to AirDrop that to me,” Vanessa said, and Josh did a double take. He thought she’d gone on ahead, but she was parked only a handful of spiral steps away, taking pictures of her own.
Danae scuttled backward until her body hit the brick wall. Since she was on the step above his, they ended up at eye level.
Every cell in his body pricked up as their gazes locked together, her glasses superimposing his reflection over her hazel irises and dilated pupils. “You okay?” he asked, his voice coming out huskier than usual.
Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath, and then she nodded. “Thanks for helping me see that. Now let’s keep going before I freak out.”
“I’ll be right behind you. I won’t let you fall. Promise.”
Another nod, and the she turned around to continue climbing, her fingers slowly pulling away from his. Which made sense. There wasn’t room for them to walk side by side. Although for the record, he totally would’ve taken the scarier side. Once they made it to the top of the lighthouse, Vanessa headed to the far end to take videos, leaving him and Danae as alone as they might get for the rest of the day.
“Our earlier conversation got cut short since someone likes to focus too much on work.”
Danae made a big show of glancing around. “That person sounds super cool, so maybe you can introduce me sometime.”
“Ha ha,” he said. “You were talking about how your dad used to take you sailing.”
Her features softened as she scooted closer to the panes of glass that separated them from the outside world. “There’s not much more to the conversation. Most every weekend we’d gather the fishing supplies and our boating gear and set sail at the crack of dawn.”
“Dang, you fish, too? I’m seeing you in a whole new light.”
“The lighthouse light?” she asked with a giggle.
Josh rested a hip against the rail, facing her instead of the rolling green hills and ultra-blue ocean. “Something like that.”
She pushed her glasses up her nose. “We’d always lose track of the time, and then we’d be racing the sun home so my mom wouldn’t get upset at us for being out so late. She’d say that I should spend more time playing with kids my age and keeping up with my homework. Then Dad would tell her that he was teaching me important life lessons—I wasn’t exaggerating my knot knowledge, you know.”
“You’ll be ready for the pop quiz later, then?”
There was the smile he’d hoped for, although only one side of her mouth got in on it. “I’m much better at not-popped quizzes. Allowing people to prepare is only fair.”
Not a surprise. How endearing he found it, on the other hand…? A sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time twisted through him. “My dad taught me to sail as well. We went every summer except the year my sister was born. I was ten, so there’s quite an age gap. Around the time I turned sixteen, my parents decided to sell the boat and move to the suburbs. To say I was devastated would be an understatement.
“So after my divorce,” he said, throwing it out there so he could get it out of the way and then move on, “I decided I needed a big life change. I thought back to what made me happy, and those summer days on the boat and sailing around Buzzard Bay popped into my mind.”
“Summers as a kid are the best,” she agreed. “They felt so magical. But when I was seventeen, my dad passed away.” At the slight tremor in her voice, an ache formed in his own heart on her behalf. He couldn’t imagine losing a parent at such a young age. “The problem with growing up—especially when it comes too early and you find yourself responsible for your entire family—is that you see the summers weren’t so magical, at all.”
“Explain,” he said. Occasionally he felt like she was talking in code, leaving out pieces that made it impossible to complete the puzzle of who she truly was.
Danae rested her stomach against the rail, her cheek so close to his shoulder that several emotions thundered through him at once. “It was staggering to learn what the boat cost, and then to have to deal with the financial strain it put on my family after he passed away.”
Josh opened his mouth in an attempt to come up with words that’d soothe the pain in her voice, but