“Yeah, Momma,” Luna cajoled. “Pweese.”
“Uh, yeah. Okay. That sounds good.”
It didn’t. It really didn’t. I was a walking, talking idiot around this man. But there was officially no way out of it. “How does six work?”
I got that dimpled grin again, and the teenager in my head swooned until she passed out, face down. “Perfect. I’ll see you then.”
“Yeah. Yep. Uh-huh. See you then.” Now I wished a hole would open up and swallow me.
“Bye, Tent!” Renee called, waving like crazy as he let himself out the back gate and resumed his run, returning my girl’s wave over his shoulder.
“Man,” Luna sighed as all three of us watched him getting smaller and smaller the farther away he got. “I think I might be a matchmaking genius. Maybe I should start a business.”
I spun on her and scowled as hard as physically possible. “One of these days, Luna. One of these days, when you least expect it, I’m going to set your house on fire.”
She giggled, unaffected by my threat. “You love me,” she declared before booping me on the nose. “Now move that cute behind. We need to find something ah-mazing for you to wear tomorrow night.”
Chapter Seven
Trent
Moving through the gate and up the back porch steps that would lead me into the kitchen of the beach house I’d rented, I silently berated myself. I was a fucking idiot. No two ways about it.
I’d set out on my run with the intention of scoping things out. That was all. I had no plans to make contact again, at least not this soon after our first run-in. Or at least that was what I’d told myself.
I’d been trailing Sawyer Darcy for a few days now to try and get a feel for the woman and the life she’d built here for herself, but with each passing day, I was finding myself more drawn to her in a way that had nothing to do with my job. It was bordering on unprofessional, and I’d always prided myself in taking my job seriously.
There was just something about the way everyone she came in contact with responded to her, how her smile seemed to be infectious to every person in her orbit. Anyone she passed on the street had to stop for a chance to chat with her, and she was more than happy to oblige every single time, never put out about being interrupted in her attempt to get from point A to point B. If someone was talking to her, they had her undivided attention.
She was clearly loved by everyone in Whitecap, that was plain to see, and that little girl of hers may as well have been the town treasure with how everyone doted on her.
When I left the place I was renting that morning, the plan was to just wave and keep on moving if we happened to spot each other while I was jogging by, but when that redheaded friend of hers had spotted me and waved me over, my feet moved of their own accord.
I should have stuck with the goddamn plan and kept going. When that didn’t happen, I should have cut the conversation short and gotten the hell out of there, not stuck around to get sucked in by a beautiful woman and the cutest little girl on the face of the earth. I definitely should have bailed when her friend took off inside to give us some privacy, and no fucking way I should have agreed to a small, private dinner with her the following night.
I was walking a razor’s edge, dangerously close to crossing a line I couldn’t cross by getting too close to a target. But in spite of the voice inside my head telling me to stop thinking with my dick and to use my brain, I hadn’t been able to make myself walk away.
She looked so fucking cute, standing there with her cheeks pink with embarrassment from her friend’s behavior and that smudge of clay on her forehead she hadn’t realized was there.
Her hair was a riot of wild, silky waves and curls, blowing free in the wind coming off the ocean. And those eyes. Christ, those eyes. They were the color of the leaves in the fall back in Hope Valley. Not just brown, but also red and yellow and orange. Like a banked fire just waiting for a bit of air to make it grow wild.
Most gorgeous eyes I’d ever seen.
So different from her twin’s.
The first time I’d seen her back at that coffee shop, the differences between Sawyer and Charlotte had been hard to see from a distance, but once I was close enough, it became obvious. Seeing her earlier today, they were even clearer.
Charlotte’s features were softer, a round face with a small, button nose. Sawyer’s were more defined, like razor sharp edges that had been smoothed by the wind and rain over time, making her even more striking than her twin.
After spending that time with her in her workshop earlier, I no longer made the correlation between her and Charlotte being twins. In no time at all, Sawyer had become her own person in my eyes. She was just Sawyer. I imagined that was how everyone in this small town saw this captivating woman.
But that little girl . . . she was a different story.
She was her aunt, through and through. When she told me she’d been named after a princess who lived in the sky, one with a twin sister, it just about gutted me, because I knew, no matter how tough Charlotte acted, how hard the life she’d been forced to live had made her, she would melt into a puddle the moment she laid eyes on her niece. The niece her sister clearly named after her, a sister who obviously missed her very much.
Which made the guilt I felt at keeping this secret from her and Dalton eat at my insides day after day.
It was on that thought, as I moved through the house to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge, that my phone rang, cutting off the song that had been blasting through my earbuds.
Pulling them out, I tossed them on the island and reached into my pocket for my ringing phone. Dalton’s name flash across the screen.
“Hey, brother. How’re things?”
“Can’t complain, man,” he answered as I twisted the cap off the bottle and sucked a quarter of it down.
“Can’t? Or won’t because your bride-to-be is within earshot.”
“You’re on speakerphone, ass face!” I heard Charlotte call out in the background. “And just for that, I’m gonna make you help with wedding prep when the time comes. Hope you like learning to fold napkins into swans and making goody bags filled with candy almonds and Hershey Kiss roses.”
“Love you like a sister, Charlotte, but I’d rather drag my balls across shattered glass than do any of that.”
“Ugh! Why are boys so gross? I’m leaving the room now so you and Dalt can bro down. Just wanted to say hi.”
“Hi, sweetheart. Talk to you later.”
I heard what sounded like Dalton and Charlotte making out before he spoke again a few seconds later. “All right. You’re off speaker now.”
“Couldn’t have done that before you shoved your tongue down her throat?”
He laughed through the line. “Where’d the fun in that be?”
“I see you called just to be a dick,” I said with a grin.
“Well, you been gone a while. Figured you’d be feelin’ a little homesick. You’re welcome.”
“So glad to know you care,” I said on a chuckle before draining the rest of my water. “How’re things going over there? Wedding planning under way yet?”
He let out a sigh, and I heard what sounded like him moving around and a door closing behind him for privacy. “I finally talked her around to setting a date. You know she’s been holding out, hoping we’d find her sister first.”