Where Noelle lived and worked.
His heart sped, and he took a deep breath of the salt-tinged air before shutting the door of his rental car and heading toward a brick walkway flanked by grand moss-draped trees that led to a plantation-style home.
Wow.
The website he’d looked at had been well done, but it didn’t do justice to the beauty of this property in person.
The grounds were beautifully maintained, some sort of fragrant red flowers growing in beds along the porch and vining through the slats of the rails. He climbed the short set of steps, taking in the comfortable-looking wicker furniture—currently unoccupied—the hanging ferns, and the pots of cascading flowers. Underneath the eave, fans rotated slowly. Evan stepped to the vast mahogany door with a small gold sign next to it that read RENTAL OFFICE. With another flutter in his chest, he pulled the door open and stepped into the air-conditioned lobby.
“Hello, sir,” a smiling blonde in a white blouse and navy shorts greeted, stepping behind the curved mahogany counter that sat in the middle of the foyer. There was a sweeping staircase behind her, with a velvet rope at the base that declared the upstairs private. “Will you be staying with us?” the young woman asked.
“Ah, no, actually. Well, maybe.” He cleared his throat. “What I mean is, I’m here to see one of your employees. Noelle Meyer.”
Her brows moved slightly, but her smile remained. “Noelle? Oh. Sure. Let me call her and tell her you’re here. Your name?”
He hesitated, worried that she’d decline to see him. It was why he’d taken a flight here to South Carolina after he’d made the effort to locate her and find where she’d been living for the last seven years. He tried to convince himself it wasn’t overkill that he hadn’t just called her. He tried to convince himself that once he’d gotten it in his head to see her, he simply couldn’t shrug off the yearning. The slight desperation he felt wasn’t the same as it’d been. It was merely a want now. The need to see her. To make sure she was doing well. To reconnect in some small way, even if that simply meant getting some closure. But he couldn’t force her to see him, even if it had taken him half a day to get here. “Evan Sinclair,” he said.
The woman nodded, picking up the phone and dialing. After a minute, she set it down. “I’m sorry, she’s not answering. She’s probably making the evening rounds to the cottages and should be done in an hour or so. Do you want to wait?” She gestured to a small grouping of red upholstered furniture to her right.
He was far too antsy for that. “I think I’ll take a walk to the shore and come back.”
“Sure.”
Evan left the house, descended the steps, and turned toward the shaded path, where he saw the side of a smaller building around the main house. The cottages? According to the website, there were ten cottages of various sizes and guest capacity, stretching out behind the main house, where the owner of the property still lived, a Mrs. Chantilly Calhoun.
Instead of heading to the shore, he took the path that led around the house, passing a sign that said COQUINA and had an arrow pointing toward a quaint bungalow that he could partially see through the foliage. Several paths lay before him, and he stopped, simply curious about the layout of the property.
He heard a little girl’s voice saying something excitedly and then the sound of a woman responding. The child laughed, and then he heard the scamper of little feet as she ran down one of the paths nearby, her white dress flashing through the trees and bushes as she passed him.
Lured by the sound of that second voice, Evan moved through the trees, another larger cottage rising on his right. There were towels flung over the railing of that one and sand toys sitting on the porch. What a beautiful, serene place. Each of the cottages was tucked away among trees and foliage just off the meandering main path that he assumed stretched quite a way back.
He rounded a flowering bush, lush with pink blossoms, stopping as his heart rose in his throat and then dropped quickly. Noelle.
She was standing next to a cart with a long pull handle, jotting something on a small pad of paper. Evan stared. She was her but . . . a different person entirely. Her hair was swept up in a high ponytail; tendrils glinting with caramel had fallen out, framing her face and trailing over her neck. She was wearing a similar outfit to the woman who’d greeted him at the front desk, a white gauzy blouse and navy-blue shorts with white tennis shoes. Her skin was golden, cheeks flushed with the heat of the day, and a small smile curved her lips before she finished writing and stuck the pad and pencil in her pocket.
He couldn’t speak. He was incapable of even moving.
She began to reach for the handle of the cart but stopped, her brow dipping right before she turned toward him, as though she’d sensed his presence.
She froze, eyes widening as they stared at each other across the span of space.
“Evan?” she breathed.
He stepped from the shade of the foliage, the sunlight falling over him as he moved toward her. “Hi,” he said when he’d almost reached her.
Hi. What a stupid word. It didn’t encompass even one of the hundred emotions he was feeling in that moment. She gave her head a slight shake, as though she didn’t believe her own eyes, and when he’d made it to where she stood, she blinked before asking, “How . . . what are you doing here?”
“It’s nice to see you.” Better, but still woefully inadequate.
She let out a breath. “It’s nice to see you too. It’s just . . . unexpected. Wow. I . . .” She glanced back over her shoulder. “I . . . wow.”
Hi. Wow. He almost laughed. Almost.
“I know you’re working,” he said. “And I’m sorry just to show up like this, but I’m here for a reason.” He shifted awkwardly. God, this was weird. And after all these years. Without a phone call.
Her eyes widened again. “Is everything—”
“Yes. Everything is okay. For me, I mean. I just . . . well . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. It was damp with sweat. He was still in the jeans and T-shirt he’d put on to travel and wasn’t dressed for this muggy southern weather. He hadn’t thought much of this through, he realized. Not the details anyway. He’d acted on his feelings, and so here he was, sweating in his inappropriate clothes and stammering through his explanation for being here. Showing up out of the blue, not just here in South Carolina but here to interrupt her life unexpectedly. “I actually need your help with something.”
Dammit. That was not how he wanted to broach the subject, and he hadn’t meant to say that so soon. He just didn’t know what trivial niceties to use to make this less artless. He should have figured out what to say to her, but he hadn’t. He’d been nervous, so here he was winging it, and it was all wrong. I need your help with something. God, that sounded stupid. Maybe it was stupid. Not just the words but even asking at all. He was suddenly second-guessing this whole thing. It was lovely here, serene, drenched in sunshine. And she was tanned and happy and peaceful looking and so beautiful it ripped his fucking heart out.
She was still staring at him, and he squinted up to the blue, blue sky and then looked back at her standing in front of a tropical-looking plant studded with tiny white flowers. “Man, the places we’ve been together.” He wanted to cringe. Why had he said that? But she huffed out a small agreeable breath, his words seeming to bring her back from the momentary shock-stupor she’d been in. “You look great,” he said.
“Thank you. So do you.” She picked up the handle of the cart. “Walk with me?” She glanced back over her shoulder again. “I have a few more deliveries to make, and then we can talk.”
“Okay. Great.” He followed along as she turned down a path, pulling the wagon behind her.