“Refit.”
“Oops. I’m not the best with nautical terms, but I’ll learn.”
The person ahead of them walked away, and as they stepped up to the counter, Trista put her hand on her hip, her eyes moving between the two of them. “Now I understand why you blew off Keira and the rest of us for dinner the other night.”
“I was busy,” Grant said.
“I see that.” Trista flashed a friendly smile at Jules. She was one of Sutton’s close friends. Her family had run the Silver Island newspaper for several generations. “Hey, Jules. I’d ask how it’s going, but I can see for myself it’s going pretty well.”
“It’s not like that. Grant and I are just friends.” Jules let go of his arm and gave him a disapproving look. “You blew off your sister for dinner?”
He gritted his teeth, shooting a narrow-eyed stare at Trista. “Thanks.”
Trista shrugged and grabbed Jules’s dinner order from the counter behind her. “I didn’t mean to start a lovers’ quarrel. That’s eighteen fifty.”
He uttered a curse and pulled out his wallet, tossing a twenty on the counter, and grabbed the bag before Jules could get her money out of her pocket.
“Thanks, Grant. See ya later, Trista. Sorry he blew you guys off, but it wasn’t for me.”
“Let’s go, Pix.” Grant grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and tugged her toward the door. “Everyone doesn’t need to know my business.”
“You could have just brought Jules with you the other night!” Trista yelled after them.
Jules giggled at Trista’s comment, feeling a little giddy at Grant’s use of Pix. It sounded different when he wasn’t angry at her or trying to convince her to stay away from him. She took his arm as they walked down Main Street toward the harbor, wondering if he even realized he’d called her that again. Hope swirled inside her that maybe, just maybe, this was the start of something more.
AS JULES WENT on about how much she loved fall and how pretty the trees were, Grant tried to figure out why he was walking down to the beach with her instead of saying what he came to say and walking away. But just being around Jules made him less angry. Her positivity wasn’t as much contagious as it was alluring. She didn’t talk to him like every sentence was carefully devised to tiptoe around what his life had become, the way most people on the island did, with the exception of his closest guy friends.
“What’s your favorite season?” she asked.
She gazed up at him with those beautiful hazel eyes, like he was the most special guy on earth, not the broken man everyone else saw, and she held on to his arm like she belonged there. Like she was his. He knew he was treading a dangerous line. He shouldn’t let her get too comfortable or lead her on, especially after the last two times he’d seen her. He’d damn near kissed her at her shop, right in front of Bellamy. There was no more fooling himself. She was so far out of the off-limits zone, he couldn’t even see it anymore. But he really liked being around her, and there wasn’t much he looked forward to these days. What could it hurt to spend an hour together? He’d nip whatever this was in the bud after she finished eating dinner.
“Fall,” he said as the Silver House came into view on the bluff overlooking the harbor. The mansion-turned-resort was an impressive sight with its expansive patios and lush landscaping. His family’s resort always brought a deluge of conflicting emotions. He was proud to be a Silver, and at the same time, he resented the hell out of it.
“Just like me.” She held his arm a little tighter. “Why is it your favorite season?”
“I like cooler weather.” He didn’t tell her it was because sometimes when it was too hot, his residual limb would sweat, and he needed to take off his prosthesis to let it breathe. Thankfully, that didn’t happen as often as it used to now that his limb had healed and his body had acclimated to the myriad changes.
“Me too. Don’t you love the fall colors? Look how pretty the Silver House is surrounded by mums and those bright-orange and yellow bushes. And those purple trees.” She pointed to the gardens. “They’re my absolute favorites.”
“They’re called sourwood trees. They’re my mom’s favorite, too. And the orange and yellow bushes are fragrant sumac.”
“Mr. Silver, are you a closet horticulturist?”
“No, I’m just a guy whose mother likes plants. See the bright-purple flowers? They’re New England asters, and the pink are turtlehead flowers.”
“Impressive. I love plants and flowers, but I don’t have a green thumb. I always drown my plants. I can’t stand thinking about them being thirsty.”
If anyone else had said that, they might seem ditzy, but it was such a Jules thing to say, it endeared her toward him even more.
“I’m pretty good at keeping things alive.” On and off the battlefield. He felt a pang of longing for what he’d lost, but instead of giving it a chance to take hold, he said the first thing that came to mind. “When I was a kid, I was always in a hurry, and I’d run through the gardens and trample the flowers. My mother would walk me back through, teaching me about the plants and talking about how strong they had to be to survive.” He hadn’t thought about that in years. He smiled with the memory and realized his mother and Jules weren’t so different in the way they spoke.
“She guilted you?” She laughed softly.
“A little, but I don’t think that was her intent. I’ve always loved to learn, and she took every opportunity to teach me. My mom has this way of explaining things that makes you care about them. She did a good job, because I ended up being the one to holler at my brothers and sisters about running through the gardens and killing the plants.”
“That’s because you’ve got a heart of gold under all those muscles. Can we sit on the deck of the Bistro and eat?”
He didn’t feel like he had a heart of gold these days. In fact, he hadn’t thought about that body part at all before Jules started firing him up. She made him want to have a heart of gold.
“Sure. I haven’t been here in ages.” He hadn’t even realized they’d walked all the way down the hill.
The Bistro was built on the edge of Sunset Beach. It was owned by Ava de Messiéres, but it had been founded by her late husband, Olivier, the man who had taught Grant to paint. The old BISTRO sign had been there for as long as Grant could remember. It stood on steel legs attached to the double-peaked roof of the renovated-boathouse-turned-restaurant, but the property itself had seen better days. It was boarded up for the winter. A CLOSED FOR THE SEASON, CALL FOR WINTER CATERING sign hung on the weather-beaten siding. The back of the restaurant faced the parking lot, the front faced the water, and wooden decking ran along the side of the building just a few inches off the ground, all the way out to the beach.
As they walked along the deck, memories of painting there peppered Grant. A gust of cold air swept up the beach, and Jules turned, burying her face in Grant’s chest. He put his arms around her, inhaling the sweet scents of honey and citrus. She felt incredible, delicate, and enticingly feminine, as she had in the vineyard.
“Do you want to go back to the parking lot?”