She smiled up at him, trying not to show her trembling. “No, let’s walk out a little farther,” she said, and stopped to take off her shoes. She might ruin her silk stockings, but she felt the need to touch the sharp edge of a new life. To see what the lake could show: that there was more to the world than it might sometimes seem.

“Anne!” Harry said. “Your feet are going to freeze!”

She smiled up at him. Underneath her hat, strands of her hair snapped across her cheek. “It’s just for a minute.”

He cocked his head at her. Then he stepped toward her and, in one motion, had picked her up off the ground. Surprised, she let out a little cry as he settled her in his arms. They both laughed; it seemed that small shards of her grief were sailing away on the wind.

“I won’t be responsible for you catching your death of cold.” His smile was close, warm. “Running around barefoot in the middle of November!”

She sighed and looped her arms around his neck, trying not to bump him with the shoes that dangled from her hand.

“I’d think with you working at a hospital you’d know better,” he said.

She smiled, looking out at the black water lapping against the shore. Another snowflake fluttered onto her lip and melted, and she turned her head back toward Harry. He was close enough to kiss.

So, feeling grateful to be alive, she brushed her lips against his.

This was not like her at all, and she drew back, hot despite the cold wind. But he was smiling, and she got lost again in the warmth of his eyes, and smiled back at him.

She hoped she hadn’t given him the wrong message, and was a little concerned that he might try to take advantage once they got back to the car—he didn’t seem like a wolf, but you just never knew with men. She couldn’t believe she’d been swept away in the moment like that. But she let him carry her away from the vista and back over the hump of the dune, and when they were settled in the Buick again, he smiled over at her and said, “If you swing your feet up here, I’ll warm them up for you.”

Still filled with that strange recklessness that had overcome her on the beach, she leaned her back against the passenger door and stretched out her legs. Harry took her feet in his warm hands and carefully lowered them onto his lap. Enveloping first one and then the other in his hands, he massaged them gently, watching her with soft eyes.