If for Any Reason (Nantucket Love Story #1) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,12
was now staring. At Emily.
Her pulse quickened. Her stomach roiled. Her mind spun.
What was he doing here? Why did he look like that? Did he recognize her? After all these years?
She must’ve had a dopey expression on her face because the girl huffed (loudly) and said, “Oh, please. Are you, like, one of his fans?”
Hollis still didn’t seem to hear the girl.
“Emily?” He studied her with eyes that were too intent. “It is you.”
She wanted to pull her gaze from his, but it was as if they’d been tied together by an invisible force and she couldn’t sever the connection.
“Hollis.” His name on her lips caught at the back of her throat, a slight whisper that held so much weight.
He looked as stunned as she felt as he moved toward her, then opened his arms to pull her into what was likely meant to be a friendly long-time-no-see hug but felt like so much more.
She stepped into his arms and for a fleeting moment inhaled the safety of his embrace. She could get lost here. Time could stop and the past could fall away.
And yet it couldn’t.
She inched back, despising the betrayal of her own emotions.
“I thought I saw you at the ferry,” he said. “It’s been—what? Eighteen years?”
Emily wasn’t sure she could speak. Being here, on this beach, on the island, at this house, and now with Hollis—she hadn’t planned to have to feel any of it. She didn’t want to remember the good things about Nantucket. Those memories had been swept away the day her mother died.
There was nothing dark or sad or tragic about the Hollis McGuire she’d known. If she let herself, she would’ve remembered him only as good and wonderful and kind.
But she’d lumped him in with the rest of her Nantucket memories and thrown them out to sea. How did she reconcile standing here in front of him now?
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
Emily nodded, willing herself not to cry. She wasn’t a crier—what was happening to her on the inside?
“Wait, you two know each other?” the girl asked.
“We did,” Emily said, still connected to Hollis as if by an imaginary string. “A long time ago.”
Hollis pulled his sunglasses off and looked at her with those bright-hazel eyes. Were they greener now than when they were kids? He’d always had that special something, the thing that drew people to him like pieces of metal to a high-powered magnet. Mom had called it “the ‘it’ factor.”
“Watch out for that one, Emily Elizabeth,” Mom had said. “He’s one part trouble and two parts charm.”
She hadn’t understood then, but she understood now. At least about the trouble part. She could practically hear warning bells blaring in the back of her mind, like the sound of a European ambulance racing through the streets of London.
People might’ve made him feel like he never belonged in the Nantucket world back then, but nobody could say that anymore.
“I can’t believe you remember me.” Emily felt suddenly—and uncharacteristically—shy.
“Are you kidding?” Hollis gave her arm a shove, putting her squarely in the friend zone. Of course he did—he was standing there with his daughter. What was she thinking fantasizing about this man who was clearly taken? She shook the thoughts away, forced herself back to reality.
“Summer was never the same after you left,” he said.
Emily looked away. How would she survive being back here? How would she revisit all the unanswered questions she’d been burying all these years?
“Glad you guys are catching up and all, but I’m starving, Dad. You said burgers on the grill. Can we make that happen?” She called out for Tilly to follow her and disappeared in the sea grass.
“That’s Jolie,” Hollis said. “She’s my daughter.”
“I guessed that much when she called you Dad.” Emily smiled. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s a pistol.” He laughed, then looked away. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing with her.”
A gentle lull fell between them.
How did he do that? Instantly put her at ease? How did he, in a matter of seconds, make Emily, the girl who trusted no one, feel like he was safe?
She reminded herself that he wasn’t that boy she’d known before her life turned upside down. He’d grown up. And all sweet boys, when they grew up, became men. And she didn’t need a man in her life any more than she needed the old Nantucket cottage.
“Kids are tricky,” she said because it was something she’d heard people say, not because she knew it to be true.