He glanced at his hand, still tingling from where it had met Eve’s.
A smile touched his lips. He was sure that he and Eve would run into each other again. St. Augustine and Anastasia Island weren’t that big after all.
Pushing thoughts of Eve and the remarkable resemblance Lila had to his daughter aside, David went to work.
The problem was obvious the moment he stepped into the bathroom. The main supply line had cracked again, and water was pooling across the tile floor and seeping under the baseboards. David shut off the water at the valve behind the toilet, then dropped to his knees to assess the damage.
Old pipes. Corroded connections. The kind of patchwork system that had been added to over decades without anyone bothering to replace the core infrastructure.
He could fix it. He could buy Margaret a few more months.
But she really did need to replace the whole system.
David pulled his wrench from the toolbox and got to work, his hands moving with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d done this hundreds of times before. The noise of the shop faded. The chatter from the coffee area, the soft music playing overhead, and the occasional rustle of hangers as customers browsed.
It all became background noise.
This was what he liked about the work. The focus. The simplicity. A problem that had a clear solution. No hidden agendas. No lies. Just broken things that could be fixed.
Margaret appeared in the doorway about twenty minutes later with a cup of coffee. “You’re a lifesaver, David.”
He glanced up, wiping his hands on a rag. “It’ll hold for a while. But you really need to schedule that replacement soon. End of January at the latest.”
“I know, I know.” She set the coffee on the counter beside the sink. “We can talk after the New Year.”
David nodded and went back to tightening the connection.
Margaret lingered in the doorway, and David could feel her watching him with that knowing smile she got sometimes.
“So,” she said, her voice light and teasing. “I saw you bump into that lovely woman on the street earlier.”
David’s ears burned, but he kept his focus on the pipe. “It was an accident.”
“Mm-hmm.” Margaret’s smile widened. “Looked like a very nice accident from where I was standing.”
David didn’t answer, just reached for the sealant tape.
Margaret laughed, the sound warm and full of affection. “It’s okay to notice someone, David. You’re allowed to be human.”
He looked up at her then, meeting her eyes. Margaret had never pushed. She’d never asked about his past or why a man who clearly had more education than most plumbers ended up fixing pipes in a boutique. She just accepted him as he was. But Margaret, like some of his other customers and two closest friends, was always subtly trying to set him up on dates.
“Thanks for the coffee,” David said quietly.
Margaret’s expression softened. “Anytime.”
She left him to finish the work.
Two hours later, David had replaced the cracked section, reinforced the connections, and cleaned up the water damage as best he could. Margaret insisted on paying him more than he’d quoted, and David didn’t argue. She ran a good business, treated her employees well, and had been nothing but kind to him since the day they’d met.
He packed up his tools, said goodbye, and headed out to his truck.
The drive home took thirty minutes, the roads emptying as he left the historic district behind and wound his way toward the outskirts of town. Trees thickened on either side of theroad, houses spreading farther and farther apart until there was nothing but forest and the occasional dirt driveway leading to cabins tucked back in the woods.
His place sat at the end of a gravel road, a simple one-story cabin with a wraparound porch and a small workshop beside it. The wood was weathered but well-maintained, the roof solid, the windows clean. He’d built most of the furniture inside himself. The porch swing. The dining table. The bookshelves in the living room.
It wasn’t much, but it was his.
David pulled into the driveway and cut the engine, taking a moment to just sit and breathe.
