Dawson knocked on the glass door of the Nuts About Dough shop, cupping his hand around his eyes so he could see inside. It was a few minutes before five a.m., so the doors were locked. But Wes should be getting ready to open any minute now.

His wife, Nicole, would be loading the cases with their specialty doughnuts and then position herself behind the cash register.

Another couple approached the store. “They not open yet?”

Dawson glanced at them. “Not yet.”

They both wore backpacks as if they were planning a day of hiking around the island, which they probably were.

“Have you eaten here before?” the woman asked. “We heard their doughnut breakfast sandwiches are the best.”

Dawson put on his salesman hat. “They are. I’d go for the Maui Waterfall one. It’s got sausage and bacon.” He turned his attention back to the door as Wes started to unlock it.

“Hey, Dawson.” The bald man grinned at him. “C’mon in.” He looked at the couple. “We’re about five minutes away from opening, but you can come in and look at the menu, if you’d like.” He held the door for everyone as they stepped inside. When he passed Dawson, he tapped him on the shoulder.

Dawson followed him through the door behind the counter and into the kitchen. The scent of hot oil and sugar filled his nose, and Dawson’s stomach grumbled.

“Your dozen are right there.” Wes pointed to the brown box on the counter next to the door. “What’s the special occasion?”

“No special occasion.” Dawson felt the little white lie way down in his gut.

“Right,” Wes said with more sarcasm that entirely necessary. “He says there’s no special occasion.” He tracked his wife as she carried a massive tray of maple bars toward the door. “Do you believe him?”

“Of course not.” Nicole hipped her way through the door and left him alone with Wes again.

“So do you want to go out with Vicky?” Wes asked, flipping on the burner for the flattop.

“No,” Dawson said.

“Why not?” Wes faced him. “She’s pretty. Likes to play bridge in the evenings.”

“She sounds like so much fun,” Dawson said dryly. “But I’m….” He didn’t know what to tell Wes.

Thankfully, Nicole returned to the kitchen and said, “Our spies saw you at Bluefish with a woman a couple of nights ago. A pretty woman. Said you kissed her.”

Dawson scoffed and opened the box of doughnuts he’d called in for yesterday. “Who’s your spy? Then I’ll know if they’re right or not.”

“Stephen,” Nicole said, folding her arms and cocking her hip. “He says you’ve been unusually cheerful at work too.”

“Stephen. Bah.” Dawson took a large bite of his cream-filled doughnut and moaned. “This is so good,” he said around the mouthful of fried dough and chocolate frosting.

Nicole rolled her eyes as the bells on the front door chimed again, signaling more customers. “Be real, Dawson.” She looked at Wes. “See what you can get out of him.” She pushed through the door and said, “Good morning,” in the fakest voice Dawson had ever heard.

Wes left him alone while he went about cleaning up from their morning prep. An order came back for the Maui Waterfall, and Dawson grinned.

“Oh, stop standing there with that goofy smile on your face. Come make yourself one of these with me.” He pulled down a glazed doughnut and sliced it in half with the speed and skill of someone who’d done it countless times before.

Dawson copied everything he did, just slower and a few steps behind. In the end, he had his own Maui Waterfall ready to chomp into, as well as the other eleven doughnuts.

“So who was that woman?” Wes asked, scraping down the grill.

“She bought the Fontaine’s house. The one on the bluff?” Dawson took a bite of his sandwich. He didn’t want to tell Wes that he hadn’t had a place to stay and had chosen the house as a temporary landing spot. He and Nicole had offered their top floor to him several times, and he’d stopped talking about his housing situation with them.

“So?” Wes cut him a glance and looked at the next order as it popped up on the screen.

Dawson swallowed. “So, I was staying there for a while. We met. Fell madly in love.” He laughed, though his heart beat faster just thinking about Charlotte.

Wes scoffed. “Come on. You won’t even go on a second date with a woman.”

“That’s not true,” Dawson said. “Just not any of the ones you’ve set me up with.”

“Taylor was nice.”

“Taylor is so fake, she doesn’t even know what color her hair really is.” Dawson glared at Wes as he scrambled an egg on the flattop.

“So this woman. You’ve been out with her more than once?”

“Yes,” Dawson said, wondering how far Wes would push and what Dawson was ready to reveal.

“And you did kiss her at Bluefish.”

Dawson hesitated, but if there had been a reliable witness…. “Yes.”

“So you’re dating her.”

“No.”

Wes assembled the PB&J, which was made on a jelly-filled doughnut, with chunky peanut butter, a scrambled egg, and bacon, and set it in the counter for Nicole. “Come on. Be serious.”

“I am being serious.” Dawson polished off his doughnut breakfast sandwich and dusted his hands together. “Even she doesn’t want to define us as dating. We just talked about it, at that dinner you spied on.” He retreated from the hot kitchen area and picked up his box of doughnuts. “Thanks for these. You guys are the best.”

He walked out into the front of the shop and paused long enough to give Nicole a quick kiss on the cheek. “Come to dinner soon,” she said as she handed a customer back their change. The line stretched for six or seven people, and Dawson wondered why this many people got up so early.

“Maybe,” he called over his shoulder as he reached the exit. He reminded himself he’d gotten up this early for some of the Langley’s doughnuts and then that once they sold out, they were out for the day. They closed by eleven, but earlier if their doughnuts were gone. In the peak tourist seasons, Dawson had seen them sell out before eight o’clock in the morning.

He drove along the coast, navigating both bays before retracing his tracks and turning down Cinder Road. Charlotte didn’t go into work super early, but he’d probably find her working in the yard or putting down carpet tacks.

He had ripped out the whole back wall of windows and installed new ones the day before, and she claimed they’d be more energy-efficient. He parked beside the giant dumpster she’d rented, where the windows still sat.

Knocking on the door, he called, “Charlotte? I brought breakfast.”

“Come in!” she called from somewhere inside the house.

He entered, the place already so different in the month since she’d arrived. It felt like a real home, with running water that didn’t splurt all over the place. It looked clean too, with the absence of dust and the addition of the new paint.

She’d moved on from the kitchen to tackle the bedrooms and bathroom on the main floor, and he found her in the room where he’d been sleeping. She smoothed down the corner of a new bedspread and smiled at him.

Or maybe her grin was for the pastry box he held. Didn’t matter. It lit up her whole face and hit him square in the chest. His heart fluttered around, and he knew something very important.

This wasn’t nothing for him. It was something. More than a fling too. More than a couple of dates and some kissing while they swayed in the hammock.

He liked this woman and wanted to spend a while getting to know everything about her.

“Morning,” he said, his voice slightly froggy from the emotions infecting it. “This room looks totally different.” He gazed at the light gray on the walls and the shiny wood floor. “Did you put in a new floor?”

“This was what was under that carpet.” She gazed down on it in admiration. “Isn’t it beautiful? A little sanding and a little polishing up. All done.”

Dawson wanted to move right back in, but not for the same reasons as before. “New curtains too. How’d I do on the windows?”

She turned to them, the morning light bathing her in white sunshine, highlighting the reds and browns in her hair. He couldn’t help himself as he moved toward her, set the doughnuts on the bedside table, and swept his arms around her.

She leaned back into him, putting both her hands on his as they clasped around her waist. “The windows are great,” she said. “I can already tell the air conditioner is running less.”

“Feels great in here,” he murmured against her neck, placing his lips there a moment later.

She melted into him, and he enjoyed the moment for a few long breaths. “Charlotte,” he said softly. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Mm.” She swayed in his arms, and Dawson focused on the sweet scent of her hair as it mingled with the slightly salty smell of her skin.

“This is real for me,” he whispered.

She tensed and turned in his arms, her eyes finding his and drawing his attention away from the glinting water outside the windows. “What?”

“This.” He dropped his gaze to her lips and kissed her. It ended much sooner than he would’ve liked, but he forced himself to pull back. “Me and you. It’s real to me. I know we didn’t really define it the other day, and honestly, I’d kind of like to.”

She simply stared at him, and he cursed himself for saying something. Her heart wasn’t anywhere near being whole enough to fall in love, and Dawson balked at the idea himself.

“I don’t do flings,” she finally said.

“Great.” Dawson ran his hands up her back and down to her waist again. “So would you say we’re dating?”

She nodded, her expression holding just a trickle of fear.

“Are we serious?” he asked. “I feel kind of serious about you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’d be upset if you went out with someone else. And I want to see you everyday. And I don’t know.” He shrugged, but it was kind of hard with her in his arms. “I like you. I want to know more about you. See where this goes.”

“We already decided on that.”

“Yeah, but….” His voice trailed off. “If someone asked you out, what would you tell them?”

“I don’t know. I work with mostly women. No one’s asking me out.”

“But what if they did?”

She stepped away from him, kept her back toward him as she wandered closer to the windows. “I don’t know, Dawson.”

“Well, my friends tried to set me up with someone this morning, and I had to tell them something.”

“What did you tell them?”

Dawson gathered his courage close and decided to be blunt, the way a couple of other women had accused him of being. “I wanted to tell them you were my girlfriend. But I wasn’t entirely sure. They already knew about us anyway. Someone they know saw me kiss you at the sushi place the other night.”

He wished she’d turn and look at him. When she finally did, a perfect storm of emotion raged across her face. She approached him, reached up and ran her fingers along the side of his face, down his jaw along his beard.

“I can live with being your girlfriend.” A shaky smile touched her lips. “So I get to call you my boyfriend?”

“I’d like that.” He leaned down and kissed her again, holding her face in both hands and enjoying the way she kissed him back. Just as he started to feel out of control, he broke their kiss.

“All right. I’m going to be late for work.” He fell back a couple of steps, needing to be in a bigger space when it came to being alone with Charlotte. “I’ll call you later? You’ll tell me how it goes with Claudia Gray?”

She nodded, waved at him, and turned back to the windows before he left the bedroom. Once in the safety of his truck, Dawson blew the breath all the way out of his lungs. When he inhaled again, a smile filled his whole face.

“You’ve got yourself a girlfriend,” he said, a definite note of happiness in his voice. For the first time in years—since Janet—Dawson felt like he’d done something right.