Wanted to see if she meant it.
He rounded the final curve at a near jog. Elisa waited for him at the top level leading to the observation deck, the sunlight through the wall-to-wall windows catching her blond hair and making it gleam. The lighthouse’s original Fresnel lens the guard had yammered about earlier filled the center of the space behind her.
Elisa smiled, and he felt silly for needing to check on her. She was fine.
“Odd time for story hour.” He braced his hands on his thighs as he caught his breath.
“Was it?” She raised an eyebrow before leaning down to unlatch a low window marked EXIT. “Seems like it was the perfect time to me.” Then she shimmied out the opening before he could reply.
She’d done it on purpose. He bit down on his lower lip as he cautiously hunched under the low frame of the window and moved into the sunshine. That made twice in two days that Elisa Bergeron had tricked him. Except this time, he hadn’t minded the trick nearly as much.
A fact which disturbed him far more than the nerve-wracking view from the top.
Noah risked a step toward the security railing to see the ocean, and his stomach pitched. Nope. He plastered his back against the lighthouse wall. A bird swooped past the curved deck, doing little to settle Noah’s rush of adrenaline. He closed his eyes.
A warm, steadying hand rested on his arm. “You good?”
He opened his eyes. He couldn’t quite feel his legs, but he wasn’t about to let Elisa know that. He sniffed, squaring his shoulders as he avoided her gaze. “I’ll be fine.”
She grinned. “I won’t let you fall.”
The wind lifted a strand of her hair and sent it fluttering away from her cheeks. Something stirred within him, something terrifyingly like old feelings. Noah clenched his hands into fists to prevent his fingers from tucking that rogue lock behind her ear, from cupping her cheek in his hand and reminding her how pretty she was.
Silly impulse. He blamed the lavender oil.
Then their eyes met, hers with a teasing, compassionate spark, and his stomach flipped.
It was no longer the lighthouse that had him concerned about falling.
ten
Noah didn’t look so good.
In fact, under his pale expression, he looked almost…well,friendly. And if that wasn’t a red flag for his mental state while standing at the top of the tower, Elisa didn’t know what was.
She removed her hand from his arm and turned to evaluate their surroundings. She needed to find this clue, and fast. For Noah’s sake, of course. Not because touching his arm and standing this close, where she could fully appreciate the depths of his scruffy jaw was messing with her own head. “Do you see anything on the window ledge?”
Noah shifted, slowly, toward the frame they’d crawled from and ran his fingers around the edges. “No.”
She’d have to check it better to know for sure, but at the moment, she didn’t want to risk crowding him. “I’ll walk around the perimeter. Do you want to come?—”
His wide-eyed stare answered her unfinished question.
“Right. Be right back.” She maneuvered the outside of the observation deck, trailing one hand over the tower wall and one over the outside railing as she walked. Nothing felt out of place, loose, or otherwise messed with beneath her fingers. Where would Gilbert have put their clue? Were they looking for a note card like the first clues had been written on?
She was flying blind—and with a lame duck waiting for her, to boot.
Lord, I could use some help here. And if you could keep Noah from having a panic attack, that’d be extra helpful.
“Noah?” She lifted her voice above the wind as she made her way around the circle toward him. The sun inched its way toward the water, sending beams of light dancing across the top of the waves. Thank the Lord no other tourists had bothered to come to the lighthouse this close to closing time. “You good?”
He called something from around the curved platform, but the wind snatched his words. At least he was still on the deck and hadn’t crawled back inside. Progress.
“Remember that time I tried to get you up here?” Seemed a bit dangerous to reference their summer together outright with him, but keeping Noah calm took first priority until they found the clue. “You refused. Claimed it was a tourist trap and not worth the money.”
“Oh, I remember.” His voice was faint, but she thought she heard a hint of humor in it.
“You probably thought you were so slick, hiding your fear of heights.” She continued her search, winding her way around the platform toward where she’d left him. “But I figured it out after that impulsive trip we took to the Ferris wheel on the boardwalk.”
