“I wish I’d had the chance to see your old house before you sold it. I used to covet that place.”
“I’m sure the new owners would let me take you for a tour,” he said.
She chuckled and shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the same. One of the reasons I loved it is because you were there.” Her statement caused a pang of joy to pierce his chest. “You know, I never told this to Shayla, but I used to envy her so much back in high school because she used to go to your house all the time.”
“Shayla and I were just friends. There was never anything between us.”
“Oh, I know. Believe me, she would have told me if there was. But just the fact that she was your friend was enough to make me envy her. That she hung out with you at Jessie’s after the game and rode around in your truck.”
“I was never brave enough to ask you to do any of those things,” Sawyer admitted. “I thought you would have turned me down.”
“I would have,” she said. “Back then, there was nothing you could have said to me that would have convinced me that I belonged in your world.”
He brushed his fingers along her jaw before turning her face toward him. “Why does it seem as if you still don’t believe you belong in my world?”
“Because it still doesn’t feel real,” she repeated.
“What is it going to take to make you see that this has always been real?”
Sawyer moved back slightly as she pushed herself up and into a sitting position. She tucked one leg underneath her, then reached over and squeezed his thigh. “This has been fun, but let’s not kid ourselves. We’re just too—”
“Don’t say ‘different,’” he warned.
“Telling me not to say it doesn’t make it any less true,” she said.
Sawyer shut his eyes and tipped his head back on the edge of the sofa. He kneaded the bridge of his nose and released a sigh. What else could he do to make this woman see that they belonged together?
“I know you don’t like to hear it,” Paxton said, “but you don’t have to look any further than tonight’s meeting to see just how different we are. I recognized the fear in those faces I saw tonight. That anxiety they’re feeling over the potential insurance rate hike? I’ve felt that.”
“We’ve been over this already. Those new maps are necessary.”
“Are they really?”
“Are you seriously questioning this again?” he asked.
“What if what happened with Tropical Storm Lucy was just a freak occurrence?”
“This is the Gulf South, Paxton. It’s hurricane prone.”
“But how many major hurricanes does this area get? There hasn’t been a catastrophic storm since Hurricane Katrina.”
“What about Hurricane Ida?”
“Gauthier didn’t suffer nearly as much from either of those as other areas. What if these new elevation maps cause everyone’s insurance to spike, but there are no storms for another twenty years? We could cause people to go into financial ruin just as surely as a storm would.”
“I won’t allow anyone to go into financial ruin over this,” he said.
“How can you prevent it? The Cheryl Ann Robertson Foundation cannot supplement the entire town’s flood insurance.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it can.”
“Sawyer,” she said in a warning tone, “you cannot bail out all of Gauthier.”
“I won’t have to,” he said. “Just trust me on this. We’re doing the right thing.”
She looked doubtful, but, thank goodness, she didn’t argue the point any further. Instead she moved over to his side of the sofa again, curling up on his lap. Sawyer ran his palm along her body, stopping at her backside and giving it a firm squeeze.
“Do you want me to finally take you on a tour of the house?” he asked.
