She grinned at him. “Don’t worry. You’ll have a great time.”

Somehow, he doubted it.

He watched as she quickly made her way back to the bikes, as though worried if she lingered that he would change his mind. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts, and then he followed her. With her as his date, maybe the wedding wouldn’t be so bad.

The rest of the ride was quiet…and a bit awkward.

Hannah was pretty certain Ethan had been planning on kissing her back at the bluff. And there was a part of her that wanted to feel the touch of his lips against her own. And there was this other part of her that was hesitant.

She felt as though once that door was opened between them, then there wouldn’t be any going back. And she couldn’t let herself get involved with a firefighter. But she’d noticed how Ethan didn’t seem anxious to leave the island.

In fact, the longer he was there, the more he seemed to fit in. It was almost as though he’d always been an islander. But then again, that could just be her projecting her hopes onto him.

“We’re here,” Hannah called out as she turned her bike onto a gravel driveway.

“I don’t see much.” Ethan glanced around. “Wait. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. What I meant to say is—”

“It’s okay. I know what you mean. The farm sits far back from the road. My grandparents liked it that way. It gave them a lot of privacy as quite a few tourists like to visit the lighthouse.”

“Lighthouse? As in one?”

She nodded. “Only the lighthouse on the southern tip of the island offers tours. The northern lighthouse is privately owned and they don’t offer tours.”

The bike bounced over the dirt road until they stopped in front of a white two-story house with a sweeping front porch with a swing at one end. Hannah had spent many hours sitting on that swing next to her grandmother as they watched the sunset.

The windows were adorned with red shutters and the roof was red. When she was little, they’d been painted a bright aqua—her grandmother’s favorite color. But when her brother took over the farm, he and his wife decided they wanted the house to have the same colors of the barn.

Off in the distance was the big old barn that was older than her. It was painted the opposite of the house as it was bright red with white trim. She’d always wanted to play in there, but her grandfather had insisted that a barn wasn’t a place for little girls. He’d said that barns were for work, storage, and animals. She was forever being shooed away, but as she grew older, she understood the dangers that lurked within the barn.

Her brother made sure to keep the yard well-maintained, but she’d noticed that without his wife around to look after the flowers and shrubs, that he’d let those things go. The only thing that stood out in the yard now was the old oak tree with a rope swing. Her grandfather had put a similar one there for her. She remembered swinging on it for so long her fingers cramped, and she had a hard time straightening them.