I wrap my arm around her. “It won’t happen. Just stay strong. Okay?”
“I’m trying,” she admits. “Some days are so much harder than others.”
The postcard is still in my hand, and I wish there were something I could do. There is, but she’d never accept it.
“What can I do for you?”
“Just listen,” she says, leaning forward to kiss me.
“That I can do.”
She tastes like butterscotch and coffee.
“Thank you,” she says. “You calm my nervous system.”
“You might be the only person in the world who experiences that feeling around me.”
The thought makes me chuckle.
“Oh, so you really are an asshole outside of these walls?”
She puts the album and the box on the nightstand beside the romance novel and settles back against me. She presses her lips to my shoulder, then along my neck.
“Wendy.”
“Hmm?”
“I need to tell you something.”
She lifts her head and looks at me, waiting. The words are right there, but my mouth won’t open. I’ve rehearsed this a hundred times on the balcony at three in the morning, and right now, with her looking at me like that, I can’t start the sentence.
Her phone rings from the nightstand. She glances at it.
“Shit. It’s Gran.” She sits up. “Hold on.”
My hands unclench. The air comes back into my lungs. I hate how good it feels to be interrupted.
Wendy answers, and her eyes widen. “I didn’t answer my door because I’m not at the B&B right now,” she lies, lowering her voice.
I walk to the balcony and glance toward the bungalow. Gale stands in her living room.
“No, I’m not secretly dating anyone. On the beach? With who? They said what? He was tall and handsome. Right, Gran. And who fits that description?”
Someone must’ve seen us. My jaw tightens, and I grip the railing. A yacht skirts across the water in the distance.
“Carter? Do you really think he’d date me? Get real. Okay, I’ll be back later. Love you. Bye,” she says.
Wendy moves next to me, and I wrap my arm around her waist.
“They’re suspicious,” she says.
I thread my fingers through her hair and kiss her. “I hate hiding you.”
“Acting like a couple would cause too much attention,” she says. “I want to enjoy us, not be the talk of the town. Anyway, sorry about the interruption. You were going to say something.” She smiles.
She’s waiting for me to finish a sentence that could change everything between us.
“I forgot,” I say, leading her back inside.
