we’re going whale watching—out on a boat in the open Atlantic—for your birthday?” He looked aghast. “Why? Are you trying to prove something?”
