Something in her eyes softened. “Well, it was nice of you to tackle my bathroom. So…thank you.”
He nodded the you’re welcome. Seemed like he was always trying to show her that he’d changed. He’d fixed her rotting porch roof with the slow, undiagnosed leak. Redid her plain, boring backsplash. Her kitchen floor. And now her master bath.
He’d fixed everything he could get his hands on but their broken relationship. Done everything but tell her how sorry he was that he’d screwed things up between them.
Maybe it was time for him to move on and let the past lie, like she clearly wanted to do. But that was the thing about living in this town. You saw your whole past every single day—every person, every mistake. It was actually one of the things he loved about it—there was no running.
He did his best every day to show that he’d turned into a capable, hardworking person, even if he couldn’t quite shake the image of the immature young adult he’d been.
“Nick, I—I just wanted to tell you something,” she said. Her eyes were the kind of gentle brown that reminded him of a doe, a comparison she used to hate. He remembered being eighteen and thinking he’d never seen anyone with eyes like that, with gold flecks that could look cool or fiery, depending on her mood. And he still hadn’t.
“Sure. What is it?” A thought occurred to him. What if she was about to tell him that the cancer was back? That sent a shudder through him. “Are you—are you okay?”
“Of course, I’m okay.” Her irritation was barely disguised. “It’s not always about my health.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.” It was just so hard when he was the last to know anything. But he couldn’t tell her that.
Her face crumpled. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.” She rubbed her temples. “It’s been a really long day.”
Always with the apologies. Both of them were quick to smooth things over without ever going deeper. “I’ve got a crew coming here first thing in the morning so we can get that bathroom done.” She looked super unhappy at that, so he added, “I’ll tell them to come at ten. That way you can sleep in a little.”
“Okay, thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
“What was it you wanted to tell me?” He vowed not to jump to conclusions, whatever she said.
She gave him a wave as she headed toward the hallway. “Not important. I’m going to crash. See ya.”
“Oh, I almost forgot.” He got up and fished around in his pocket. “My guys were back there drilling out the floor, and I found this on your bureau.”
As he held out the antique ring, she recoiled. Which threw him, because he knew it was important to her. “I trust my crew,” he said, “but sometimes we have delivery people coming in and out, and I didn’t want it to lie around and take a chance that some dishonest person—”
“Thanks. It belonged to my great-great-grandmother.” Together they examined the large, sparkly gem with an old-fashioned filigree band. There was no mistaking it for a unique piece. It wasn’t a precious gemstone, but Nick knew it was precious to her in other ways. “I would hate to lose it.”
He looked up at her, so close that he could reach over and kiss her cheek. “The ancestor who started the home for unwed mothers, right?”
Darla nodded. “Yep. She was amazing.”
He knew a whole lot more about that ancestor than Darla thought he did. She stood there, palm open, waiting for him to drop the ring in. “Well, it must run in the family then,” he said, which made her blush.
He was digging himself a hole. He decided at the last minute to place it carefully into her palm, curling her fingers around it.
Her lashes fluttered, and she looked at him.
His heart gave a jolt. She was still just the same. A complex mix of vulnerability and emotion, shielded by a huge suit of invisible armor. He knew who she was underneath the armor, and he yearned to connect with that person.
Nick saw everything in that look. Confusion, pain, annoyance. But something else too.
A tiny flicker of attraction. Heat. Still there, after all this time.
And despite himself, he felt a strange sense of hope.
Chapter 3
Darla did not want that ring. Yes, her great-great-grandmother Amelia Manning was a kick-butt trailblazer and way ahead of her time.
The ring was pretty too, at first glance looking exactly like a diamond, but it was really one of thousands of bits of quartz that had bumped their way down watersheds from the Catskills, getting polished and hewn along the way, and often ending up on local beaches—and then in a lot of the local gift shops.
It wasn’t a diamond, but it was priceless to Darla. Amelia had left a bad marriage, bought the ring, and pretended to be a widow so she could buy property. Hence the “amazing” part.
The property she bought was an old Victorian with a wraparound porch a few blocks from Main Street, taking in unwed mothers who had no place to go, teaching them life skills like personal finance and childcare. She helped them get jobs and sometimes, when she could beat down the summerhouse mansion doors of the very rich and plead her case, even educational opportunities or apprenticeships.
Darla often bolstered herself by thinking that just a hint of her ancestor’s gutsiness might run in her blood. Could courage be inherited? She hoped so.
The weird thing was that Hadley and Kit, her two best friends, had both found love while wearing the ring. It had been Darla’s idea to give it to each of them over the past two summers to serve as a little shot of courage when they’d needed it most.
But Darla was interested not in finding but in forgetting, and she didn’t even take the ring to California.
Also, the irony was not lost on her that the ring had just been handed back to her by the guy she’d spent the past year trying to forget.
As much as she yearned to learn more about her bold ancestor, there was no way that she was going to put that ring on now with Nick standing right there. So she set it on her bedside table, vowing to put it somewhere for safekeeping in the morning.
She sought out a bathroom in the same part of the house Nick was sleeping in, but as far away from him as possible. She skipped the shower and just brushed her teeth, hurrying back to her bedroom as quickly as possible.
Then she threw on her favorite T-shirt that read I’M AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DO THE MATH and sleep shorts and climbed into bed with her laptop, settling in to write just a few words until she got sleepy.
Any words counted at this point. Stalker X, the book she was contracted for, was coming out more along the lines of an enemies-to-lovers romance. No terror, no suspense. She’d been struggling for the past three weeks to turn it into the book she was supposed to be writing.
But Darla was tired. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d taken a full weekend off. It seemed that the more successful her books became, the faster her publisher, Crime Scene Publishing, wanted her to write them. Which had initially seemed like a good problem to have. She’d handled the stress and strain of deadlines without missing one in all this time. But for the first time in her career, the winds had blown her way off course.
She picked up the ring and tried it on, examining its sparkle. “Hi, ring. Instead of a man, please bring me an idea so that I can save this book.” She let out a chuckle because—well, she was appealing to a ring. “Although being married to my work is probably not a good idea. But what I really need is a mysterious man named Stalker X that I can invent to save my neck.”