He shook his head, but there was laughter in those blue eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Keep climbing, Kitty.”

“Don’t you ever do anything for fun that doesn’t burn a thousand calories?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come walk the beach, Morgan.” My voice lowered in an awful Jackson impression. “Come surfing, Morgan. Look, there’s yoga to learn, Morgan.”

His laugh echoed through the brick structure.

“Why not, let’s see a movie, Morgan? Or my personal favorite, let’s order in and watch Netflix, Morgan?” We finally reached a landing with a door, and I turned toward him as he stepped up beside me, drawing my eyes upward again. “Hmmm?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“I will order in with you whenever you want.” His gaze dropped to my lips, and the temperature in the lighthouse rose. Or maybe that was just my own body. “I’ll even let you pick what we do next time.”

Next time. I swallowed, trying to find the levity we’d had just seconds ago. “I hope you’re up for a fun night of reading on the couch,” I teased.

“I’ll come read with you,” he offered in what had to be the sexiest voice imaginable. Hell, that was the sexiest line imaginable. “What book are you spending your nights with?”

“I just finished Mrs. Dalloway, and I’m on to Orlando now. I’m on a bit of a Virginia Woolf kick.”

“Go figure, you’re a classics kind of girl.” He grinned. “You almost had me fooled, thinking you were all about night hikes,” he joked.

I scoffed. “I’m not exactly an outdoor kind of girl, you know.” At least I hadn’t been.

“With all the shell hunting, beach walking, and yoga and surfing? You could have fooled me.”

“The old me preferred pedicures to four-wheeling, and the only things I hunted on the beach were boys and a tan. Oh, and the occasional Jet Ski trip.” My shoulders lifted in a shrug.

“The old you, huh?” He took a few steps to my right and reached for the door handle.

“Yep. She even came with a quick smile and sharp little tongue when the occasion called for it.” That was a whole other life—a whole other girl—but the girl I was tonight didn’t feel too bad, either.

“You still have those things. Trust me. And I happen to like whatever version of you this is just fine. In fact, I have yet to see any version of you I don’t like. They’re all just you.”

The sincerity in his eyes stripped away another layer of my defenses, but I didn’t feel raw or exposed. I felt…seen, which was oddly comforting in a way I really didn’t want to examine at the moment. “Thank you. So are you going to open that door, or was this hike just for fun?”