That was a strange offer. What was even stranger was that her first instinct wasn’t to immediately shut it down. To lash out at him. The anger that had turned on like a neon sign being plugged in when she first saw him was starting to…flicker.

It wasn’t extinguished entirely, though. “But I don’t need a carpenter, at least not yet. I’m talking about pulling up carpets and painting and stuff.”

“I can do that.”

Maybe he could, but she wasn’t going to let him. But she didn’t want to get into it with Clara there. So she just smiled and said, “We’ll see.”

The swimming was going well. Eve had been visiting Paradise Cove a few times a week for a couple of weeks, and she was at the point where she could walk out until the water was up to her boobs. She could spread her arms and lean back. She just couldn’t seem to make herself actually lift her feet off the ground and float, which, according to Learn to Swim in Five Easy Steps, was supposed to be her first big milestone.

So maybe it wasn’t going well in terms of the actual outcome. But she was coming to love the time she spent in the water. There was something about being immersed in the big blue lake under the big blue sky that was good for the soul. Eve had mentally written off Moonflower Bay when she and her broken heart had skipped town. But a lot of good things had happened here, and, as she was finding out, those things were still there inside her head, hiding under layers of heartbreak she’d hastily papered over them.

She jumped a little when she heard someone enter the water.

It was probably just Jake, but she didn’t need an audience for her pathetic attempts to teach herself to swim. She turned, intending to head back to shore.

And came face-to-face with Sawyer.

Who was, from the look of things, spitting mad.

“Evie Abbott, what the hell are you doing?”

What she was doing was standing there staring at him with her jaw hanging open because he was walking into the water in his cop outfit.

Once he’d gotten her attention, he stopped with the water at his knees. She let her eyes move upward. He was wearing one of those short-sleeve cop shirts that she’d always thought were stupid, because button-down shirts in short-sleeve format just were. But on Sawyer, it was…not stupid. It fit him to perfection, with the exception that it was, as she’d noted the other night, a little snug around his biceps. Sawyer had always been strong, but he’d never had those defined muscles before.

He started walking again, probably because she was just standing there like a dodo. “Evie. What are you doing?”