All right, then. He should just take a hint. They needed to talk. Well, he needed to talk, and he could only hope she would listen. But now was clearly not the time or the place. He’d wait until they got home. To the inn. Whatever.

Eve hadn’t even really registered that it was the weekend of the Mermaid Parade. Well, she had, but it didn’t have the same weight as last year. So she had temporarily forgotten, until they rolled into town Friday afternoon to find that the mermaids had taken over. As Sawyer slowed on the approach to the inn, she took in a group of young women—tourists, she suspected, because she didn’t recognize any of them—in elaborate mermaid getups posing for pictures in the gazebo. And there was Karl Andersen wearing a T-shirt that featured the “man” symbol you saw on public bathrooms, but instead of legs, it had a tail.

When they pulled up to the inn, the front door was ajar, and the lockbox on it was open. “There must be a showing happening.”

Sawyer parked and tried to run around to the passenger side to help her out, but she rushed to beat him. As in the morning, she couldn’t let him touch her. Couldn’t bear any more of his chivalry and attentiveness.

She turned and tilted her head up to contemplate her inn.

Her inn?

She took several steps back so she could see the whole thing at once. She took in the same improvements she’d noted when they were here yesterday: the door, the moonflowers. But today they felt like her improvements. Things she had done to her aunt’s inn with help from her friends.

And there were those balconies. The ones she and Sawyer had spent so much time on as kids. The one they had almost kissed on as adults.

Tears threatened again, but unlike this morning’s, they felt like…happy tears.

Yes, this was her inn. Her inn. She smiled.

And then Jeannie Wilkerson walked out the front door.

Eve inhaled sharply. Or maybe that sound had come from Sawyer, because actually, Eve couldn’t breathe.

Jeannie handed a business card to a fortysomething man in a business suit. “As I said, offers are being held back until Tuesday. But please don’t hesitate to be in touch if you have any questions. I’ll get you the information about the zoning variance.”

Breathe, Eve ordered herself. Breathing was a necessary precondition to whatever was going to happen next.

Jeannie, who looked essentially the same except skinnier and blonder, turned to put the key back in the lockbox.

Breathe.

She did, finally, but it came on a gasp.

It drew Jeannie’s attention. But not to Eve.

“Sawyer? Sawyer Collins? Oh my God!”