Chapter 5
Chapter Five
AUSTIN
I stowed my gear near the cleaning station I’d built in the kitchen. My rods leaned in the corner, the black snapper still encased in ice inside the cooler. It could wait. After a long day, I was ready for a cold beer.
Then a sharp, determined knock echoed from the front door, and my head snapped up. Who the hell was that? My siblings usually texted or, in Braden’s case, just materialized on the porch with a couple of beers.
“Shit.” If it was some door-to-door salesman trying to peddle solar panels or salvation, they were about to have a very short conversation.
I strode to the door, my expression anything but welcoming, and pulled it open. And stared.
Holloway.
Son of a bitch. She stood on my porch, clutching a wicker basket covered with a brightly colored cloth napkin.
Her blonde hair, the shade of sun-bleached driftwood, was pulled back in a loose, messy ponytail, but rebellious strands had escaped to frame a face scrubbed clean of makeup.
It made her look younger, softer. And her wide blue eyes, the color of a clear summer sky over the flats, were fixed on me with an expression of acute, almost painful, nervousness.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other like a sandpiper testing the tide.
I braced myself. What now? A petition to have my hibiscus formally declared a public nuisance?
Then I registered the anxiety radiating off her.
The way her knuckles were white where she gripped the basket handle, the slight tremor in her hands.
It was a marked contrast to the determined, if spectacularly disastrous, amateur plumber I’d encountered yesterday. This version looked vulnerable.
And it threw me completely off balance.
An uncomfortable feeling squirmed in my gut. Not guilt. Definitely not guilt. More like acute social discomfort.
“Holloway,” I muttered, the single word sounding more like a reluctant acknowledgment of an unavoidable natural phenomenon than a greeting.
Her eyes widened further, if that was possible. “Mr. Coleridge. Austin.” Her voice was a little shaky, a little breathless. “Um. Hi. Can I… I mean, I wanted to…”
She gestured awkwardly with the basket, as if it held the secrets of the universe. The faint, sweet, unmistakable scent of baked goods wafted from beneath the napkin. Chocolate chip, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Cookies? She baked cookies? After yesterday?
I’d expected a complaint, an argument, maybe even a demand for me to fix the damn sprinkler she broke.
This was disarming. And, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, thoughtful.
She’d likely spent hours on this, psyching herself up for another encounter with the neighborhood monster.
Me.
“I am so, so incredibly sorry about yesterday,” she rushed out, the words tumbling over each other.
“About your hibiscus. And your day off. It was completely my fault. I was an absolute idiot with the sprinkler, and I just wanted to… well, I baked these.” She thrust the basket forward, a hopeful, desperate offering. “As an apology.”
I stared at the basket, then at her earnest, anxious face. My mind, usually so quick to retreat into grumpy solitude, seemed to have short-circuited.
“Right. Cookies.” The words sounded flat, even to my ears. I cleared my throat. “Well, thank you. Uh, come in.”
The invitation was out before I could stop it.
Holloway stepped hesitantly into my living room, her eyes darting around as if she’d just entered an alien spacecraft.
Which, compared to the chaotic jungle of Heron House, my home probably was.
She looked so out of place, a brightly colored, slightly disheveled tropical bird that had somehow flown into a minimalist art gallery.
Her presence, her nervous energy, and the sweet scent of her damn cookies filled my carefully ordered space.
Without comment, I turned and led her into the kitchen. Cookies belonged in the kitchen.
Her eyes darted around the room, taking in the clean counters, the gleaming maple Shaker cabinets, the lack of clutter, the restored Dade County pine floors that shone with a hand-rubbed luster.
Probably comparing it to the disaster zone she was inhabiting next door.
A strange, inexplicable urge to apologize for its neatness rose in me. Which made zero sense.
“You can, uh, put that there.” Gesturing vaguely toward the kitchen table, I was still off-kilter, like the deck of Line Dancer in a sudden squall.
“Oh. Right. Thank you.”
She placed the basket down with an almost reverent care, as if it contained fragile, priceless artifacts. An awkward silence descended, thick and heavy as pre-hurricane air. I leaned against the counter, arms crossed, trying to project an aura of unconcerned detachment I was far from feeling.
She stood by the table, fidgeting with the ribbon on the basket. Her gaze landed on the cluster of fishing rods propped in the corner. Tools of my trade, symbols of my escape, an integral part of my identity. To her, they were probably just sticks.
“Fishing rods, huh?” she asked, her voice still a little breathless. “You fish a lot?” She was clearly grasping at conversational straws.
“It’s my job,” I said, my tone brief. “I run charters out of Sunset Siesta. It’s our family’s resort on the western edge of Dove Key.”
“Oh! You are a captain. That’s… that’s really something.” She paused, then rushed on, a delicate pink flush rising in her cheeks. “I’ve been fishing! At summer camp as a kid. Caught a trout, or maybe it was a bass. It was very small.”
She finished with an earnest nod, then blinked rapidly as she apparently realized how that sounded to a man who caught marlin for a living. She gestured with her hands, indicating something the size of a minnow, and shot me a fleeting smile.
I almost snorted. It was clueless yet somehow utterly, disarmingly sincere. The way she was blushing now, a deep crimson spreading from her neck to her hairline, like she’d just confessed a heinous crime instead of a minor fishing inadequacy. It was…
Endearing?
No. That was absolutely not the word.
Just less actively annoying than the sprinkler incident. Yeah, that was better. The color in her face reminded me of dawn on the water. Dammit, I was staring.
“Oh, shucks and sticks. I’m sure that sounded really stupid.” Her voice came out hushed, her gaze fixed on the floorboards. “Comparing my… my trout… to what you do.”
A beat of silence stretched. Then, I heard myself say, “No. It’s just different, Iris.”
The use of her first name hung in the air, a small but significant shift, like the tide turning. Her head snapped up, and our eyes held.
“Deep-sea fishing is a bit more involved than pulling a trout out of a lake, but it’s the same principle.” I almost smiled. The corner of my mouth might have twitched. It was hard to tell.
The blush on her cheeks softened, replaced by a hesitant, shy smile that did strange, unwelcome things to my insides. “I can imagine.”
The tension in the kitchen eased a fraction. The air was still charged, but the immediate threat of open warfare—or at least a stern lecture on property boundaries—seemed to have receded.
“Oh! I went to Bookshop in Paradise today and met Brenna,” she offered, as if trying to establish common ground. “She mentioned you. That you were her brother.”
“Brenna talks too much,” I said, but there was no real heat in it.
“She was very nice.” Warmth filled her voice. “She invited me to her book club. To get to know people.”
“That sounds like her.”
The book club. Of course. Next, Iris would be organizing neighborhood potlucks and trying to get me to participate in a group singalong. The thought was horrifying. I leaned back against the counter to ground myself in reality.
“Well…” Iris glanced toward the door as if suddenly remembering she was in enemy territory. “I should let you get back to whatever it is sea captains do when their hibiscus hasn’t been destroyed.” She gave a self-deprecating grimace. “Thank you for letting me apologize. Properly this time.”
Thick, awkward silence stretched for a beat. I just watched her, this whirlwind of earnest apology and accidental destruction. My default setting was a curt nod and a retreat into monosyllables. But instead, unbidden words emerged.
“The hedge will recover.” My voice came out rough, like an engine that hadn’t been run in a while. I cleared my throat. “Yesterday, I might have been… abrupt.” Abrupt was an understatement. “You, uh, caught me off guard.”
Her head, which had started to droop, lifted slightly. A flicker of surprise, maybe even hope, sparked in those wide blue eyes.
God help me, I continued, “Hibiscus are surprisingly hardy.” Finally, I got ahold of myself and added gruffly, “Just aim away from it next time.”
A shaky smile touched her full lips, relief softening the anxiety in her eyes. “Deal. No more rogue water features, I promise.”
My eyes darted to the basket on the table. “Thanks for the gesture.”
What on earth made me say that?
I was saved from further distress when she moved toward the back door.
She paused, her hand on the knob. “The cookies are chocolate chip. My mom always said they could solve most of life’s minor catastrophes.
Enjoy.” Her smile was fleeting, a little sad around the edges.
Then she was gone, the door closing behind her with a soft click, leaving an Iris-shaped hole in the silence of my kitchen.
I stared at the closed door. The silence she left behind was somehow different than the silence before. More thoughtful. Agitated. I ran a hand through my hair, feeling strangely drained and wired at the same time. She was a complication I didn’t need.
And yet…
My gaze fell on the basket of cookies on my table, the colorful napkin slightly askew. A Trojan horse, filled with sugar and good intentions. I eyed it suspiciously. Then, with a sigh that sounded like surrender, I lifted the napkin.
They were golden-brown, generously studded with chocolate chips. I inhaled deeply, unable to help it.
“I bet they taste like sawdust and desperation,” I muttered, just to maintain my internal equilibrium.
I picked one up. A perfect ratio of cookie to chocolate chip. I examined it critically, as if searching for hidden flaws, for evidence of shoddy workmanship. Then, I took a bite.
And another.
Shit.
They were good. Really good. The edges were perfectly crisp, the center delightfully chewy, the chocolate rich and plentiful. Not too sweet.
A minute later, I was pouring a tall glass of cold milk from the fridge, an accompaniment I hadn’t indulged in for years. I ate another cookie. And another. Before I knew it, I was sitting at the table, and half a dozen were gone.
“Okay,” I conceded to the empty milk glass. “There’s at least one thing the woman can do right. She can bake a decent goddamn cookie.”
I wiped the lingering crumbs from my mouth with the back of my hand, staring out the window toward Heron House.
The late-afternoon sun slanted through the trees, casting long shadows across her overgrown yard.
I could just make out her silhouette moving inside, a blur of motion behind the dirty windows.
A fleeting, unwelcome, and entirely inappropriate image flashed through my mind: that same messy blonde hair, not tangled with leaves but wild and windblown from the salty spray of the ocean.
Her face flushed with excitement, maybe even a bright, unrestrained smile directed at me, out on the deck of Line Dancer, the vast blue of the Gulf stretching behind her.
I pushed the thought away, hard, annoyed at its sudden intrusion.
Nope. Not going there.
She was trouble. End of story.
But the cookies had been infuriatingly good. I put the milk glass in the sink with more force than necessary, the clatter loud in the suddenly too-quiet kitchen. I was unsettled. Deeply. The order of my world had been disturbed, and not just by a broken sprinkler.
Iris Holloway, with her disastrous DIY skills, her wide, anxious blue eyes, and her dangerously good cookies, was proving to be a complication I hadn’t anticipated.
And as much as it pissed me off, one I couldn’t entirely dismiss.