peacocks.”
“Or having a pod of dolphins swimming in the cove behind the house.”
“She didn’t really ask for that,” I said.
“Oh, she did,” Dani responded. “I mean, it isn’t happening. I called every Aquarium in Florida, the local university’s marine biology program, and the coast guard and they all laughed at the request. Sasha sent me home early that day. Said I was too incompetent to spend another minute in her presence.”
“Ouch.”
Dani shrugged. “She apologized the next day and took me to lunch at The Vine. Which is generally how she operated. Impossible one minute, then incredibly nice the next. It was exhausting, trying to keep up.”
“I’m surprised you made it as long as you did.”
“In retrospect, I am too. Though I was so blinded by my own stupid ambition, maybe I’m not really surprised.”
We reached the door to the pool house, nestled over on the left side of the grounds beyond a grove of palm trees. I paused, my hand resting on the knob. I thought about Dani’s collection of LeFranc purses I’d seen in her garage. “I’m sorry you had to lose that.”
Her expression softened. “Thanks, but I don’t know that I am sorry anymore. In my head, LeFranc embodied everything I thought high fashion should be. It was above reproach. I think I let that blind devotion influence me too much. I spent all my time only thinking about what kind of designer LeFranc would want me to be.”
“But that makes sense if you were trying to get a job designing for LeFranc.”
“True.” She hesitated, like she was afraid to say what came next.
I opened the door to the pool house and motioned her inside.
“But what if I don’t want to design for somebody else? What if I want to design as me?” She paused and looked around, surprise filling her eyes. “Wow. This is the pool house? It’s amazing.”
“Wait until you see the view.” I walked across the living room and opened the patio doors. The pool was a sparkling blue in the sunshine; just beyond it, the open water of the ocean shone a bright, brilliant turquoise.
Dani stared, her eyes wide. “This place is magical,” she said. “You spent every summer here?”
The sea breeze lifted a strand of her blonde hair and tossed it across her cheek. I barely resisted the urge to brush it away before she reached up and tucked it behind her ear. “We spent more time in Manhattan,” I said. “But yes. We were always here for at least a few weeks, maybe a month or so, every summer. Christmas was always here, and Thanksgiving when I came for that.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Dani said. “I thought I was lucky growing up in Charleston, but this takes the beach to a whole new level.”
I pushed my hands into my pockets, the safest way to keep myself from touching her. “Hey,” I said.
She turned to face me. “What?”
“I think you’d be great designing on your own.”
She grinned. “Really?”
“Really.”
There was so much more I wanted to say. To ask. Would she go back to New York to do it? Would she stay in Charleston? Did this version of her future have room for me in it?
She bit the side of her bottom lip and looked at me in a way that spoke of possibility. “It would be really risky,” she finally said. “I might not make it. Especially if Sasha works against me.”
“But you might. And you’ll never know if you don’t try.”
She nodded, looking back out toward the ocean. “It’s hard to let go, Alex. One minute I think I can do it, and then the next it’s like I don’t even know myself anymore and I just want things to be the way they were before, when I still believed designing for LeFranc was a possibility.”
But what about me? What about us? The question pulsed through my brain, willing me to open my mouth and ask her.
I took a step backward. “I should get our bags from the car.”
“Right,” she said, pressing a hand to her stomach. “I’ll just wait here if that’s okay.”
I left her staring into the Atlantic and headed back to the front drive to move the car and get our bags. I’d wanted to ask her, but I couldn’t do it. If I’d asked, she might have answered. And I still wasn’t sure she was willing to give the only answer I wanted to hear.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dani
While Alex went to park the car and retrieve our bags—all but the