* * *

BRYCE SAW KAEGAN the minute he walked into her parents’ restaurant. Automatically, he zeroed in on the area where she stood and their gazes connected. Why today, of all days, did he have to come into the café for dinner? A late dinner at that. She had arrived back in town earlier that day and had told her parents she would pitch in this evening.

The restaurant would be closing in an hour, and since things had gotten slow and she hadn’t expected many more customers, she had convinced her parents to go home and that she and her brothers would close the restaurant. Since her folks had been there since four that morning, they’d quickly taken her up on her offer. Her brothers were in the back, and since Kaegan was her only customer, that meant they were virtually alone.

She hadn’t seen him for a while. Not since that day he’d made those deliveries to Shelby by the Sea. He had not come to the café and she’d refused to ask Sawyer or Ray about him.

Pasting a smile on her face, she said, “Evening, Kaegan. Any particular place you’d like to sit?”

“I’ll grab that table by the window.”

She nodded. That was where he normally sat whenever he came in alone. No need to remember even when they were in high school that he would sit there to wait for her to leave the restaurant so he could walk her home at night. “And what would you like to drink?” she asked, walking over to the table to put down a place mat and eating utensils.

“A cold beer would be nice.”

“One cold beer coming up. Here’s the menu,” she said and made a move to walk off.

“I don’t need a menu. I talked to your mom earlier when I dropped by for lunch. She promised to put aside some of her lobster stew and corn bread for me.”

“My parents have gone for tonight, but I’ll see if Mom mentioned anything about it to my brothers,” she said before walking off.

Her mother had indeed told Duke and Ry about it. After getting Kaegan a beer, she went behind the counter to wait for Duke to get the meal together. As she wiped down the counter she could feel Kaegan’s gaze on her, but refused to say anything to him or look his way.

Why did he have to look so darn good today? Of all days? Being at Samuel’s wedding and seeing how happy he was had made her wonder if there was a man somewhere out there for her. She hoped so because she definitely wasn’t getting any younger. She was thirty-two and never had a ring on her finger. And she did want kids one day. She loved her nieces and nephews but they were just that—her nieces and nephews. She wanted to have children of her own.

A pain settled in her chest when she recalled how she would often lie in bed and visualize how her kids would look. They were kids she thought she’d have one day with Kaegan. They would take on more of his prominent features. Her son would be strikingly handsome and her daughter would be eye-catchingly gorgeous. They would have their father’s long silky black hair and that hawkish nose that she used to love rubbing hers against. Her son would grow up with his father’s rugged good looks, chiseled jaw and those dreamy dark eyes. She would have to work hard to keep the girls from him.