Erik Rexford drew three résumés from the pile and tossed them into the wastebasket under his desk before looking up at his sister, Hillary, and sliding the remaining two résumés to her.

“Follow up with these two.”

She gave her brother a hard look before picking up the stapled pages. “Jacob Gilmartin and Edward Wireman.”

He nodded curtly.

“The other three were more qualified, and you know it.”

The other three are women.

He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to the side. “I like these better.”

Hillary, who had come on board as his executive assistant last year, sighed. “I am the single raft of estrogen in this sea of testosterone.”

He continued to stare at her without comment. They’d trod this ground before. Many times. He knew what was coming in three . . . two . . . one . . .

“It wouldn’t kill you to hire a woman, Erik.”

And yet . . . it might.

Erik cleared his throat, using a dismissive tone. “Follow up with those two. Anythin’ else?”

“Yes, in fact,” she said, sitting down in the guest chair across from his desk as she rested the résumés on her lap. “Fancy called a little while ago.”

“And what did our dear mother have to say? Lookin’ forward to seein’ the ball drop in Times Square?”

“Nope. Amtrak’s all messed up from the storm. They’re stranded in Boston, and it looks like they’ll be snowed in for at least three days, so they’ve decided to go skiin’ with friends in Vermont. They’ll spend New Year’s in the mountains instead.”

“Good for them.”

“Erik,” she said, her voice gentle but urgent. “She said that Utopia Manor got hit hard with the storm out on the Banks. Mr. McGillicutty called. Power’s down. Pool’s flooded. Dock got damaged. The repairs are outside of his purview. One of us needs to go out there to meet the insurance company and manage things for a few days.”

Like he could give a shit about what happened to Utopia Manor. He hadn’t been back in almost six years. He shrugged. “Fine. Take a few days off. I’m sure Pete would enjoy the trip.”

His sister and Pete had gotten together two years ago after Hillary had graduated from UNC–Chapel Hill, Pete’s alma mater. They lived together in a restored Victorian house in Historic Oakwood, and it was just a matter of time until Pete, who had always been like a brother to Erik, truly was his brother by marriage.

He was happy for Hillary. Really and truly happy for her because no one had waited longer or shown more faithfulness of heart than his sister. She was rare among women, and therefore the only woman he allowed to get close to him in any way, shape, or form.

“Can’t do it, Erik. Cisco’s hostin’ the biggest tech conference of the year in two weeks. Pete’s up every night until after two gettin’ his presentation perfect. He’s not goin’ anywhere.”

“So you go.”

“First of all, I have New Year’s plans.”

And she knew very well that Erik did not.

“Second of all, I want to be here to support Pete. Get him dinner, be around while he’s workin’ so hard.”

Erik rolled his eyes.

“Not to mention,” she continued, giving him a look, “I know, literally, nothin’ about architecture and structure damage and all of that sort of stuff. I’d be less than useless.” She slumped in her seat. “Come on. You know you have to be the one to go.”

He clenched his jaw. He hadn’t been back to that fucking house in years. Not since the Thanksgiving when she didn’t show.

It still hurt. It still fucking hurt, all these years later.

He looked up at Hillary and growled, “Hire someone and charge it to Daddy.”

With his eyes locked with his sister’s, he watched hers soften to grief, and she took a halted breath before whispering, “They call you the Ice Man, Erik.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Ask me if I give a shit.”

“Even if you don’t, I do,” she said softly. “I want you to be happy.”

“You’re not the happiness police, Hills,” he said, twisting his chair away from her a little.

“You have to deal with this,” she insisted. “Purge your demons. Say good-bye. Move on. It’s been long enough now.”

For years Hillary had been saying the same thing: move on. As if moving on from the love of your life, who suddenly and without explanation banished you, then disappeared off the face of the earth, was possible.

It’s not that he actually thought about Laire very often. He didn’t. He didn’t allow it. But she was the truest and realest thing he’d ever known, or so he’d stupidly thought. He’d loved her harder and better than anyone who’d ever come before. And he didn’t intend to ever put himself through that misery again as long as he lived. If he didn’t love anyone, then no one could hurt him as Laire had.

It had become a challenge of sorts among the most charming, beautiful, successful women of North Carolina: to be the one who finally melted Erik Rexford’s frosty heart. But Erik knew something they didn’t—his heart was beyond touching, beyond warming, beyond caring. His heart had been crushed into a million pieces, then shoved back into his hands. It wasn’t just frozen. It has been broken first. And now it was virtually untouchable.

So they could call him the Ice Man as much as they liked.

It was perfect and he welcomed it.

At least any woman who went out with him knew exactly what to expect.

Not that he dated very often, if you could even call it that. When he needed a date, he had a slew of eager admirers ready to stand up beside him. And there was always Van.

Vanessa Osborn had grown only more beautiful in the years since Laire had shattered his dreams, and she was perpetually in demand. But when she was single, between boyfriends or fiancés or affairs, she was Erik’s preferred date to events and dinners, merely because he’d known her for so long. There was an easiness he found in Van’s company that owed itself to history and childhood. Maybe he still felt some small bit of warmth toward her since they’d been friends for so long. She was a good companion, funny and interesting. She knew how to drag out a small smile from Erik when no one else could.

And sometimes—sometimes when he was with her and felt an unexpected surge of longing for a home and family of his own—he wondered if she would eventually wear him down . . . and if he and Van would end up together in some affectionate, passionless arrangement. He knew that she still cared for him—that she would drop everything in an instant for the chance to be with him. He fought against the loneliness and weakness that might lead him down such a path because he knew in his heart that he’d ultimately destroy Van’s chance at happiness, the way Laire had destroyed his.

The bottom line was this: no matter what Van hoped, his regard, without his love, wouldn’t be enough for her in the long run. And he would never love Van the way he was, at one time so long ago, capable of loving a woman. His bitterness and disappointment would become hers, and ultimately he’d kill the light inside her that some other man would have cherished. Staying away from Van as much as possible was the best course of action. At least until she found someone who loved her.

“Erik?” said Hillary. “Are you listenin’ to me? Because I think you should go spend a few days out there. See the places where you and . . . and she spent time together and say good-bye to those memories. See if you can’t move on now. It’s been years. You need to face your past, or you’ll never be able to move forward. I mean, wouldn’t you like to love someone? Be loved by them? Maybe get married and have a baby?”

The problem was, the only time he’d really ever envisioned himself happily married with children was with Laire, and when she crushed his heart, she crumpled up that dream and threw it away.

“Do I look like I want a kid?”

Hillary stood up, her patience over, her eyes flashing. “Well, I’m not goin’ out there. My plate’s full. Either you go or you call Fancy up in Vermont and tell her to figure it out herself.”

“Hills—”

“No! You shut up. You just shut up!” She tucked the résumés under one arm, then crossed both arms over her chest. “You want to live in a cold dark place because love stomped on your heart once upon a time? Fine. Go ahead. But you’re damaged, Erik. You’re broken. You let her break you. And you’re still lettin’ her break you every day.” She nodded emphatically to make her point before continuing. “You have given the memory of some eighteen-year-old girl this . . . this . . . this power over you, and you know what I think?”

Erik narrowed his eyes. “Enlighten me.”

“I think you like it. I think it makes you still feel connected to her in some sick way. You’re like a . . . a male version of Miss Havisham.”

Whatever the fuck that means.

“But one day you’re goin’ to wake up thirty or forty or seventy, and you’re goin’ to have nothin’ good to show for your life. and you know whose fault that’ll be?”

Hers.

“Yours!” she cried, as though she could read his mind. “Yours. Because you chose not to move on. You chose to wallow in your memories of her. You wasted your life. Willfully. And it’s such a goddamn shame!”

He stared daggers at his furious little sister, wanting to say something to slap her back into her place, but no words came. His mind was a blank, her words reverberating in his head like pebbles in a tin can and just as annoying. As much as he hated to admit it, she made sense.

Turning around, she marched to the door and yanked it open, then looked back at him, raising her chin and pinning him with a sour look. “I’m not goin’ out to the Banks, Erik. Furthermore, I’m takin’ vacation time until after the New Year!”

The door slammed shut.

“Fine!” he bellowed, leaning back in his chair and spinning it away from the door. He stared out the windows at cold, gray Raleigh. The sun had almost set, and cheerful Christmas lights started to dot the dark and murky cityscape below, which pissed him off.

Christmas was over. Christmas lights after Christmas just looked pathetic, celebrating something that was already long gone.

Move on. Move on. Move on.

“Fuck!” he muttered, turning back to his desk and placing his fingers on the keyboard.

***

In a last-minute decision that surprised and delighted his staff, Erik sent out an e-mail advising that the law offices of Rexford & Rexford, LLC would be closed from December 29 through January 2. Then he went home, packed a bag, walked to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car office around the block from his condo, rented a car, and pointed a shiny new Porsche Cayenne SUV east to the Outer Banks.

With downed trees and icy conditions reportedly worse near the coast, the usual four-hour drive would take him twice as long, especially in the dark, but he felt a responsibility to observe and manage the damage to his family’s property. Someone had to do it. And truth be told, the week between Christmas and New Year’s was an especially quiet time of year. It made sense to check on things, didn’t it? Of course it did. It was the sensible thing to do.

He was not going back to the Outer Banks to “purge demons” or “say good-bye” to lost loves or anything else so patently ridiculous. Absolutely not. He was merely going as a property agent for his parents, and once his business there was finished, he’d return to Raleigh.

Realizing that he’d have nowhere to stay upon his late arrival prompted him to call the only year-round hotel establishment he knew of in Buxton, the Pamlico House Bed & Breakfast, which also had nothing to do with “facing the past” and everything to do with sleep.

Fuck Hillary’s harping.

Fuck Hillary, who was fat and happy in her blissed-out state with Pete.

Fuck anyone who thought he knew what love was, and woe to him who trusted it.

“I thought I knew too,” he muttered, pressing harder on the gas.

The first year had been the hardest, of course. Even though his heart had hardened against Laire when she didn’t show up at Thanksgiving, by Christmas his resolve to forget her had weakened, and he was desperate to see her face again. His devotion to her, as much as he had fought against it, hadn’t died.

The day after Christmas, he’d driven out to the Banks and chartered a boat to take him through the icy Sound from Hatteras to Corey Island. Although he hated her mightily, he needed to see her, and he needed to know why she had pushed him away.

Walking up the dock to King Triton Seafood, his hands sweat, despite the whipping wind of the thirty-three-degree day. When he stepped into the little shop, a redheaded man in his early twenties looked up from the counter.

“Help you?”

He didn’t mince words. “Is Laire here?”

The young man, surely a relation of hers, judging by his hair color, had leaned toward Erik, his eyes narrowing. “Who’s askin’?”

“I am.”

“And you be . . .?”

“Erik Rexford.”

Fire leaped into the man’s eyes, and his fingers, resting on the counter, curled into tight fists. “You’re goin’ to want to leave here, sir. Right fuckin’ now.”

“Come again?” Erik asked, scanning the man’s face.

“Laire’s gone. And she ain’t comin’ back.”

“What? Why?”

“How do you people sleep at night?” growled the man. “How d’you fuckin’ sleep w’the way you treat people?”

“I’m sorry but I don’t—”

“Get the fuck out. And never show your face on Corey again, or I swear to Judas, I’ll kill you myself.”

Erik took several steps back, shocked by the fury in the man’s voice, wondering what the hell he was missing.

He quickly reviewed the facts as he knew them:

He and Laire had had an amazing summer.

They’d had an amazing night together.

Her father got sick.

She broke up with him.

She broke up with him. Not the other way around. She broke up with him without explanation, then stood him up at Thanksgiving. She was not the innocent fucking party in this equation. He was. So why the fuck was this punk threatening him?

He turned to the door, reaching for the handle, when his confusion and brokenheartedness overcame him. He pivoted back around to face the redheaded man again and cried, “I don’t fuckin’ understand!”

Vaulting over the countertop with surprising grace for so squat a person, the man lurched at Erik, one fist catching his cheek while the other uppercut him in the chin. Slam bam, and Erik stumbled back against the door, pushing it open with the force of his sucker-punched, reeling body. The wind caught the door, and it swung wide open, leaving nothing to break Erik’s fall. He tripped backward over the welcome mat and landed on his ass, with the redheaded man looming over him.

“Now do you understand, you fuckin’ cocksucker?”

Erik looked up at the man—her cousin?—and shook his head. “No.”

“Well, that ain’t my fuckin’ problem. Now git.”

Her cousin turned and walked back into the shop, locking the door, and turning the sign from “Open” to “Closed.”

And Erik, who had no more answers than he’d had when he arrived five minutes earlier, had no other option but to walk back to the charter with his bleeding cheek and swollen chin and start making his long way back to Raleigh.

Laire’s gone. And she ain’t comin’ back.

Truer words had never been spoken. Laire was gone—his Laire, the girl he’d loved so completely, so passionately, so goddamned much—was gone. And wherever she was, she was lost to Erik, never coming back.

He had mulled over her cousin’s words from time to time over the years—the pointed question about how he could sleep at night, as though he’d done her an injustice. Try as he might, he couldn’t figure out what that injury was, though it had tormented him for a few years whenever he turned his mind to it. He’d loved her. He would have done anything for her. Perhaps, he’d finally decided, her cousin had been talking about the politics of the Rexford family and his father’s administration, which wasn’t known for making life easier for the working man. It’s the only thing he could come up with because, as far as Erik was concerned, he’d never done anything to hurt or disappoint her.

When he really wanted to torture himself, he sorted through her words at the hospital, trying to wrest from them some meaning, some explanation for the way she’d pushed him out of her life. The last words she’d ever spoken to him were, I’m not your darlin’. I’m not your anything. We were just a . . . a fling. A fantasy. I’m an islander; you’re a dingbatter. It’s over. . . . It wasn’t real, Erik. It wasn’t real.

But it had been real. Or at least it had been real for him.

He gasped suddenly, the muscles in his face clenching, and he flinched, growling softly under his breath as if he’d stepped on a rusty nail that punctured the soft skin of his sole. It gaped and oozed, this wound inflicted by Laire Cornish so many years before. It had never healed. It had never been sewn up or doctored. It was as raw and painful now as the day she’d banished him from her life, perhaps all the more so because of the energy he’d expended in trying to ignore it.

Sometimes, lying in his bed alone, late at night, he stared up at the ceiling and wondered what he would say to her if he ever saw her again. And though there was a foolish, masochistic part of him that fantasized about saying nothing, just opening his arms to her and feeling the heaven of her heart pressed against his one last time on this earth, mostly the word “Why?” circled round and round in his head. And sometimes he bargained with God: if he could just find out why she’d pushed him away, it would give him the strength to finally let her go.

***

Whatever he expected to feel, or not feel, when he pulled into the well-lit Pamlico House B & B parking lot later that night—anger, sadness, sentimentality—an emotion that he didn’t expect to feel was relief. After a perilous nine-hour journey, however, he was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and whatever he felt about being back at the place where he’d courted Laire so faithfully, it would have to wait for processing until he’d had a good night’s sleep.

The drive from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras had been especially shocking. His rental had hydroplaned more times than he could count. He’d gone over and around dead, fallen trees, twice by driving off the road and over the sand. He didn’t bother going to Buxton to look at Utopia Manor—it was pitch-black out. There were almost no lights after Rodanthe, so he was better off waiting until morning.

He knew that the Pamlico House had a generator, but the warm lights through the windows were the best greeting he could have asked for. No matter what had happened between him and Laire so many years ago, this little inn was his beacon in the wilderness tonight, and he was grateful for it.

Swinging his body out of the car, he found his muscles stiff from the drive, and doubly stiff from staying alert throughout the dangerous journey. Pulling his phone from the center console, he turned it back on and scrolled for messages using the inn’s Wi-Fi. He’d missed a text from Hillary.

HILLZ: Sorry I stormed out, but you make me piping mad. You know I still love you. Text me when you get there. Drive safe. xoxo

Erik sighed, his breath a white puff of smoke floating up into the night sky.

ERIK: I’m here. Pamlico House B & B. Banks are toast. It’s good I came. xo

He slipped his phone into the hip pocket of his jeans, then opened the back door of the rental, pulling his leather duffel bag from the seat and swinging the strap onto his shoulder. On the floor was his laptop bag, and he hesitated for a moment but decided to bring that it too. May as well get some work done tomorrow, before and after meeting the contractor.

Looking up at the inn, his eyes scanned the lighted windows. The reception area was still open, of course, waiting for his arrival, but there were a couple of other lights on as well, in the upstairs guest rooms. Three or four night owls still awake at one o’clock in the morning, he guessed. It wouldn’t be a packed house, of course, but it looked like he wouldn’t have the inn to himself.

Trudging up the walkway, he stepped into the reception area, suddenly assaulted by the smell of the Pamlico House—oiled floors, old carpets, sea air, and cinnamon. His undammed memories sluiced back, and his breath might have hitched a little as he felt the ghostly weight of her hand in his, the softness of her lips beneath his, the lightness of her step on the shiny hardwood floors.

His eyes scanned the reception area, flicking to the stairs he’d ascended only once, the night Laire took him to the widow’s walk and told him she could spend the night. His heart clutched at the memory, and he jerked his glance reflexively to the left. The restaurant was closed for the season, but the old bar where he’d spent almost every night of that summer was aglow with the ambient light of the television, his favorite seat at the corner vacant, as though waiting for him.

“Evenin’. Mr. Rexford, I presume?”

A gray-haired gentleman in jeans and a flannel shirt rounded the corner of the bar area, where he must have been watching the TV, and made his way to the reception desk. He had a mustache and reading glasses, and Erik had a passing notion that if he were casting the role of the Innkeeper for a play, he couldn’t get much closer than this guy.

“That’s me.”

“You made it.”

“Barely.”

“Roads still bad up north?”

Erik shrugged. “Not so bad north of Rodanthe, but after that . . .”

“Blackout.”

“Bad.” Erik nodded, looking around the small welcome area. Several lamps set beside antique couches and chairs bathed the room in soft, warm light. Had there always been a fringed Persian rug on the floor and flowers in a vase over the fireplace? He couldn’t recall.

“We’ve got a generator,” said the innkeeper, sliding a check-in form and pen across the reception desk. “Fill this out, huh? And include your, uh, your car and license plate info, huh?”

“Sure,” said Erik, placing his computer bag on the floor by his feet and letting the duffel slide down his shoulder to join it. He took the pen and started filling out the form. “Got a lot of guests right now?”

The innkeeper shook his head. “Just a few. Let’s see . . . We got two couples what come to visit their family over the holiday. They’re stayin’ until New Year’s Day. Got a couple of year-rounders whose gennies got dunked in the storm. They’re stayin’ until the water gets pumped out and they get their power back. Mother and daughter just come last night. Their place in Hatteras got it bad.”

“Huh,” said Erik absentmindedly, sliding the completed form back to the innkeeper. “My folks have a house in Buxton.”

“Yeah,” said the old-timer, nodding at Erik. “I know who you be. Governor’s son.”

Erik forced a smile he didn’t feel and changed the subject. He wasn’t in the mood for a political conversation. “You own this place?”

“Aye-up.”

“Local?”

“From Ocracoke ’riginally.”

“Islander, huh?” Erik asked, trying to keep the bite out of his tone.

“Aye-up.” He nodded, offering Erik his hand. “Henshaw Leatham. They call me Shaw.”

“That or Grandpa!”

Erik slid his eyes in the direction of the voice and found a young woman coming down the stairs. She was pretty—between eighteen and twenty, he guessed, with blonde wavy hair and a winsome smile. Big tits. Small waist. Bare feet.

Not unlike someone else he used to know.

His face hardened.

“Hi,” she said, grinning at him.

“Hi,” he answered, not grinning back and looking away from her quickly.

“I’m the granddaughter. Kelsey,” she continued, talking to his profile.

Erik nodded, but he didn’t look at her again. He wasn’t interested in the flirting smiles of an island girl. Not one bit. Not at all.

The iciness that covered his heart, that had earned him his reputation and nickname, made his next words sound sharp and unfriendly.

“Can I get my key?” he asked Mr. Leatham.

“Can I help you with your bags?” asked Kelsey at his elbow.

Erik wasn’t looking at her, but in his peripheral vision, he’d seen her move across the room, from the staircase to the reception desk, and he quickly bent down and picked up the bags, throwing one over his shoulder and gripping the other tightly. “No, thanks.”

“Kelsey, honey, ain’t it your bedtime?”

“Grandpa,” she said, scooting around the reception desk and giving her grandfather a kiss on his bristly cheek, “I think I’m old enough to know when it’s time to go to sleep.”

“Well, as long as you’re still up,” said the innkeeper, “how’s about takin’ Mr. Rexford to room 308?”

“Rexford, like the gov’nor?” asked Kelsey, her blue eyes lighting up with unconcealed interest.

He was forced to look at her. “His son.”

“Well, I’ll be,” she said, twisting a lock of blonde hair around her finger. “Royalty.”

“Hardly,” said Erik, increasingly more agitated with her flirting. “I don’t need you to show me up. I’ll find it.” He faced Mr. Leatham. “Just the key, please.”

The innkeeper nodded, turning to the key slots behind him. He grabbed the key and handed it to Erik. “There’s breakfast from seven to nine, and we do a fire pit on the widow’s walk from eight to ten at night. In case you don’t know, a widow’s walk is—”

“I know what it is,” he said tightly. And exactly where it is too.

“Well, then, I guess you’re all set. Need anythin’, just come find me or Kelsey.”

Still averting his glance from the granddaughter, Erik nodded at the old gentleman. “Thank you.”

“Welcome to the Pamlico House, Mr. Rexford!” said Kelsey to his back as he trudged up the stairs. “Enjoy your stay!”