A driftwood sign was tacked to the outer railing, words painted in the same color as the trim. Beach House No. 9.
Meg mounted the steps that led from the sand to the surface of the deck. She dropped her bag on the umbrella-topped table and took in the rest of the patio accessories: single chaises, a double lounger, a stack of extra chairs and a barbecue.
Everything looked in order. Though the current resident was gone for a few days, he’d return for the month of June. After that, No. 9 would have different occupants in July and August. Skye had said almost all the cottages were booked up for summer. That was good, because those months were when Crescent Cove paid its way. It would quiet in the fall and the rentals would be mostly vacant throughout the winter and spring.
Meg frowned at the peeling rails. Her sister was right to be annoyed that the paint hadn’t stayed tight to the wood. Maintenance was accomplished in the off-season and a company had been out in February to refurbish, but their efforts hadn’t lasted.
On the plus side, it gave Meg something to do, besides think of—
No one. No one was on her mind.
Yanking a hair tie from her front pocket, she gave another frown at the blistered railing as she bound her mass of caramel-colored hair. Then she consciously relaxed her facial muscles. “Watch it,” she murmured to herself. “You don’t want to groove permanently grumpy lines.”
Then again, she was a twenty-nine-year-old accountant. Grumpy might already be permanent.
Ignoring that unpleasant thought, Meg tackled the task she’d assigned herself, starting at one end of the railing. Paint chips flew until they covered her feet in their rubber thongs and were scattered over her hands and forearms. They drifted onto her jeans and T-shirt, too, almost obscuring the word blazoned across her chest: Meh.
Which kind of summed up how Meg had been feeling about herself and her life.
Meh. Meg. Just one letter off.
Contemplating that made her thirsty again. She’d nearly drained the puny little bottle of water she’d brought. The May Gray was locked in battle with the sun, and though right now gray was winning, it had definitely warmed up. With the last drop in her still-parched throat, Meg decided to dig through her bag for the cove’s master keys, and dash inside No. 9 to refill her water at the kitchen sink.
Since No. 9’s occupant, Griffin Lowell, had summered in this very bungalow as a kid and they’d been friends back in the day, she didn’t think he’d object. Although according to Skye, Griffin barely resembled the devil-may-care boy who had vacationed with his family at the cove. Now a journalist, he’d spent a year embedded with the troops in Afghanistan and had come back to the beach a loner who wanted nothing more than to be left to himself. Meg hoped he’d find what he was looking for here, though her own return to Crescent Cove had yet to bring her peace.
The sliding door leading from the deck to the living room was heavy, so she left it open as she hustled inside, leaving her paint-chipped footwear behind. It only took a moment or two to replenish her bottle and twist on the cap. As she hurried back out, her bare soles slid on the hardwood floor. She felt herself going down and dropped the container to catch her balance on a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Steady again, she saw the plastic cylinder of water rolling toward the sliding glass door. Rolling toward shoes.
Shoes?
As she looked up, the sun won the war, breaking from behind the clouds. The light dazzled, and made the figure in the doorway a dark silhouette. A male silhouette, with a big, shaggy-haired dog at his side.
Meg’s heart shot high, fueled by pure exhilaration as she recognized the masculine outline. Her fingers tightened on the bookshelf. Peter. Peter!
In one single moment she experienced all the blazing joy of that summer ten years before when she’d met a twenty-two-year old recent college graduate. She’d fallen for him, fallen so deep that there’d been barely a splash, and he’d been equally smitten. The feeling had held all the thrills and enchantment her mother had promised about that thing called love, as happy-ever-after-ish as Meg had fantasized since she was a little girl swooning over the Disney version of The Little Mermaid. Peter Fleming had been her prince.
That summer, she’d thought she’d met her future, and they could have fed the entire world’s energy grid from the unending pool of their mutual bliss.
And here he was! Again! Her heart raced, thrumming against her ribs. Peter…
Did she say it out loud? Because the dark figure shook his head, then stepped into the room. The dog followed, his nails clicking smartly against the floor. “I’m Caleb,” the man said. “Caleb McCall.”
She stared at him blankly, her racing heart braking to a screeching halt, her brief joy subsumed by the grief she’d experienced that summer, too. Her body began to tremble, an aftereffect of shock.
As she watched, the man swooped down for the bottle, then paced toward her, holding it out. “It looks as if you could use this,” he said.
She released the bookshelf to take it from him, her senses still working at recovery. Of course this man wasn’t Peter. Peter had been gone for ten years, drowned by a rogue wave, it was presumed, when he’d gone out kayaking one afternoon at the end of August.
The stranger might look a little like Peter had he lived, though. Same golden tan, same sandy brown hair—though cut short when Peter’s had been long. The man—Caleb, he’d said—was gazing at her with narrowed brown eyes, concern written across his handsome features.
Now that she was breathing again, she felt
