Before
BEFORE
In the morning, an incoming call pierces my awareness, yanking me from a vivid half dream. I bolt upright and fumble my cell off the nightstand, then croak a greeting.
“Oh god, Mina,” Kate jabbers breathlessly in my ear. “Please don’t hate me, but I can’t take you to Seattle today. I’m so sorry.”
“What?” I rub grit from my eyes. “What’re you talking about? Why not?”
“This is so stupid, but I left my dome light on last night, and now my battery’s dead, and... Well, I was just leaving to come get you, but I’m stuck. And I know you have to leave like, now , and—”
“Wait, what do you mean, now? Now now? What time is it?” Not waiting for an answer, I pull the phone away. The numbers on the screen slap me across the face. “What? Seven thirty? How’s that possible? I set my alarm for six.”
Or maybe I didn’t. I don’t actually recall. I just remember climbing into bed, filled with enough excitement that I couldn’t sleep for hours, and now...
“Shit,” I say. “Shitshitshit.”
I jump from bed and race to the bathroom, where I toss the phone onto the counter. I scrub my teeth and yank a brush through my waist-length hair.
“I’m so sorry,” Kate wails, on speaker. “I don’t want you to leave, but I never would’ve done this on purpose.”
“I know.”
“Are you mad?”
“How could I be mad?” I spend all of four seconds wanding mascara onto my lashes, then another three dusting blush onto my cheeks. There. Done. “I should’ve been up already, and I should’ve had a backup plan.”
“What’re you gonna do?” She sounds miserable. “Can you call Patrick and explain?”
I zip back to my room and pull on the clothes I laid out last night—a collared shirt and dressy slacks intended to show that I take the responsibility of rehoming Rosalie’s possessions seriously. My cousin is family by marriage, not blood, and he has no obligation to keep this job open if I don’t show up as agreed. Especially since we’ve never actually met.
“I’ll just have to find another ride,” I blurt.
“Ugh.” Kate swears under her breath. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”
My heartbeat churns as I scan the screen again: 7:34. That gives me twenty-six minutes to cover the three miles to Seaside House. Running is my only option—the closest cab company operates out of the next town, and the last Uber I called took forty-five minutes just to show up. “Of course not.”
“Oh, thank god.” She expels a breath. “Are you gonna ask your mom, then? She can take the day off work, right?”
Only then do I realize Kate’s asking whether I intend to catch a ride with Michael Drake.
Oh. Well. In that case, she’s going to be pissed.
But we can argue it out later, once it’s all said and done. “Look, I’ll text you in half an hour, okay?”
“Okay.” She tenses up all over again. “But... Don’t do anything stupid, all right?”
Just before hanging up, I say, “I won’t.”
Except...I absolutely will. I’ve waited my entire life for this. I can’t let the opportunity slip through my fingers now.
I pelt from the house with my quilted purple roller-bag in tow. Luckily, I’ve chosen sensible shoes for my first day, and my shiny black flats slap against the sidewalk as the suitcase clatters behind me.
My thighs burn. Sweat beads my forehead. But my breath comes deep and even, because if there’s one thing I excel at—besides daydreaming about places I’ve never seen—it’s running like hell.
Cars honk as I careen through one intersection after another. The boardwalk rimming the beach comes into view. I hurtle onto it and burst through the door of Seaside House, a dusty blue Victorian bed-and-breakfast with a nightly price tag somewhere in the four-hundred-dollar range. Now I am breathing hard, but I ignore it and pull my phone out again: 7:58.
Not too shabby.
I glance around. A bank of windows overlooks the beach, where early risers pick through whitewashed driftwood. Round tables topped with lacy cloths dot the room. Two women with flawless salon highlights sit nearby, sipping from steaming coffee cups. I don’t recognize them, which gives me hope.
“Hi.” I finger-comb my hair, trying to make myself at least halfway presentable. “You wouldn’t happen to know a Michael Drake, would you?”
They frown at my heaving chest and sweat-dampened collar.
“Who’re you?” one says. “And why’re you looking for Michael?”
A breath bubbles out. It sounds like they know him, at least. “My name’s Mina. Do you work with him? I’m trying to catch a ride.”
They exchange a surprised look. “Are you a friend of his? Or...?”
“No,” I say. “We just met yesterday, but he’s heading home this morning, and I desperately need to get to Seattle.”
“Oh.” The first woman’s tone softens. “I think he’s still out running. He left about an hour ago, and I haven’t seen him since. Unless he sneaked in through the back.”
The second woman sips her coffee. “Even if he was here, though, I wouldn’t bother. You won’t get anywhere with him.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Sarah asked if she could carpool with him this morning, and he blew her off.”
The first woman—Sarah, apparently—nods. “And not in a nice way. I mean, he’s always been kinda standoffish. But something’s been seriously off with him lately. I swear he’s spent the past month outright avoiding everyone.”
“Except Ben,” the other interjects.
Sarah nods. “Yeah. Except Ben. Anyway, Michael made it pretty clear he wanted to drive alone today. Sorry. I wish I had better news. But honestly...he’s kind of an arrogant asshole, anyway. You’re better off going with someone else.”
Panic whirls in my stomach. “I don’t have anyone else to ask.”
Sarah’s look turns sympathetic. “I’d say you could come with us, but Brooke”—she gestures at her friend—“drives a Miata. Only two seats. Good luck, though.”
“Thanks.” I try to gulp down the sudden throb in my throat. Michael offered me a ride himself, but maybe he’s changed his mind. Still, I have to try. Asshole or no, he’s my only option. “I’ll check to see if he’s out front. Have a nice breakfast.”
I leave as they dig into their waffles. Outside, my phone shows 8:02.
The numbers jab at my gut. Michael’s toned physique makes me suspect he’s no stranger to self-discipline, and the fact that he went running at 7:00 a.m. while on a retreat only strengthens that theory. Which means if he said he’s leaving at eight, he was probably serious.
I scan the parking lot. Sunlight glints off metal car hoods, and in the far corner...
My pulse jolts. Beneath a stand of lodgepole pines, a blond head ducks into something low and blue. An engine roars.
Shit. If that’s him, this is my last chance.
I take off running. The car powers through the lot, gravel fountaining from its tires, making me think there’s definitely a man behind the wheel.
I reach the lot’s exit. The Audi TT jerks to a stop mere inches from my knees, all throaty rumble and sparkling jay-blue paint. Reflected sunlight glares off the windshield.
I shade my eyes. A power window whirrs down, barely audible over the hiss-crash of waves against the nearby beach.
“Michael Drake?” I shout. “Is that you?”
A low laugh answers. “Maybe. Depends on whether you have any pies with you this time.”
The smoke-and-bourbon voice spills warmth through me. I spring toward the driver’s side. He doesn’t sound like he’s going to refuse me. “Oh, thank god. My friend’s car died this morning, and I ran all the way here, hoping you could—”
When Michael looks up through his open window, the rest of my sentence flies off into the sunshine.
Jesus.
He’s got one of those faces made from bold, sharp lines—angled jaw, squared chin, prominent cheekbones. I gape for a good five seconds before noticing the gentler touches like generous lips and a faintly upturned nose, and then I just keep staring. Between the hard lines and the soft ones, there’s something intensely... beautiful about this guy, yet with his rough, masculine edges, I would never actually use that word to describe him.
And those eyes—glimpses of a welcoming ocean, fringed by long lashes. They seem to record the depths of my inner reaction, as if he sees straight through to some private core.
“Hoping I could what?” he says.
My breath gets lost trying to find my lungs. “What?”
A smile plays around his mouth. Hair the color of old, age-worn gold curves over his forehead, which he reaches up to brush back. “You were hoping I could what?”
“Um...” I blink my way from my stupor. Guys like this don’t stroll through Seagrove every day. Or any town, for that matter. “Take me to Seattle.”
He smirks. “What do I look like, some kind of altruist?”
The truth rolls off my tongue before I can stop it. “God, no. You look like you shouldn’t even know what that word means.”
“Wow.” He laughs. “Thanks. First you hit me with a pie, then you tell me I look dumb. I’m starting to think I’ve offended you somehow.”
Heat stains my cheeks. “No, I didn’t mean...” Yesterday, I assumed he was hitting on me, but looking at him now, that’s so very obviously not the case that I can only laugh at my own arrogance. Out loud.
He raises an eyebrow. “And now you’re laughing at me. Mockingly , if I’m not mistaken.”
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s not that. I didn’t come here to insult you, or beg for charity. I just need some help. I can pay, if that helps.”
His tropical eyes glitter. “Now you think I need your money?”
I scan the car, which probably costs more than most people make in a year, then his shiny, gilded hair. I bet his shampoo alone is worth more than my entire makeup collection. “Um...”
“You know what?” He waves a hand. “Don’t answer that. Just throw your bag in back. You have to be in Seattle by eleven, right?”
My mind blanks. I can’t imagine how he knows that. But then I remember his above-and-beyond attention to detail yesterday. Takes one to know one, writer girl .
Must be an architect thing.
“I really, really do.” I forcibly unfreeze myself, then toss my suitcase into the trunk, slip into the car, and snick the door shut. Michael rolls up his window, sealing us into a cocoon of chilled black leather and tinted glass.
He watches me click my seat belt, his expression curious and assessing and...something else I can’t pin down. I pointedly ignore it and punch Rosalie’s address into the navigation. A blue line appears on the map: “Time to destination: 3:02.”
I fixate on the path to my freedom, which will deliver me a mere nine minutes late. I only have to get through three hours and two minutes in close quarters with an absurdly gorgeous architect who may or may not be the world’s biggest asshole.
Worth it.
“I’m surprised you came,” Michael says, ignoring the navigation screen, his foot still on the brake. “I was ninety-nine percent sure you wouldn’t.”
I arch an eyebrow. “That’s because you one hundred percent don’t know me.”
It’s a bold response, so much so that I can’t say where it comes from. If my mother could hear me, she’d faint dead away. So would Kate. Well, no. She’d give me the look .
Not this guy, though. His half smile blossoms in full. “What’s your name?”
“Mina.”
“Mina. Huh. I like that, actually. It suits you. Tiny, but impossible to ignore. Mi-na .” He infuses those two syllables with more appreciation than I knew they could hold.
To me, my name has always sounded small and stilted, a reminder of my unimpressive size. But when Michael Drake says it with his oak-paneled-rooms-and-red-leather-armchairs voice, I suddenly change my mind.
Mina. It actually has an edge of elegance. Who knew?
“Thanks,” I say. “And...you are Michael Drake, right?”
I don’t know why I ask; he can’t possibly be anyone but the pie-covered guy from yesterday. And yet I can’t quite believe this was hiding under all that whipped cream.
His focus sharpens. “If I said no, would you get out?”
“I... Uh...” Not what I expected.
He waits, not so much as a blink to lessen the weight of those eyes on mine.
I swallow, remembering a story I once read about two wartime pen pals who fell in love by letter, neither knowing what the other looked like. When they finally agreed to meet, the woman wrote ahead to say she’d pin a red rose to her lapel, but when she boarded the train, she asked a kind, homely woman to wear the flower instead—the problem being that she was beautiful, and she didn’t want her soldier to love her because of that.
It was a test. At the station, would the soldier approach her, gorgeous but roseless? Or the plain woman wearing the flower? Would he choose beauty or substance?
This charged silence makes me feel like the soldier. Like Michael’s asking whether I got into this car because of our easy repartee yesterday, or because of that striking face of his.
“Sorry, but...” I mirror his intensity. “I’m looking for a Michael Drake. Maybe you’ve seen him? Nerdy architect guy? Likes to walk around wearing a few layers of baked goods? Maybe I should just wait out on the sidewalk. I’m sure he’ll show up eventually.”
I fumble for the door handle, not at all certain he’ll stop me, immensely grateful when he reaches across to still my hand.
When I turn back, he’s leaning close. He breaks into a smile, which has roughly the same effect as the sun emerging from behind a cloud.
My breath dwindles. I forgive the fact that he apparently has no plans to depart my personal space anytime soon, because he smells incredible. Like the mossy forest after a drenching rain, when the world glows fresh and quiet, the woods still waking after the fury of the storm. He smells like the beginning of something. Like the start of a new day.
“I guess I’m Michael, then,” he says, soft and smoky. “No need to get out.”
“Oh. Good. I was kind of looking forward to seeing what this car can do.” Amazingly, I sound all kinds of casual. Inside, I can’t help but marvel at how his name doesn’t suit him.
Michael . It’s biblical. Angelic.
Aside from the golden hair, this man possesses exactly zero angelic qualities. In fact, looking at him makes me want to commit a cardinal sin at the earliest opportunity.
No, it doesn’t , I tell myself. Patrick. Great-aunt Rosalie . All I need is a ride. And not the X-rated kind.
Michael doesn’t encourage a return to rationality by moving away, though. His gaze lances into me, and every cell in my body responds, a crowd of a million heads all swiveling to fixate on the same thing.
I gulp. “Do you always look at strangers this way?”
His lips quirk. “What way?”
Like you’re examining their soul , I almost say, but there’s no way that won’t sound ridiculous, so I settle for “Like you know them as well as you know yourself.”
“Of course not,” he says. “I’m not a creep. Despite what your friend said.”
“Okay. But you’re looking at me this way, which makes you...?”
“Intrigued.”
“Right.” I’m dimly aware that I’m hyperventilating, but I can’t seem to make it stop. “And what about me intrigues you?”
“A few things.” His smile softens, turning vulnerable and sweet. “For one, not many girls would’ve sprinted across town just to get a ride. But you did, which tells me you’re passionate about something.”
“Everyone’s passionate about something.”
“No.” He chuckles. “God, no. And second, I like your face.”
A nervous cackle threatens to erupt at the absurdity of hearing a statement like that from a guy like this .
“You have this natural look,” he continues. “Not a lot of makeup. Like you’re not trying to fool anyone. Just being you. It’s a sign of confidence.”
“Actually, it’s a sign of me oversleeping by an hour and a half.”
His eyes crinkle with amusement. “And you’re honest. Most people aren’t. At least not like that.”
“Well,” I manage. “You might actually be onto something with that one.”
He glances down, his lashes kissing his cheeks, then releases my hand and retreats. He shifts into gear. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, are you ready?”
I nod, completely incapable of forming words. What’s English? What are words?
“Good.” His foot presses the gas. “This should be...interesting.”
I flash a weak smile and glue my attention to the road. When my brain finally decides to start working again, I realize how vastly I’ve misjudged this situation.
Michael Drake might be willing to drive me to Seattle, but I’d better make damn sure I still want to get out of his car once he does.