Page 99 of At First Catch

Nolan laughs, and I want to sink into the sound.

“I’m nervous too,” he admits.

The confession catches me off guard.

“You are?”

“Hadley.” His mouth curves. “Do I look like the kind of man who normally brings flowers?”

A helpless laugh escapes me. Nolan glances toward the flowers once more before looking back at me carefully.

“I haven’t done this in a while.”

He smooths one thumb across the brown paper around the flowers. Like he’s suddenly worried he brought the wrong ones.

“A date?”

“A real one.”

The awareness hangs between us while the warm evening wind drifts through the screen door behind him.

Then Nolan reaches for me. His fingers brush lightly along my wrist before sliding down to lace with mine.

Even though it’s only contact, it distracts me. Holding hands feels terrifyingly intimate somehow.

Nolan’s thumb brushes once against my knuckles.

“You ready?” he asks.

I look down briefly at our joined hands, then back up at him before nodding, unsure if I could utter a single word intelligibly.

The open tenderness on Nolan’s face is so heart-wrenching it almost cracks me in two.

He lifts our joined hands and kisses my knuckles. My fingers tighten around his. Neither of us lets go as we step off the porch together.

Chapter Twelve

NOLAN

Taking Hadley Wright on a date turns out to be significantly more nerve-racking than buying a hurricane-damaged marina. That knowledge follows me while we move through downtown Coral Bell Cove together. The whole town glows beneath the warm spring evening—restaurant patios crowded with locals and tourists, music drifting from open bars near the boardwalk, laughter spilling into the streets beneath hanging lantern lights.

Everything feels alive tonight—maybe because Hadley’s beside me.

Hadley’s fingers tighten lightly around mine as we pass the bakery, and I glance down.

She’s smiling at something ahead, and the sight hits me directly in the chest. Beautiful doesn’t cover it anymore. It feels too shallow for what Hadley actually is.

She squeezes my hand once as we cross Main Street. Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t seem to realize she did it. I tighten my fingers around hers before I can think better of it.

“You’re staring again,” she says lightly without looking at me.

I blink. “How do you know?”

“Because I can feel your eyes on me.”

The quiet intimacy in that answer nearly undoes me, and I want more than my eyes on her.

One corner of her mouth lifts as she finally glances over. I’m genuinely fighting the urge to drag her into the nearest alley and kiss her stupid.