Zeke woke up even earlier than normal the next morning, his mind racing and his blood coursing in his veins.

He felt like the night before had been a dream—the most vivid, delicious, tantalizing dream he’d ever had. It was hard to believe it had actually happened.

It had though. He’d kissed Cecily on the pier the evening before, and then sat with her long after it had gotten dark. She hadn’t tried to analyze their situation or talk about the significance. She’d just leaned against him. She’d just kissed him back.

He wanted it to happen again. Desperately wanted it.

But he also felt a rippling of foreboding, telling him something so good and so impossible couldn’t last.

He took a cool shower in an attempt to clear his mind and calm himself down, and then he stood in his small kitchenette and drank two cups of black coffee in a row, having to remind himself that it wasn’t even five in the morning yet, and so he couldn’t go bang on Cecily’s door and see if she wanted to kiss him again.

He’d been working so hard for the past several days in an attempt to distract himself that he’d finished all the work that needed doing all next week. There wasn’t anything he needed to do today. He could take most of the day off if he wanted.

What he really wanted was to take Cecily out. Spend the day with her.

But she would want to have a discussion today. He knew she would. She wasn’t the kind of person who could leave things unsaid for very long. She would want to confront this issue head-on—which meant yesterday evening was probably all the time they would ever have.

The sinking feeling at this realization vied with his excitement for control of his mind, and it wasn’t at all clear which one would win as he walked outside barefoot. It was October now, but they were having a very warm week. He didn’t need shoes, even this early.

He needed to do something but didn’t have any work left to do, so he was going to walk on the beach.

The sand was cool and pleasant against the soles of his feet, and the horizon was just starting to grow lighter. The sun wasn’t visible yet, and the beach was completely empty.

He walked and thought and prayed and wondered if the man who was so nakedly excited about a woman was really him.

He hadn’t felt this way since he’d first met Lara—and even back then, it had all felt different.

He’d been young, and the two of them had kind of fallen into each other, the way kids often did in college. He’d loved her deeply, and he knew it had always been real.

But it had never felt like the whole world was shuddering with the intensity of the emotion the way it felt right now.

About Cecily.

Whom he’d always known he could never have.

It was miracle enough she wanted to kiss him at all.

He couldn’t hope for an even greater miracle as well, one that would smooth over all the barriers between them.

He’d stopped hoping for miracles a long time ago.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he actually jumped slightly when a voice came from behind him. “Zeke.”

Whirling around, he saw Cecily approaching him. She was wearing a little cotton dress—more casual than her normal weekday outfits—and she was carrying her sandals. Her hair was down, which was so unexpected and so beautiful that he couldn’t help but stare.

The sun was rising now—with the kind of stark, colorless beauty that sometimes happened late in the year. It was just a bright orb at the horizon, whiting out the darkness of the night.

“You’re up early,” he said, astonished that his voice sounded mostly natural.

“So are you.” She came over to stand in front of him, her eyes searching his face.

“I’m always up early.”

“You’re not normally walking on the beach. I saw you from the window when I looked out.”

She’d come out here intentionally to see him.

She wanted to talk.

Of course.

She might have lasted all last evening without forcing a conversation, but there was only so far she would go.

Cecily didn’t hide from anything. She definitely didn’t hide from her own feelings.

He cleared his throat and rubbed his beard and waited to hear what she would say.

She might tell him last night had been a mistake.

It was the most likely scenario, after she’d had the whole night to think things through.

She dropped her eyes as if she were hit with a sudden shyness. Then she took a deep breath and looked up at him again. “I never expected something like this to happen between us.”

He nodded. Of course he knew that was true. She’d never looked at him as anything even close to intimate until just recently.

He might have been seeing her as beautiful and desirable and tantalizingly touchable for years now, but this was new to her.

It was likely to scare her just as much as it had always scared him.

“I don’t even know where it came from,” she went on, twisting her hands in front of her, a sure sign she was nervous. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. And it’s complicated.”

“I know it is,” he said gruffly, waiting to hear the rest of it, waiting to hear her say that he was never allowed to touch her again.

“We have this whole work thing that would need to be dealt with. Plus neither one of us has had a lot of experience with romantic relationships for the past few years.”

He nodded again, giving her a sign that he was hearing her, that he understood.

He cared about her. A lot. He wasn’t going to make this difficult for her. He knew what was coming, and he was ready for it.

He’d lived for going on nine years knowing that the world would eventually take away everything that he wanted the most.

She took a ragged breath and then let it out intentionally. “I know it feels like there’s an awful lot going against us, but I still can’t help but wonder if it’s worth a try.”

He closed his eyes very slowly and then opened them again. “What?”

She drew her brows together. “I said I wonder if we should give it a try.”

“Give it a…” He’d been so sure she would say something else that he could barely process what she had said.

She was frowning now. “Why do you look so flabbergasted? Is it so strange that I might want to give it a try?”

“Yes, it’s strange!” he burst out. When her eyes widened, he knew he’d spoken too loudly. He cleared his throat and started again. “Sorry. But yes. It’s strange.”

“Why is it strange?”

“Because… Because I’m me. And you’re you.”

She still looked confused, but she reached out and took both his hands in hers. “Yeah. I guess we are. But I think we were… we are kind of good together. Don’t you?”

Of course he did.

He was better with her than with anyone else.

He was so overwhelmed he couldn’t say anything.

After a minute of just staring at each other, Cecily dropped his hands and took a step back. “Okay,” she murmured hoarsely. “I thought we were… but maybe I was wrong.”

She started to turn away.

She was hurt. She thought he didn’t want her. She thought his silence meant that he was trying to let her down.

Zeke couldn’t let her keep believing something that was so incredibly far from the truth.

With a throaty sound, he reached out, turned her around, and pulled her into a hard kiss.

She was surprised at first—the tension clear in her body—but slowly she relaxed into the embrace, her body softening, her arms twining around him.

She loved kissing him. It was very clear from her eager response. And the knowledge made his heart throb with pleasure as deep as his body felt.

When arousal started to tighten at his groin, he forced himself to let her go. “We’re good together,” he muttered. “No question.”

She was flushed now and slightly tousled from the kiss. She smiled up at him. “That’s what I thought.”

“But that doesn’t mean this will work,” he added—because he knew he needed to say it.

“I know that. We’re both adults, and we both know this is complicated. But I still kind of want to try.”

“My job.”

“I know. We’d have to figure that out. I couldn’t be your supervisor if we were…”

She didn’t have to finish the statement.

“I’ve been alone a long time,” he said after a minute. “I don’t know if I could even… even do this.”

She nodded, clearly accepting those words as true without question.

She must have had doubts herself—that someone as isolated as Zeke had been for so many years could even manage an intimate relationship.

Because she’d been so honest with him, he tried to be honest with her. “I’m afraid I’ll end up hurting you.”

She gazed up at him, both fondness and knowledge in her eyes. “And what if I hurt you?”

“I’m used to being hurt.”

Her features twisted, and she reached out for his hands again. “Zeke—”

“I mean it. I don’t care about being hurt, but I refuse to ever hurt you. I… I do want you, Cecily, but I’m not going to put myself in the position where I might end up hurting you. I lost my wife once, and I…” His throat had tightened, and he couldn’t get the rest of the words out.

She evidently knew what he was trying to say, just like she always did. “Zeke, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You’re acting like we’re about to jump into a full-fledged relationship, but we’d just be starting out. No commitments. No expectations. Just seeing what happens. We wouldn’t have to work everything out beforehand, except your job.”

He stared at her, wondering how she’d managed to say the one thing that might overcome his roiling fears.

She wasn’t expecting a commitment from him.

She wasn’t expecting him to promise her everything, even the parts of himself he wasn’t sure he could give.

She was just giving him a chance to… see what happened.

And he wanted that chance so much.

“So,” she continued, slightly breathless now and still clinging to his hands, “if we can figure something out with your job, would you want to… to try?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he glanced away and admitted in a harsh whisper, “I don’t know.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m not putting you on the spot or anything. I know this is… completely new for both of us. Let’s take the rest of the day to think about it and think of some possibilities for dealing with your job. Then we’ll talk again tomorrow morning. No pressure, Zeke. I promise I’m not putting any pressure on you. I know what you’ve been through. I’m not blaming you for… for being cautious.”

She was completely sincere. He had no idea how she could be selfless, so generous. She’d opened herself up to being hurt and humiliated but hadn’t resented the fact that he was still working through things.

Despite her reasoned tone, he was still afraid she might feel rejected, and he couldn’t bear for her to feel that way. Not when he wanted her so much.

So he reached up and took her face in both his hands, leaning down into another kiss—this one slow, gentle, tender.

She reached up to hang onto his wrists as her lips moved eagerly against his. “Zeke,” she murmured against his mouth.

After a minute of pure pleasure—in which his whole being was swallowed up in her sweetness—she finally pulled away. “Okay,” she rasped, panting audibly. “If we’re not sure we’re going to try this, then we better not do that anymore. Until we know what… what’s happening.”

“Yeah.”

He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to do a lot more than just kiss her. But she was obviously right, and he couldn’t let himself touch her again until they knew they were going to try the relationship.

She gave him a trembly little smile. “So let’s take the day to think, and then we’ll talk again tomorrow morning. Okay?”

“Okay.” He kept looking away from her to keep himself from pulling her back into his arms.

Where she belonged.

He couldn’t help but believe it.

“Okay,” she said again. Then shook herself off and started to turn around. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow then.”

“Okay.”

He stood where he was—not moving a muscle—as she walked back up the beach to the walkway that led to the pool deck. Her dress blew around her thighs, emphasizing the luscious curve of her butt.

He shouldn’t be focusing on that. After kissing her, that was the last thing his body needed.

What he needed was to cool down enough to think clearly. She was going to expect him to have come to a real decision by tomorrow morning, and he wasn’t going to let her down.

***

Zeke walked on the beach for a couple of hours after Cecily left him, and then he returned to his cottage to get something to eat—since he hadn’t eaten breakfast and was ravenous.

As he ate eggs and toast, his mind continued to work, reviewing all the options, all possible futures, all the parts of life he’d tried for so long to pretend he didn’t want.

He did want them.

He didn’t want to spend his entire life completely alone.

He wanted a woman beside him, across the table from him, in bed with him.

He wanted that woman to be Cecily.

After he’d finally admitted this to himself, he got up and rinsed out his plate. Then without ever consciously deciding to do so, he walked to the small hall closet, opened the door, and pulled down a box from the top shelf.

A box he hadn’t opened for years.

The last time he’d looked inside it had been the one-year anniversary of Lara’s death.

When he lifted the flaps to reveal the contents, the first thing he saw was a dried rose, carefully pressed between sheets of plastic.

Lara had saved it. It was the rose he’d given her the night he’d asked her to marry him.

He lifted it out carefully so he could reach the photo album beneath it.

Their wedding album.

Lara had put this together too. She’d been sweet and sentimental and had had such a great time with their wedding photos. He looked through each page, staring at their happy, hopeful faces.

He’d been so young. Clean-cut and clean-shaven. Skinnier than he was now.

A different person.

He’d loved Lara completely, and their marriage had been a good one. He’d been devastated when she died, and he didn’t regret a moment they’d spent together.

If she’d lived, he was sure they would have loved each other all their lives, growing and changing together.

But he had to admit when he got to the end of the album that it had been the twenty-year-old boy who had fallen for her.

He wasn’t sure the man he was today would have chosen a woman like Lara.

The man he was today would choose Cecily.

He’d been through all the stages of grief—some of them multiple times—but this final conclusion felt like a new wound in his heart, one he had to take the time to work through.

As he processed this reality, he went through the rest of the items in the box. There wasn’t very much else there. He wasn’t sentimental like Lara had been. But there was their framed wedding invitation and the photos they’d taken on each of their anniversaries, each one in the exact same place and pose. Even on their ninth anniversary, a few months before she’d been diagnosed with cancer, he still looked so young.

He wasn’t sure he’d been grown-up even then.

He was grown-up now though.

He didn’t believe in silly fantasies or that sappy feelings could ever overcome the bleak reality of the world.

Hoping for something didn’t mean it would happen.

If you wanted something to happen, you had to make it happen.

He stroked the pressed rose one more time—very gently—and then he put it back in the box, on top of all the other contents. Then he tucked the flaps to close the box and returned it to the top shelf of his closet.

After standing perfectly still for a few minutes, he went to his laptop and pulled up a new Word document.

He wrote a few sentences. Pressed print. Walked to the printer to pick up the one sheet of paper.

Reading it over once, he folded it in thirds and slid it into an envelope.

Then he took a deep breath, and before he could second-guess himself, he strode down the path toward the main building.

There were several people lounging by the pool, and they all gave him very strange looks.

Then a man walking from the lobby with two bottles of water in his hands shied away from Zeke as their paths met.

There must have been something more intimidating than normal in Zeke’s expression, but he didn’t take the time to think through what it was.

He walked directly to Cecily’s office and knocked loudly on her door.

“Come in,” she called in her cool, professional tone. She sounded normal. She wouldn’t be expecting him to pay her a visit.

When he swung open the door, her eyes lifted and she gave a visible start.

She definitely hadn’t been expecting him.

“Zeke,” she said as he closed the door behind him. “I thought we were waiting…” She trailed off as she peered at his face, and she must have seen the same expression that had caused the people on the pool deck to avoid him. “Is something wrong?”

He was incapable of speaking, so he handed her the envelope.

She took it automatically but then lifted her eyes back up to his face.

“Read it,” he grunted.

Very slowly—too slowly—she opened the envelope flap, slid out the piece of paper, and unfolded it.

In a few seconds, she gasped loudly. “No!”

“Yes.”

“No, Zeke! Please. I don’t want you to resign.” Her voice broke slightly, a clear sign that her emotions were rising quickly. “If you don’t want to do this, I can understand. We can work it out. You don’t have to resign.”

“I’m not quitting because I don’t want to do this,” he murmured thickly, taking a step closer to her. “I’m quitting because I do.”

She sucked in another sharp breath, her eyes wide and bewildered. “You…”

“Do.”

She looked up and down between the resignation letter she held and his face, still trying to process what he told her.

“I love this job,” he said, his voice still like gravel. “I do. But I… if I have a chance with you, then I’d give it up in a heartbeat.” When her eyes widened even more, he was suddenly afraid he’d said too much. He made a little sound in his throat and added, “I want to try.”

“You want to…”

“Try.”

Something had come alive in her eyes at last. They were blazing, exactly the way his heart was blazing too. But her lips wobbled slightly as she said, “We were supposed to wait until tomorrow morning.”

“I didn’t want to wait.”

She laughed softly and surprised him by going back behind her desk and leaning over her computer. “I didn’t want to wait either.”

“So we…” He frowned when she seemed completely focused on the work on her computer, rather than on this discussion—which surely was more important.

He thought it was anyway.

“Uh, Cecily?”

“Hold on.”

His frown turned into a scowl. “Cecily?”

“Hold on,” she said, more firmly, now typing something on her keyboard.

“Damn it, Cecily! What the hell are you doing? I thought we were having a conversation here.”

She laughed. She actually laughed, and then she must have hit print because her printer started to hum.

His scowl faded as he gazed at her fond, laughing expression. She’d gone over to pick up two pages from the printer, and she brought them over where he was standing to show him.

“We are having a conversation,” she said. “I’d been working on this and wanted to show you.” She handed him the sheets. “I don’t want you to quit, Zeke. Not yet anyway.”

He felt better knowing that she hadn’t been more interested in work than in him, but he frowned in confusion as he focused his eyes on what was written on the papers.

“I’ve been thinking about this all morning,” she explained. “I’ve been trying to think of a way for us to try this without you giving up your job. So I thought of this. A one-month sabbatical. You’ve worked for me for eight years without even taking a vacation. If anyone deserves a sabbatical, you do. So you can take a month off from work—and you won’t be under my supervision for that time. So we can try this out to see what happens. I thought a month would be long enough for us to know. We’re both too old to have a long ‘hanging out’ period. We’ll either need to do this thing or not. But given our situation, I think we’ll need at least a month to really try it to see if it’s what we want.”

She was talking quickly, trying to explain as he read. She cleared her throat and added, “I know it’s just a partial solution since technically I’ll still be your boss. Maybe it’s really just a gesture, but I want to at least have it on paper that I’m not supervising you this month. I don’t know what else to do, and I don’t want you to quit… unless you really have to.”

He stared up at her, his mind whirling, his heart whirling, everything whirling. “But the work—”

“I’ll hire folks to do the outside work, and Janet can supervise the housekeeping staff for a month. Obviously, you’d do the work better, but I’m sure we can muddle through for a month. If… if…”

He’d obviously been silent for too long. She was starting to think he didn’t want what she was offering.

He opened his mouth to tell her it was perfect, it was the ideal solution for their tricky situation. She was brilliant. She always had been.

But instead of words, he stared down at the formal agreement she’d printed up, beautifully articulated and professionally formatted, and he started to laugh.

He laughed.

For real.

Long and loud and uninhibited.

He couldn’t stop. The amusement completely overwhelmed him.

He’d smiled and chuckled and smirked over the past several years, and more recently he’d done them more often, as he’d gotten closer to Cecily.

But he hadn’t laughed—really laughed—like this for at least nine years.

Cecily stared at him like he was crazy.

He tried to rein it in, control himself, but he couldn’t seem to do it. Something like joy was washing over him, and there was too much of it. The overflow was being released as laughter.

“What are you laughing at?” she demanded after a minute.

He tried to answer but couldn’t.

With a disapproving face, she snatched the papers out of his hands. “I was just trying to think of something to do,” she said primly. “If you don’t want this agreement, then—”

“Cecily,” he burst out, amusement still rippling through him. He took the papers out of her hands, put them on the desk, and signed the line at the bottom of the last page.

She stared at his signature and then stared up at his face. “Then why are you laughing?” she demanded.

He still couldn’t really stop, but he did manage to take her into his arms, propping her against the desk so he could kiss her deep and firm. “Because I’m happy,” he rasped against her mouth. “Maybe you can’t recognize it, but that’s what it is.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t say any more because he was kissing her again. She was responding to the kiss with as much fervor and enthusiasm as she had before.

Both of them were flushed and panting when he finally made himself pull away.

“So you’re good with the agreement, I guess,” she said.

He leaned his forehead against hers. “It’s perfect. I’ve never known anyone else to need a contract in order to date, but hey, you’ve always been special.”

“It’s not a contract. It’s an agreement.” Her voice was edged with amusement now too, but she managed to sound almost cool as she admitted, “I guess it’s kind of crazy, but I’m serious about the work we do here, and I wanted to protect your—”

“I know you did. Thank you.” He kissed her again.

“So I guess this means we can… we can date.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Are you free tomorrow evening?”

“I am,” she said, stroking his beard as if she liked the feel of it. “As it happens.”

“Good. It’s a date then.”