“Holy shit,” Sam whispered, her jaw dropping at the view.

“Exactly.” The wall of windows looking out over the Atlantic was what had convinced me to pull the financial trigger and buy.

We walked across the spongy, avocado-green carpet that matched the kitchen walls, counters, and appliances, and I opened the sliding glass door with a cringe-worthy squeak. “Ignore that boarded-up window.” I nodded toward the south-most side.

“And that one, too?” Sam pointed toward another segment of plywood.

“Yep. And watch for the missing boards out here.”

The salty ocean breeze lifted the hair off my neck and back as the girls followed me across the wide deck until we rested our hands on the splintered wooden railing. Below, the small, fenced yard ended with a gate leading to a short wooden path that climbed over the dune to a deserted beach about a hundred feet away.

Waves crashed with soothing regularity, coming in a hypnotizing rhythm.

Can you believe people actually live here? Talk about paradise. His voice slid across my heart, and my eyes fluttered shut at the sharp, sweet pain the memory inflicted. It had been almost two years since I stood on a deck like this one, farther up the coast in Nags Head, with Will.

Now I was one of the people who actually lived here. He would have loved it.

“Okay, now I can see why you bought it.” Mia’s gaze drifted north, then south. “What year was this built? Early fifties?”

“Fifty-one,” I replied. “How did you know?”

“There are no other houses beyond the dunes. You and your lone neighbor right there are the only ones for miles. Hatteras has a protected beachfront, and my guess is this was built right before the Seashore was established as a national park. Wow. I wonder how it escaped the imminent domain proceedings back then. The land has to be worth a million bucks, Morgan.”

“Maybe if you tear the house down, but there’s a clause in my purchase contract that if the structure ceases to exist or is extended beyond a certain point, the land reverts back to the government. Fixing it is my only option.”

Mia shook her head. “With the damage from last year’s hurricane, this must have blended in with all the other fixer-uppers. You have your work cut out for you, but you seriously lucked out with the real estate. Shape of the house isn’t bad, either. Looks awkward as hell, but it actually deflects the wind like a champ. Probably why it’s still standing.”

“So it will always be just you and your lone neighbor,” Sam surmised. “By the way, why didn’t you buy that one?” She nodded toward the house next door. It was a bit smaller but in perfect condition.

“Because it wasn’t for sale. Besides, I like this house…well, the possibilities, anyway.” It was twenty-five hundred square feet, had been in my price range, and felt like I did—weathered, beaten, and broken in ways that needed more than just a coat of paint.