‘Yeah, it is,’ he agreed, his eyes crinkling at the corners. But he wasn’t looking at the Spanish moss anymore. ‘So you’re not from here, Emily James?’
‘Kind of but not really,’ I said, matching his confusion in my own expression. ‘It’s a long story. How about you?’
He shook his head and gave me another lopsided grin. ‘No, ma’am. I’m from North Carolina. My family live up in the mountains near Asheville but I’m hoping to get into the photography programme at SCAD next year.’ He jerked his head backwards in the general direction of the college Catherine had pointed out on the way to the Powells’. ‘Savannah School of Art and Design. Figured I’d take some classes over the summer, try to get a head start on my application. It’s a tough school to get into.’
Gorgeous, funny and artistic? I never stood a chance.
He patted the tree trunk with the palm of his hand then leaned all his weight against it, stretching his arms up overhead to hold onto the lowest branch. ‘You’re on vacation? I should have known you weren’t a local with that accent.’
‘No, sir,’ I replied, casually flicking my ponytail over my shoulder and immediately getting a mouthful of hair for my trouble. ‘As of yesterday, I am an official resident of the city of Savannah.’
His pupils dilated, huge pools of inky black expanding against the endlessly changing colour of his irises and I was entranced.
‘The big house across the square,’ Wyn said quietly. ‘The one with the grey roof.’
I nodded and pressed my lips together, my heart beating loudly in my ears. He did recognize me.
‘I saw you in the window last night. You had the most intense expression on your face.’
‘I did,’ I said in a whisper. A statement not a question.
‘Yes.’ He opened his mouth to say something else then hesitated, second guessing himself before he committed. ‘You looked exactly how I felt.’
It all came rushing back. The vision of a non-existent kiss that almost knocked me clean off my feet. Whatever he was feeling at the time, I was pretty sure that wasn’t it.
‘Hey, since you’re new here, you’re going to need a tour guide,’ he declared, his beautiful voice slicing straight through the tension between us. ‘I could show you the sights, if you wanted, that is.’
Sights? There were sights? Other than his chameleon eyes and strong forearms and the soft curve of his lower lip that was just begging for someone to lean forward and bite it and …
‘Or not,’ he added when I didn’t reply. ‘You’re probably real busy with your family and—’
‘I would love for you to be my tour guide,’ I interrupted, talking so fast it was a struggle to separate my words into single syllables. ‘If you have time and it’s not too much trouble.’
We stood facing each other, less than an arm’s length apart and both of us smiling as an invisible thread wound itself around my heart and reached out to his. A new connection that was always meant to be.
‘I’ll be the best tour guide this town has ever seen.’ Wyn pulled an ice-blue iPhone out of his back pocket. ‘Can I get your number?’
‘You can but it won’t do you much good.’ I produced my own useless handset and presented it as evidence. ‘It’s pay as you go and apparently it doesn’t work in America.’
‘This is your real phone?’ he asked before grabbing the tinyplastic flip phone out of my hands. ‘Woah, I’ve never seen one of these in real life before. It really works?’
‘Only for calls and messages. I used to travel a lot so I could never get on a real contract,’ I explained as he opened and closed it, snapping the two halves of the clamshell together with delight. ‘Plus my dad had a no-smartphones-until-I-turned-seventeen rule.’
He looked up, horrified.
‘Please tell me that’s soon. No one should have to live like this.’
‘Next month,’ I confirmed, my cheeks turning pink. ‘June twenty-first.’
He handed back my sad little phone with something that looked like admiration, the literal opposite expression to anyone else who had ever seen it. ‘I think it’s kind of cool. We spend way too much time on our phones anyway, right?’
I grimaced as I shoved it back in my pocket. ‘Spoken like someone who has never had to watch TikToks on their dad’s laptop.’
Wyn laughed again and happiness bubbled up inside me, like my favourite song had started playing on the radio.
‘How about we do this the old-fashioned way?’ he suggested. ‘Pick a time to meet and show up. Tomorrow morning, around eleven?’
I liked the sound of the old-fashioned way.
