Page 31 of Key West Homecoming

“I needed the quiet.”

There was more behind the answer. Emma was sure of it.

She wanted to ask what had happened. She wanted to know why he’d chosen Key West and how he’d ended up in this particular cottage.

Instead, she picked up her bag.

“Thank you for the water.”

Jake looked almost surprised that she wasn’t going to keep asking questions.

“Anytime.”

Emma walked down the path.

At the gate, she looked back.

Jake had already picked up his gloves.

By the time she reached her car, she heard the pruning shears again.

Marisol was behind the front desk when Emma returned to Winslow’s.

Emma came through the door with Jake’s envelope tucked inside her bag. She’d put it there rather than carry it under her arm. It seemed safer somehow, although she knew that was ridiculous. She’d driven less than two miles and had checked for it twice at stoplights.

“Back so soon?” Marisol asked.

“I need a favor.”

“How can I help?”

Emma smiled. “Do you have a copier?”

Marisol pointed behind her. “I have two.”

She came around the desk, and Emma took the envelope from her bag.

For a second, she hesitated before handing it over.

It wasn’t even her letter.

That struck her as she watched Marisol remove the pages. The letter belonged to Jake, and he’d given it to her because she’d asked him to. No proof of who she was. No explanation he could check. He hadn’t even asked for her phone number before letting her walk away with it.

Emma wasn’t sure she would have done the same thing.

The copier hummed beside them.

Through the open doors at the back of the main house, she could see part of the garden. A couple sat beneath an umbrella near the pool. Someone had left a paperback face down on a lounge chair with a pair of sunglasses resting on top of it.

Another book facedown.

She thought of the two on Jake’s porch and smiled.

“What?” Marisol asked.

Emma looked at her. “What?”

“You smiled.”