Chapter 2
The spreadsheet on Meredith’s laptop had seventeen rows, four alphabetical columns, and a formula she’d written at two in the morning that she was now fairly certain contained an error in the third nested function.
She squinted at the screen, her fingers hovering over the keyboard, tempted to check her email… again.
She resisted the urge but lifted her gaze to take in the Summer House from her centrally located position at the dining table in the main living area.
In the kitchen straight ahead, Atlas let out a squeal that could have meant delight or protest—with a four-month-old, the line between the two was almost nonexistent.
Whatever it was, the sound was loud enough to make Jonah unlock his infant son from a chest harness to move him into his bouncy seat on the island, explaining to the baby that it was time for Daddy to cook.
With Atlas secure, Jonah turned to the refrigerator to set up his mise en place for the feast he was creating to celebrate Dusty and Tessa’s super-fast civil service that morning.
The newlyweds hadn’t wanted a crowd but agreed to a family dinner tonight.
“What are you working on, Mer?” Jonah asked, glancing back at her as he laid out veggies and a cutting board. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Spreadsheet for the seating chart tonight?”
She curled her lip, long used to her older brother’s teasing about her obsession with organization. But wasn’t that exactly what mise en place was? She let it go and shrugged.
“It’s a spreadsheet, but work.”
“That’s not fun. Work is…work.”
“For some, work is fun,” she muttered, getting a wry smile in response. “You cook, I toil in joy.”
He tipped his head in concession and lined up some peppers and onions.
Through the sliding glass doors that opened onto the deck, she could hear her father’s voice mixed with Peter McCarthy’s deeper one. The two men were talking softly with Peter’s son, Connor, the conversation broken by occasional laughs.
Aunt Vivien and Peter were together now—properly, officially together—and he’d been a fixture at the Summer House over the past few weeks. Lately, Connor came along, dragging his cast-covered broken wrist like an albatross that had ruined his life.
From the beach just over the dunes, Meredith could hear the sounds of her little cousin Nolie, her childish laughter like music in the summer air.
Aunt Crista’s voice floated up, too, calling something to her daughter. Her husband, Meredith’s uncle Anthony, had gone back to Atlanta, but her pregnant aunt and Nolie had decided to stay through August, since they’d purchased a second home in the area and were doing some renovations.
Grandma Maggie and Jo Ellen were down on the sand, too—no doubt huddled together planning their next adventure, proving every day that age was just a number.
Meredith couldn’t see, but she imagined Aunt Pittypat was settled on Grandma Maggie’s lap, her tiny Yorkie body trembling as she barked at seagulls and surf and anyone who dared get close. Jo Ellen probably had her iPad open, playing Wordle.
It was the kind of afternoon that should have made Meredith shut her laptop and join them. The Gulf was that impossible shade of emerald green it turned on clear days, giving off a breeze that tamed the August air to a comfortable temperature.
On a sigh, she looked back at her computer. Two minutes had passed. Enough time to check her email. She clicked, but oh. Nothing. Not a word from Pippin Lake Development Group and Friday was fast sliding into the weekend.
When would they hear something?
The last meeting with Dad and the developer had ended on a high note, with the assistant whispering to Meredith that they would be “in touch soon” about final firm selection for Lakeside.
Meredith had learned long ago that “soon” in the architecture business could mean anything from tomorrow to never, but she couldn’t stop checking.
She sighed noisily, aching for the news that Acacia Architecture had been chosen as the lead firm for the gated residential community that would be built over the next three years. She wanted the win so bad she could taste it.
“Anything?” Jonah asked, not looking up from the cutting board where he was dicing a shallot with impressive speed.
“About what?”
He shot her a “get real” look. “Meredith. You click, you moan, you writhe in agony. Have you heard on the Lakeside thing?”
“Not yet.”
“Remind me what that is again?” Jonah scraped the diced shallots into a bowl with the flat of his knife, the move shockingly professional. “I know you and Dad have been talking about it, but I tune out when you guys start speaking architect.”
“It’s a master-planned community just north of here, at Pippin Lake. More than a thousand residences, a town center, a splash park, golf cart trails, the whole Florida thing. We bid to be the exclusive architect for one of the neighborhoods called Lakeside.”
“So you’d design every house?” he asked, sounding impressed.
“In that one gated development,” she said. “Acacia would create all of the elevations and floor plans, design the clubhouse and common areas.” She paused, trying to keep her voice even, trying not to let the hope leak through. “Dad would make me project manager if we get it.”
Jonah whistled low. “Sounds like a huge job. Would you stay here and not go back to Atlanta?”
She didn’t answer right away but surely her brother knew that after she’d made a complete mess of her personal life a few months ago, she had little to go back to except work.
Her social life was non-existent, her apartment deeply lonely, and her old circle of friends were fast moving into marriage and motherhood.
“I can’t make any plans until we get the job,” she said, purposely vague. “If we get it. Which we might not. There are bigger firms in the running, some of them local, and one that’s worked with this development company before on the first neighborhood. So, the competition’s tough.”
“But none of them have Miss Perfect.” He tempered the old nickname with a smile, but she still rolled her eyes. Not that it really bothered her anymore. However, there’d been a time when his pet name for her was a dig at her work ethic—and maybe an acknowledgement of his lack of one.
For years after Mom died, her brother, older by a little more than a year, had been so lost and angry. He spent the better part of his twenties getting high and living like a nomad in that disgusting van.
He’d ended up in California, where he’d met his girlfriend, Carly, conceived Atlas, and, at a particularly low point, had come here when Carly gave his loser backside the boot.
With the help of Kate Wylie—of all the unexpected sources—Jonah had gotten accepted in a local community college culinary program, and his life was finally looking up.
Then Carly had run out for diapers one evening and was tragically killed in a car accident mere weeks after having Atlas.
Jonah had been in California for the birth, with plans to come back to attend school with his new family.
Reeling with heartbreak and loss, Jonah had returned to Destin with Atlas and a desperate need for help, which of course, this family and the Wylies gave him.
Jonah had changed. Fatherhood had matured him. Dad’s influence had mellowed him. And finding his passion and purpose in the kitchen had transformed him.
He no longer seemed resentful that Meredith had taken a different and far more ambitious route in life, following in their architect father’s footsteps. In fact, he was proud of her—and himself for forging his own destiny.
Atlas slapped both palms against the bouncer’s tray and gurgled, and Jonah turned to him with the soft, unguarded expression that embodied all that transformation in one easy smile.
She watched him hand Atlas a teething ring and murmur something that made the baby giggle, and she felt the familiar ache that sat just beneath her ribs whenever she looked at them.
She didn’t feel grief anymore. Nearly six weeks had passed since Miss Perfect’s carefully constructed world had imploded. Her ectopic pregnancy, the result of a stupid and brief relationship, had unraveled the life she’d so meticulously planned.
Now, she was healing the only way she knew how—by throwing herself into work.
“What are you making for tonight?” she asked Jonah, leaning back and forcing herself not to check her email again.
Her brother’s face lit up. “Pan-seared grouper with a mango-habanero glaze, coconut rice, and roasted broccolini.”
“Sounds yummy and tropical.”
“It will make your tastebuds do the samba.”
“And will there be wedding cake?”
“No cake—too tradish for Tessa. I’m making key lime tarts because if Tessa isn’t a tart, I don’t know who is. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.”
“She’s a sweet…tart,” she agreed on a laugh.
Just then, Connor McCarthy stepped in from the deck, moving carefully so he didn’t bump his right arm, currently in a cast from wrist to just below the elbow.
The car accident he’d been in after their Fourth of July party last month had broken his collarbone, too, but thankfully he didn’t have to wear anything on that.
Still, he looked like someone who’d been forced to learn patience against his will. A tall, good-looking dental student about the same age as Meredith, Connor had his father’s dark eyes and broad shoulders.
He moved toward the kitchen island where Jonah was working, peering at the ingredients.
“What are you making? It smells incredible and you haven’t even started cooking yet.”
Without him noticing, Meredith studied the young man from a distance. His skin looked tanned by the sun, and the ends of his chestnut-colored hair were tipped with gold. There was a restlessness in him that Meredith recognized—a kind of coiled energy with nowhere to go.
They’d chatted enough for her to know that he was beyond frustrated with the delay in his final semester, thanks to an idiot who’d had too much to drink and clipped Connor’s car on the way home late at night.