Sand Castle Bay (Ocean Breeze) - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,58
exploring? And how on earth was she supposed to find out if she kept running away? It was one thing to take off in search of some elusive goal at twenty-one. It was quite another to do it ten years later, when she should be smart enough to see that a successful career wasn’t quite as fulfilling as she’d imagined, that maybe there was more to life.
She was still thinking about that when the sound of a car engine drew closer, then cut off.
“Oh, boy,” Samantha muttered as they saw Boone turn the corner of the house and amble in their direction. “I’ll be inside if anyone needs me.”
“Me, too,” Gabi said, leaping to her feet with surprising agility given the two potent drinks she’d consumed. “Hey, Boone.”
Boone stood at the bottom of the steps, his gaze on Emily. “You going to run off, too?”
She smiled. “I think I’ve been rude enough for one day. Besides, this is my home. No one gets to run me off.”
“In that case, mind if I join you?”
“Why not? You want a drink?” She held up her half-empty glass. “I’m not entirely sure what Samantha put in this concoction, but it definitely takes the edge off.”
He shook his head. “That’s okay. Probably better if I keep a clear head for this conversation.”
He took a seat on the glider at the side of the porch, then set it in motion. To be honest, watching him made Emily a little dizzy. She frowned at her glass. “What the devil did Samantha put in here?” she murmured.
Boone chuckled. “Maybe I should make coffee.”
“It might be a good idea,” she conceded, “especially if you intend to say anything you want me to remember.”
“I’ll be right back,” he told her, then held out his hand for her glass. “You should probably be done with that.”
“Probably,” she conceded, handing it over, though with some reluctance.
Boone wasn’t gone long, just long enough for her nerves to quicken as she considered all the possibilities behind his unexpected appearance here tonight. When he came back with two cups of coffee, he set hers on the table beside her.
“You’d better let it cool off a little,” he advised, then went back to the glider.
“I’m surprised you’re here,” she blurted. “Wasn’t Ethan coming for dinner?”
“He came,” Boone confirmed. “One thing about having a really good friend who’s known you just about forever, they say stuff and you generally have to listen.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“In this case, about you and me,” he admitted.
Emily smiled. “Yeah, I’ve been getting a lot of that, too.”
“I have a feeling there’s some consensus on this,” Boone said. “What I keep hearing is that we’d be idiots not to give our relationship another try.”
“Pretty much what I’ve been hearing, too,” she confirmed. “Ethan said that, as well?”
“And a lot more,” Boone said. He finally looked her directly in the eyes. “I wish I honestly knew what we should do next, Em. From the minute you left town, I told myself not to look back. Then there was Jenny, and she made it easier to look forward. So did B.J. Now, Jenny’s gone, and here you are again.”
“And you see taking a chance on me as taking a step backward?” she suggested.
He nodded. “It might not be fair, but, yes.”
“Then why are you here, Boone? Seriously. Not even Ethan could persuade you to do something you didn’t feel right about.”
He shrugged, looking genuinely bewildered and surprisingly vulnerable. “Because I can’t seem to stay away,” he admitted with unmistakable reluctance. “You’re still in my blood, apparently, and I know I’ll kick myself from now till doomsday if I don’t seize this chance to see if anything’s left between us. Anything real, I mean, not just my memories and a few solid-gold fantasies.”
Despite all the positives in that response, Emily heard only the unspoken misgivings. “You don’t sound happy about this decision.”
He smiled. “Can’t say that I am. I always thought I was supposed to learn from my mistakes, not repeat them.”
Though she could have taken offense, she saw his point. Would it be a painful mistake to try to rekindle what once was?
“Maybe we should do this one day at a time,” she suggested, looking for that middle ground Gabi had mentioned earlier. “No pressure. No huge expectations.”
“But there is pressure,” he said. “You announced earlier that you’re leaving, and suddenly I feel as if we have to settle this in the next fifteen minutes or something.”