“You’re right. I was rude. I get protective. It comes out wrong sometimes.”
The admission surprised her. She found herself really looking at him for the first time. She shrugged. “I’m not here to cause trouble. I just needed somewhere to... be.”
He nodded slowly. “I understand that. More than you might think.”
They stood awkwardly in the parking area while market life swirled around them. She noticed the way he held himself, careful and contained, like someone who’d learned to take up less space than his tall frame required.
“The mug.” He nodded toward the pottery stall. “You should go back and get it. Jim’s work... it has a way of making morning coffee taste better. He swears it’s all about the way he shapes the rim.”
It was an olive branch, offered quietly. She hesitated, then nodded. “Maybe I will.”
“I’ll let you get back to your shopping.” He stepped aside, but not before she caught a kind of cautious interest in his expression. “Welcome to Starlight Shores, Emily.”
He walked away before she could respond, leaving her standing in the morning sun with a confused mix of attraction and apprehension twisting through her. She watched him navigate the market with easy familiarity, stopping to talk with vendors, his earlier stiffness replaced by genuine warmth.
She returned to the pottery stall and bought the mug. As Jim wrapped it carefully in paper, she tried not to think about the fact that Grant had caught up with her to apologize or the way he’d said her name. Not with accusation, but with a careful neutrality that somehow felt worse.
Back at her cottage, she unpacked her market purchases. The mug she unwrapped slowly, running her fingers over the glazed surface that really did capture something essential about the Gulf waters.
She made tea in her new mug and carried it to the small porch, settling into one of the weathered chairs. The lighthouse stood proud in the afternoon light, its white surface almost blinding in the sun. From here, she could pretend the morning’s encounter hadn’t happened and that Grant Stone hadn’t recognized her and connected her to everything she’d tried to leave behind in Chicago.
But she could still feel his gaze, the careful assessment of someone who knew the art world’s harsh realities. He’d create distance now and warn others, perhaps. The small anonymity she’d found would evaporate like morning mist.
“You should leave.” She spoke the words aloud, testing them. “Pack up tonight and find somewhere else.”
But where? Another small town where someone else might recognize her? A city where she could disappear but would have to face galleries and artists. Face all the reminders of what she’d lost?
She sipped her tea. It did taste better in the mug. Grant had been right about that, at least. And his look had said he understood exactly what she’d lost and seen through any pretense that she was fine without her art.
Restless, she walked back inside the cottage, still debating whether she should just pack up and leave. The studio door seemed to mock her from inside the cottage.
Still locked. Still untouched.
Maybe Grant’s judgment was accurate. Maybe she really was a former artist now, someone who had talent—past tense—but lost it along with everything else.
A knock interrupted her spiraling thoughts. She set down the mug and went to the door, expecting Winnie with another gentle invitation to join the community she wasn’t ready for.
Instead, she found a small wrapped package on her doorstep. No note, but she recognized the pottery stall’s distinctive paper. Inside was a small bowl, glazed in the same layered blues and greens as her mug. Perfect for holding the smooth stones and shells she’d been collecting on her beach walks.
She looked across the courtyard but saw no one. The gift could have been from Jim the potter, a marketing gesture for a new customer. But something told her it wasn’t.
She carried the bowl inside and set it on the windowsill, already imagining how the afternoon light would play across its glazed surface. Whatever Grant Stone thought of her past, this small gesture suggested he wasn’t ready to condemn her entirely.
But that almost made it worse. Clean rejection, she could handle. This careful kindness from someone immersed in the art world threatened defenses she couldn’t afford to lower.
The beautiful bowl was a reminder that she couldn’t remain invisible in Starlight Shores. Tomorrow, word would spread. The scandal would follow her here.
She thought again about packing and running. Instead, she filled the bowl with her collected stones and shells and set it where she could see it from her chair.
Grant’s boots crunched against the gravel path as he left the lighthouse property behind. He shoved his hands into his pockets, suddenly aware of how empty they felt without the pottery bowl he’d carried all the way from town.
What had he been thinking? A peace offering? An apology?
The afternoon sun slanted through the palm fronds, tossing shifting patterns across the worn path. He’d walked this route a thousand times, knew every dip and curve, every root breaking the earth.
Comfortable. Predictable. Safe.
Unlike whatever impulse had made him purchase that bowl and leave it on Emily Shaw’s doorstep.
