of Mad wandering the world, instead imagining him securely rooted right here in California, like one of Grandpop’s avocado trees. She glanced out the window, taking in their dark shapes.
“They didn’t lock the gates of Sawyer Beach once you left, Harper,” he said. “We go, we come home.”
We come home.
“Of course I know that,” she said, trying to take the testiness out of her tone. But she might be guilty of thinking that everything and everybody remained unchanged and stayed where they were after she packed her bags that very first time.
Now Grandpop was growing older.
Mad had indulged a wanderlust she hadn’t known about.
“Still,” Harper said, thinking aloud. “Sawyer Beach seems much the same to me.”
“Are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?” he asked.
“I…no.”
“Because there have been changes. We have more economic diversity, with the wineries and the tech start-ups, to name two. Diversity equals stability.”
“Are you working for the chamber of commerce? Because you don’t have to convince me. I know it’s a nice place…and a nice place to raise a family.”
“More people are moving in than are moving out.”
We come home.
She rummaged in her canvas bag. “Do you want more cookies? I also have Nilla Wafers.”
“Can’t say no.”
As she handed over a stack, her fingers brushed his warm, dry palm. A streak of heat ran up her arm and she was hyper-aware of him all over again, his big body, his scent, the way he’d always affected her. The night they’d met, at Sophie’s graduation party, he’d strolled up, so big, so confident, and she’d felt her heart flutter for the first time in her life.
This was no boy, she’d thought, because she’d found boys her age so easy to dismiss. Silly.
This was a man, she’d decided. And wanted him for her own.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said.
Admitting to reminiscing about their shared past seemed beyond foolish, so she cast about for an untruth she could sell. “Just wondering what else don’t I know about you.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes I work too much. I surf when I can. Enjoy family and friends by the ocean and in the mountains.”
“Hah!” Smiling now, she pointed her cookie at him. “When I closed my eyes at night, I could see you doing all that. Beach barbecues and windy trail hikes. Surfing with the guys. Weekly poker night.”
A beat passed.
Then Mad’s voice, low, deep. “You thought of me when you closed your eyes at night?”
Her smile vanished. Crap. Cranking down the window, she stuck her head out the opening. “Did you hear something?”
“No.” He slid closer on the bench seat. “You thought of me at night, Harp?”
“I was sure you married Courtney. It was sometimes…amusing to imagine you as a dad. Cute little kids. Pets. Do you have a dog?” For some reason panic half-closed her airway. He was simply too near.
She pressed closer to her door.
“Right now I work too much for a dog.”
“Right.” She looked away from the looming wall of his body and scanned the avocado orchard, searching for movement.
When she looked back, Mad had drawn even nearer. Or it only seemed that way. She could feel the warmth of his body reaching out to hers and she remembered that sweet hollow below his shoulder where her head rested so neatly. His heartbeat in her ear.
Her love for him overwhelming.
Like the way her mother had felt—still felt, it appeared—for her always-absent lover, the father of her daughter.
She gripped her thigh and dug in her nails, recalling the pain of leaving home. “Remember Grandmom’s old tabby, Kerchief?” she asked, just to say something. “That cat lived to be twenty-two years old.”
He whistled, sounding impressed. “Purred like a motorboat.”
“Yes!” She laughed. “Every year Kerchief climbed to the top of the Christmas tree and knocked the angel off the top.”
“And ate your grandmother’s cookies. Those are still the best holiday cookies around.”
“Her birthday cakes surpass the cookies.”
“Remember the birthday bonfire we had to celebrate your big day when you turned twenty-one?”
“Only the best birthday and the best bonfire ever.” She could almost smell the wood smoke mingling with the salt from the sea, and hear Sophie laughing uproariously at her terrible aim with a horseshoe. “All my girlfriends gave me a charm for my bracelet.”
“All my poker friends gave you beers from around the world.”
She’d always told people she was going to travel and the internal clamor to do so only grew louder the more attached she became to Mad. “The moon was so big I thought it might swallow us