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“What are you doing here, Sawyer Kole?”
Honey Duer’s heart stuttered. Irrational gladness surged through her nerve endings until she tamped her feelings down to that secret place where she contained everything concerning the Coast Guard petty officer. Perched on a stool at the Sandpiper Cafe counter, he stiffened at the sound of her voice.
Kiptohanock life ebbed and flowed around them. The hearty scent of eggs and bacon permeated the diner. Weather-beaten watermen packed the green vinyl booths and sopped their buttermilk biscuits in redeye gravy while trading fish stories.
Placing his palms flat against the counter, Sawyer rose and faced her. He let his arms drop to his side.
Much against her will, Honey’s gaze locked onto Sawyer’s hands—strong, work-roughened and capable. A distant memory flashed of those hands cupping one of Blackie’s pups.
The clinking of glasses and murmur of voices in the crowded diner faded into a distant, droning buzz as the image of Sawyer’s face that long ago Kiptohanock spring welled in her mind. He’d cradled the black Labrador puppies, the lines fanning out from his eyes as he smiled. At her.
Her stomach knotted. And with her reverie broken, she found his crystal blue gaze fixed on her. In his eyes, she beheld pain, regret, sadness. And a question?
She recalled her crusty waterman father’s oft-quoted saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Honey quelled the traitorous feelings Sawyer’s presence evoked. She’d believed—hoped—after three long years, she’d be immune. But apparently not.
She’d learned the hard way not to trust a Coastie. Especially not this one. So with deliberate effort, she schooled her features and reined in her pulse.
The summer tourist season remained at fever pitch with the upcoming Labor Day weekend and Duck Decoy Festival. And with the Duer family’s century-old lodge booked to the rafters, she didn’t need this—or him—distracting her.
“Why are you here, Kole?”
Eyelids drooping, he put the stool between them. “Reassigned back to the Shore. Thought the chief would’ve warned you.”
Honey propped her hands on her hips—mainly to give her hands something to do. Anything but allow her hands to shake and betray their utter unreliability. “The chief? Braeden Scott knew you were here?”
Of course as Officer in Charge her brother-in-law knew. Which meant her big sister Amelia knew, too. She growled low in her throat. “How long, Kole? How long have you been skulking around Kiptohanock without me knowing?”
“A week.”
Sawyer’s eyes, the blue of a winter sky over the blue-green waters of the Delmarva Peninsula, darted toward her again. “I was told you didn’t work at the cafe anymore. That you wouldn’t be hard to...” His gaze slid away to the diner’s plate glass window overlooking the cupola-topped gazebo on the square.
And she extinguished the tiny spark of hope that had surfaced upon spotting his broad uniformed shoulders hunched over a cup of coffee and a plate of Long Johns. As if time had rewound back to that spring when she’d dared to dream, to hope...
She grimaced.
When he left her looking like a fool in front of the fishing hamlet of Kiptohanock, Virginia.
And the startling fact that hope somehow persisted—despite her best efforts to eradicate it—angered Honey. Angered her more than the gall of this here-today, gone-tomorrow Coastie, who had the nerve to show up in her town at her cafe again.
The anger, with three long years to simmer, boiled in her veins. ’Cause Sawyer Kole hadn’t come looking for her. He’d come thinking to avoid her.
Eating Long Johns and drinking coffee at her counter as if nothing had changed. Some things never did change. Some men never did, either.
Like how you couldn’t trust a Coastie as far as you could throw him.
“Honey, I—” His mouth pulled downward.
The anger percolated in her gut, rising. Someone tugged at her hand.
She glanced down to find her eight-year-old nephew, Max. With whom she’d come searching for a midmorning treat once the inn’s guests cleared out after breakfast. Max—whom she’d completely forgotten in her sudden awareness of Sawyer.
“Is that the Coastie who made you cry, Aunt Honey?”
She flinched at the foghorn decibel of Max’s voice.
Conversation ground to an abrupt silence.
Sawyer’s face constricted and he swallowed. Hard.
“I’m sorry, Honey.” Sawyer pivoted on his heel toward the exit.
Her nostrils flared. That was it? After all this time, that was all he had to say for himself?
If he thought he was going to walk away from her again, Sawyer Kole had another thought coming. No longer able to contain the molten lava of three years of unanswered questions, her anger erupted and exploded.
“That’d be Beatrice Duer to you, Coastie.”
She reached across the counter and seized the uneaten Long John on his plate. She hurled the cinnamon donut across the room where it collided with a shower of powdery sugar against the back of Sawyer Kole’s hard head.
The dozen or so cafe patrons, including Max, gave a collective gasp.
Sawyer whipped around. The disbelief on his features almost made her laugh.
Almost. ’Cause laughing wasn’t something she’d done much since that bittersweet spring.
“Honey...” Her waitress friend, Dixie, lowered a platter of fresh baked Long Johns to the countertop. “Before you go off half-cocked...”
Sawyer just...stared at her. Which only made Honey crazier. She snatched another Long John off Dixie’s tray.
This time, he made a gesture with his hand like a stop sign. “Honey...” His mouth tightened.
Honey raised her arm in an arc over her head. “I told you to call me Beatrice. Be-a-trice. Better yet, don’t call me anything at all.” She drew back.
Sawyer’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t...”
Honey lobbed the donut at him.
Zapping him square between the eyes, the Long John bounced and landed at his regulation black shoes on the cafe’s linoleum floor.
“Hah!” She jutted her chin. “I just did.”
Max nudged her with his elbow. “Mimi says it’s not nice to throw things, Aunt Honey.”
“He deserves it.” She palpitated another Long John. “This one, too.”
And she flung the donut in Sawyer’s direction again. But her aim was a trifle off. The Long John only grazed his tropical blue Coastie uniform, leaving a trail of sugar across his chest.
His rugged profile remained stoic. The arctic blue of his eyes smoldered. But otherwise, no reaction.
Maddened, she palmed another pastry, which she let fly in a curveball worthy of the Kiptohanock church league champions. “And another. And—”
It ricocheted off his jaw.
A muscle ticked in his cheek.