laptop, all those articles and her legal pads. She felt a mixture of relief and fear as they disappeared from sight.
Inside, she glanced at the kitchen clock. It was only two. What on earth was she going to do for five whole hours? What had she done on all those lazy summer afternoons years ago? It finally came to her that when she and her sisters hadn’t been out on the water, she’d gone into the backyard with a book in her hand. She’d gotten lost in amazing adventures in exotic locales.
Impulsively she reached into the bag that her sisters had left and withdrew a paperback without even glancing at the title or the author. Neither really mattered.
Before she could suffer a pang of regret or pick up the phone to call the cable company, she went outside to the swing facing the bay. It was wide enough for her to turn sideways and put her feet on the seat, and there was enough breeze to keep it in motion; just a slight, soothing back and forth.
She opened the book, read the first paragraph with the intention of hating it, then read the second with a more open mind. By the end of the page, she was hooked. She was reminded of the pleasure she’d felt years ago when her days had been lazy and undemanding and a good story had been all she needed to keep herself entertained for hours on end.
The best days had been the rainy ones, when she’d curled up on a chair in the living room or on the porch, book in hand, a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade beside her. She’d read incessantly, emerging only long enough for meals or to play cards or board games with her grandmother and sisters.
The satisfaction of that was coming back to her, page by page. In this book, the characters jumped off the page, the romance was steamy and the author’s voice was filled with intelligence and wit. Ashley lost herself in the story.
She was stiff and cramped when she finally turned the last page. Her cheeks were unexpectedly damp with happy tears. When was the last time she’d read anything that had affected her like this? Probably before she’d gone to law school. Since then she hadn’t had time for the simple pleasure of reading for entertainment.
For the very first time, Ashley saw this self-imposed banishment in a new light, as a real gift. Maybe if she went back to the girl she’d once been, to someone who was filled with hopes and dreams, she’d be able to discover where she’d slipped off track. Maybe she’d rediscover the humanity that had made her a good judge of people before she’d started to rely on cool calculation and mental agility to succeed.
Not that she intended to tell her sisters that she was beginning to see the benefits of this sabbatical. They’d gloat.
“Oh, my gosh, dinner,” she muttered, glancing at her watch. It was ten minutes till seven, and she’d never even taken a shower or changed. After all her grumbling about the mere thought of being isolated, if she was late for a party, she’d never hear the end of it.
“They’ll just have to take me as I am,” she said, laughing at the evidence that she was already adopting a whole new attitude.
That didn’t stop Ashley from grabbing her purse and car keys and tearing out of the driveway at her more accustomed frantic pace. She simply couldn’t be expected to change everything about her personality overnight.
Josh felt like a rebellious twelve-year-old running away from home and unwanted responsibilities. As he neared the Chesapeake Bay, he could smell the tang of salt water in the cool September air. As he got closer to his family’s longtime second home by the water, there was also a faintly fishy scent that he’d come to acquaint with summer. His mother had balanced that with a garden filled with fragrant blossoms, which were just beginning to fade as summer moved into autumn.
When he turned at last onto the final leg of the journey, a long, winding country road that led from White Stone toward Windmill Point, he spotted a dozen or so brand-new homes interspersed with the old cottages and other recently completed vacation homes. The new additions were huge, dwarfing their quaint and occasionally run-down neighbors, but large or small, they all shared the same incredible view of the Chesapeake Bay and its inlets.
He was almost to the cutoff to Idylwild, the small clapboard cottage with its neat green shutters and sweeping porch, when a fancy car being driven toward him way too fast took the turn ahead of him wide. The driver spotted him too late and tried to overcorrect. Josh cut the wheel in the opposite direction, but the crunch of metal against metal was inevitable, the contact jarring but not enough to cause injury.
He leapt out of the car in full lawyer mode, then backed up a step at the sight of the tawny-haired driver of the other car suddenly bursting into tears. At once all he could think about were broken bones and soft, bleeding skin.
“Are you okay?” he asked, leaning in the driver’s window close enough to catch a faint whiff of something exotic, sexy and expensive. The combination dealt a knockout punch to his belly and put the rest of his all-too-male senses on full alert.
Brown eyes, shimmering with tears, glanced up at him, then away. Her cheeks blazed with unmistakable embarrassment. Josh studied her, trying to figure out why he felt an almost immediate connection to her, as if they’d known each other before. But that couldn’t be, of course. He would have remembered any woman who looked like this. Except for the tear-streaked face, she was as sleek and polished as any of the society women he’d come to know in Richmond. The clothes were expensive, if wrinkled. Gold-and-diamond studs winked from her ears.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “It was my fault.” She was already fumbling in her Gucci bag, apparently digging for her driver’s license, car registration and insurance card. “Dammit, dammit, dammit! Why can’t I ever find anything in here?”
“It’s okay,” Josh soothed, sensing that she was about to burst into another noisy round of sobs that would claw at his gut. “There’s no rush. We’re in the country. Folks around here don’t get all worked up over a little fender bender. We can take care of the formalities in a minute. How about some bottled water? I just picked up a case of the stuff. It’s warm, but it might help. I have a first-aid kit, too. We can take care of that scrape on your cheek.”
She self-consciously touched her hand to her face, then stared at the blood with shock. She immediately turned pale.
“Hold on,” Josh said. “Don’t you dare faint on me. It’s nothing. Just a tiny little cut.” He glanced inside the car, trying to figure out if anything was broken. He couldn’t see any glass that would explain the injury.
Without waiting for a reply, he ran back to his ridiculously oversize but trendy SUV, retrieved a bottle of water, some peroxide and antibiotic cream, then went back. By then, the other driver had emerged from behind the wheel, all five-ten or so of her, with narrow hips and endless legs and just enough curves to make a man’s blood stir with interest.
“I’m Josh,” he said when he could get his tongue untangled. He handed her the water. He poured the peroxide on a cotton ball and reached over to touch the wound, but she immediately tried to take the cotton from him.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“You can’t see what you’re doing,” he said, holding firm and cupping her chin in his other hand, then daubing the peroxide on the scrape. He bit back a grin when she winced even before he’d made contact.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked when he’d cleaned the wound.
She frowned at him.
“You never did say what your name is,” he reminded her as he smoothed on antibiotic cream, trying not to linger on her soft-as-silk skin.
“Ashley.”
He heard the unmistakable Boston accent. “Just visiting the area?”
“For three weeks,” she said emphatically, as if that were two-and-a-half weeks too long. “Are you a local?”
“I like to think of myself as one,” he said. Richmond might be where he lived, but this was the home of his heart. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until he’d made that final