Emily rose to sunshine and blue skies after another night where sleep had barely paid a visit. Switching on her phone, she found a voice mail from Skylar asking how she was.

Ryan Cooper’s dark, handsome features swam into her vision. Last night her anxieties about being responsible for Lizzy had been punctuated by thoughts of the calm way he’d dealt with her mini meltdown.

Pushing those thoughts aside, she texted Skylar, doing okay, thanks. She knew better than to mention Ryan to her friend, an incurable romantic. She sent a similar message to Brittany, who had asked the same question in a text sent in the early hours, and then slid out of bed.

Lizzy was still asleep, so she took a quick shower in Kathleen’s pretty bathroom. Afterward she secured her hair on top of her head and reached for another pair of black tailored pants that were the staple of her wardrobe.

Sooner or later she was going to have to do something about that. She didn’t own clothes suitable for casual beach living.

It felt strange not to be living her life checking the time and syncing calendars.

In New York her working day would have started hours ago. If she’d been in the office she would have been at her desk by six in the morning. If seeing clients, she would probably have been thirty thousand feet up in the air flying between meetings. Her life had been a series of stays in faceless hotel rooms and endless work on projects that would never be remembered by anyone. There had been no time to stand still, and she realized that the furious pace of her life had stopped the past settling on her.

Neil had wanted her to slow down and invest in their relationship.

She’d had nothing to invest. Emotionally, she was bankrupt.

She took nothing and had nothing to give. Which was presumably why she had felt nothing when he’d ended it.

Wondering how her carefully ordered life could have spun so wildly out of control, she walked downstairs, brewed coffee and unlocked the door to the garden. She stood, breathing in the aroma of good coffee, absorbing the warmth. Here, the sound of the birds almost drowned out the sound of the sea.

It was a sun trap, sheltered from the whip of the wind and designed as a sanctuary for nature. Kathleen had planted carefully, perennials clustered together in a haze of purples, blues and yellows to attract the bees. Wildflowers, moss and fern grew between rocks, and butterflies danced across petals dappled by sunlight.

It was a perfect peaceful spot. There had been summers when she’d spent hours curled up on one of the chairs reading, lost in worlds that weren’t her own.

“Aunt Emily?”

She turned to see Lizzy standing there, eyes sleepy, her hands holding tightly around the bear.

“Hi.” Emily softened her voice. “You slept?”