right? Can I help you?”
I stepped closer, trying to find my voice. She tilted her head, studying me, wary. Up close, I could see more changes. Her eyes, once so bright and alive, were dimmer. Sad. Her hair was swept into a thick coil at the back of her neck—Sunny always hated to wear her hair up. She was as tiny as I recalled, and there was a coolness to her manner she’d never projected before. Reserved and formal.
Her brow furrowed as she looked at me. She began to worry her lip the way I remembered her doing. Her breathing picked up, whether in fear of the stranger in front of her, or some long-forgotten recollection of the boy I was to her surfacing—I didn’t know.
I pulled off my glasses and met her confused stare. Her eyes widened in shock as we locked gazes. Years fell away, and the warmth of her stare that always filled me up hit me all over again. I was seventeen, staring at the girl I was in love with.
The girl I still loved, now a woman, a virtual stranger, who could still bring me to my knees with a glance.
“L-Linc?”
I sighed at the way my name sounded on her lips. How the letters sounded when she said them.
“Sunny,” I replied, my voice low.
Then her expression changed. Bewilderment and anger brought her shoulders up and a scowl to her face.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped.
I cleared my throat. “Ah, some family business.”
She barked out a dry laugh. “Family business. Yes, I know all about your family business. What are you doing in my shop?”
Her anger wasn’t unexpected, but I had never heard Sunny’s voice be so cold.
“When did you move back here?” I replied.
“How do you know I ever left?” she shot back.
I leaned on the counter, incredulous. “I looked for you. You had disappeared.”
Her eyes widened, but before she could retort, a young girl came through the door at the back.
“The last batch is done, boss. You want me to start on some cookies?”
Sunny moved back. It was then I realized how close we had moved toward the other. I rose to my full height, stepping away from the counter.
“Yes, Shannon. Let’s do the ginger ones today.”
Shannon eyed me curiously, then smiled at Sunny, before disappearing through the door. “On it, boss.”
We stared at each other.
“As much as I’d love to go down memory lane with you,” Sunny informed me, her voice icy and filled with sarcasm, “I have a business to run. Do you want anything, or did you come in here to bring more upheaval into my life?”
I blinked. “I smelled biscuits.”
She barked out another laugh. Even that sound was foreign. I recalled her sweet, low laughter. Her lighthearted giggle. This was neither of those.
She reached below the counter and grabbed two biscuits, shoving them in a bag. “There.”
“I was going to—”
She cut me off. “No. You’re going to take the biscuits and get the hell out of my shop and my life, Linc.”
“Sunny, I want to talk. I need to—”
Again, she cut me off. “I said no. You had plenty of time to talk while I pined away for you. I no longer care what you need.”
“But I—”
“Get out, or I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
I stared at the angry, cold woman in front of me. This wasn’t Sunny. Not the Sunny I remembered. Then again, I wasn’t the same boy.
“All right, I’ll go. But I’m coming back. I’ll see you soon.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard that before. I guess we already know that won’t be happening.”
Then she turned on her heel and walked away.
She was on my mind all day, no longer a ghost, but a living, breathing woman. Beautiful. Sad. Angry.
Here. Right here in Mission Cove. I had looked for her years ago, unable to locate her, finally deciding to let her go and move on. Concentrate on my plan and make sure my father no longer had the power to hurt people. I knocked over the pieces in his intricate game of chess, taking his queen and leaving him with no moves left.
The day I received the call that he’d had a massive heart attack in his office and died had produced one emotion: relief. I didn’t go to see him. There was no funeral. Only a simple statement in the paper and I had his ashes shipped to me.
I found great satisfaction in driving them to the local dump and tossing them into a pile of