Page 37 of At First Catch

Dangerous answer.

Me

I know.

Silence stretches afterward.

I tell myself that’s good. Mature, even. A natural stopping point before one of us says something impossible to take back.

Then the phone lights again.

Hadley

Nine?

I close my eyes briefly.

This woman is going to ruin every carefully ordered part of my life.

Me

Nine.

This time, I actually set the phone down afterward.

Outside, the dock lights shimmer across dark water. The whole place creaks and breathes around me like an old thing, carefully trying to trust new hands.

I set my phone beside the inspection report.

Tomorrow at nine, Hadley will walk back down these docks. I should be thinking about permits. Instead, I catch myself wondering whether she’ll take her coffee the same way she did this morning. It seems I’m excellent at priorities.

Chapter Six

HADLEY

By the second week of marina planning, my morning routine has become embarrassingly predictable. I am not the woman who stands in front of her closet debating whether a sundress says too much when she is supposedly going to a marina for a professional meeting. I am not the woman who puts on mascara, wipes it off because it looks like way too much effort, then reapplies it because maybe a little effort is fine.

And I am definitely not the woman currently staring at herself in the bathroom mirror asking why she suddenly cares whether Nolan Pierce notices her earrings.

This is humiliating.

“Get it together, Hadley,” I mutter at my reflection.

Rook, Lark’s dog who wandered over from my parents’ farmhouse sometime before sunrise because apparently we all share custody of a giant emotionally manipulative dog, lifts his head from the bathmat and sighs heavily.

“Don’t judge me. You lick windows.”

His tail thumps once.

I point at him. “Exactly.”

Outside the cottage window, morning sunlight spills across the farm in soft golden bands. Spring has settled fully over Coral Bell Cove this week, bringing warm air, bright green fields, and the kind of breeze that carries honeysuckle through open windows before breakfast.

I take one sip of coffee. Set the mug down. Walk three steps toward the front door. Turn around and pick the mug back up because apparently, I forgot coffee existed.

Rook watches the entire performance with the weary expression of someone questioning my competency.

“Don’t start.”