With the sun heading for the horizon, Kara Ballard brought her launch to a smooth landing at the floating dock next to McCarthy’s Gansett Island Marina and helped her passengers disembark. After an endless day on the water, she was ready for some dinner and some peace. She would get the former, but the latter was hardly assured.

Her routine over the last week had been to work all day, pick up something for dinner and then head over to Dan Torrington’s place, where she helped him by typing up the notes he’d made during the day for the memoir he’d been working on before the accident. Fortunately, he was left-handed so he could still write longhand, but the bulky cast on his broken right arm made it impossible for him to type.

They’d talked about getting software that could type for him, but Kara was helping him edit as they went along, so this system was working for him. With his book deadline looming, he needed all the help he could get.

Kara had willingly volunteered to type for him, but he’d been grumpy and out of sorts since the accident. Not that she blamed him. He’d been through a traumatic thing, but sometimes she wanted to remind him that his injuries and limitations weren’t her fault. She was trying to help him, not that he seemed to appreciate that very much.

For a brief period this afternoon, she’d considered taking a night off from going to Dan’s, but her worries over what he’d eat for dinner as well as her concerns about his deadline had her turning over the launch to her relief driver and heading up the main dock at McCarthy’s.

She stopped at home to shower off the sunscreen and salt spray, changed into shorts and a tank top, grabbed a sweatshirt and called in a takeout order to Mario’s. By now she knew that Dan was extremely fond of Mario’s fettuccine alfredo. Despite her efforts to get him to try something else, he asked for the same thing every day and always insisted on paying for the food.

So they’d slipped into this odd routine without a mention of the night they’d spent together or the awkward parting the morning after when he left to join his friend Grant and Grant’s brothers on the ill-fated sailboat. It was like the night of amazing sex had never happened.

Kara tried to tell herself that was because he was recovering from painful injuries, but she couldn’t help but wonder if or when the Dan she’d known before the accident would ever reappear. That Dan had been positively besotted with her—or so it had seemed. He’d pursued her relentlessly until she finally broke down and went out with him—and slept with him on the first date, breaking her own personal rules about such things.