Chapter 1 #3
The small, careful smile he gave her was the smile of a man who had not committed to anything yet.
He was tall, but not in a way that announced itself.
His weight rested evenly, his shoulders soft, a man who had learned somewhere to take up less room than his size suggested.
A pale blue T-shirt that had seen the kind of laundering a man did when nobody else was doing his laundering.
Jeans that had been put on that morning.
The kind of work boots that had been work boots for a long time.
His jaw had been shaved at five in the morning by a man who knew which side he had to start on.
A small scar at the corner of his left eyebrow registered before she had decided to register it.
He set the duffel down without taking his eyes off her.
“I’m looking for Sloane Mercer,” he said. “I rented a slip and bought a boat here.”
His voice was warm. Lower than she had expected from a man with his particular set of shoulders. The kind of voice a person didn't put on. The kind of voice he had been carrying around his whole life.
Margo, on the stool, did not turn around. Sloane registered the not-turning. It was Margo’s way of giving her the room to be the one in the conversation.
“That’s me.” Sloane set down her cup. The cup made a small sound on the counter that she heard over the sound of his standing in her doorway, which was not a thing a cup should be able to do. “You must be Ethan Vale.”
“I am.”
“You found Mae’s.”
He lifted the paper bag the way a man lifted a small piece of evidence. “I got the cinnamon roll.”
“Did it live up to billing?”
“It exceeded billing.” His mouth moved into something that wasn’t quite a smile yet. “I was prepared to be polite about it. I didn't have to be polite about it.”
Sloane felt the laugh come up before she had decided to let it.
She let it. It was a small laugh, not big enough to warrant explaining, and she watched his face register that he had made her laugh and not make a thing of having made her laugh, which was — she filed this also — not a thing many men in this town would have failed to make a thing of.
Margo turned around then, slowly, the way Margo did things when she wanted to be noticed turning around.
“Mr. Vale.”
“Ma’am.”
“Margo Marriott. I run the Sandbar up the road with my husband.”
"It's nice to meet you. I'm sure I'll make my way down there soon."
She slid off the stool, gathered her coffee, tapped her knuckles twice on the counter — which was Margo’s way of saying, I am going to leave the two of you to it — and crossed to the door. She paused there.
“Welcome to Blossom Springs, Mr. Vale.”
“Ethan, please.”
“Ethan.” Margo let his name sit on her tongue for half a second longer than it needed to sit, which was a Margo move and which Sloane was going to hear about later. “We’ll see you around.”
She went out. With only the two of them left, the office became a different room than it had been a minute before.
Sloane came around the counter. She wiped her hand on her thigh out of habit and held it out to him.
“Welcome to the marina.”
He took her hand.
His was warm and a little rough — the hand of a man who had used his hands for things. The handshake lasted exactly as long as a handshake ought to last, and a half-second longer, and she felt the half-second in the soft place at the base of her thumb where his thumb had been.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s good to be back.”
She heard the word.
Back.
Not here. Not home. Back. He had used a word a man used when he had been somewhere before, and she filed the word the way she filed everything, in the careful undisplayed place behind the shelf of insurance certificates her brother had taught her when she was twelve, that the best place to hide a thing was behind something boring.
She took her hand from his. The thumb-soft place still had warmth in it. She ignored the warmth, the way she ignored most warmth that arrived without invitation, and she picked the slip seventeen folder up off the counter.
“Let’s get you settled,” she said. “The boat’s waiting.”
“Lead the way.”
She led the way. He followed her out the side door of the office and onto the boardwalk, and she didn't look back at him as she walked, although she was aware, with a precision that surprised her, of the sound of his boots on the planking a half-stride behind her.
The boardwalk was warming up under the morning sun.
The light off the water was the white-gold light of a Gulf morning before the heat actually arrived.
A halyard tapped on a mast down Pier One.
Somewhere, a charter captain was hosing a deck.
Sloane Mercer walked her new tenant out to slip seventeen, and the only thought she allowed herself was that she was going to find out, in the next twenty minutes, whether the man behind her knew how to look at a 1998 Sea Ray Sundancer with the eye she had been waiting for someone to look at her with.
That last thought, she would have to take apart later. For now, the boardwalk. For now, the dock. For now, the boat.