On Tuesday morning, John woke up later than usual.

In fact, he blinked several times at the clock next to this bed, trying to figure out what day it was and whether it was morning or evening. He felt the same way he used to as a kid when he’d taken a long nap and then waken up to have absolutely no idea what was going on.

He never slept past seven, and the clock was right now outrageously claiming it was 8:05.

After staring and rubbing his face a few times, he finally came to the conclusion he’d slept in.

He wasn’t on a schedule here, so it didn’t matter. But he still felt strange and almost guilty as he dressed. He didn’t shower because he was going to swim right after breakfast. He wanted to be finished if Betsy decided come visit him early again, the way she had yesterday. Because he’d just gotten out of the pool, they hadn’t been able to do anything but talk.

He wanted her to stay longer today, so he was going to be showered and dressed when she arrived.

When he went down to breakfast, he felt like people were looking at him, wondering why he’d slept in so late. It was ridiculous, of course. No one probably even noticed. But he couldn’t seem to shake that feeling of not doing, being what he was supposed to do and be.

Breakfast passed as usual, and the little seagull was waiting on the fence for his morning biscuit as John went out to crumble it on the ground for him.

He had a little pang of regret about how disappointed the bird would be next week when there was no biscuit left for him to eat.

Then he swam for an hour. His knees were feeling better, but swimming was a lot easier on his body than running, and there was no reason to kill himself just to exercise.

At nine-forty-five, he headed back downstairs, dressed and ready for Betsy to arrive.

He felt kind of like an idiot—because there was no reason to assume she’d come in the morning today. Every day except yesterday, she’d come in the middle of the day or later.

He might be sitting around for hours this morning waiting for her.

He didn’t have anything else to do, though. He was on his third book of the paperbacks Betsy had brought him, and he had half of it left to read. He sat in his normal chaise on the patio and flipped through the pages to find the spot he’d left off on.

He wondered what Betsy was doing at the moment.

Hopefully not talking on the phone with Dennis the Dentist.

He rolled his eyes at the thought of him.

It wasn’t kind. It wasn’t generous. It wasn’t in the spirit of Christian charity.

But he just didn’t like that guy.

At all.

It didn’t matter that he’d never met him.

He’d been reading for about a half hour when he looked up expectantly at a presence beside him. His heart had sped up automatically, and his breath caught in his throat as he thought he would see Betsy beside him.

It wasn’t Betsy. It was a woman he didn’t know. She wasn’t paying any attention to him. She’d clearly sat down right here just to work on her phone. Her entire focus was on whatever she was tapping on the screen.

He watched her for a moment, registering a ludicrous amount of disappointment that it wasn’t Betsy.

Then he realized something else that was strange.

She had a phone. Here.

He must have been staring too obviously because she looked over at him after moment. She was fairly young and quite attractive in that very modern, fashionable way he’d noticed in a lot of women in their twenties and thirties. Her hair was a very light blond, and her tailored trousers and heels looked expensive. So did the big leather bag she’d laid down beside her.

He noticed all this in just a few seconds. Then he said, “How’d you sneak that in here?”

She frowned at him in confusion for a minute—or maybe she just didn’t want him to bother her. Then her face relaxed. “The phone, you mean? I’m not staying here. Just visiting.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He was surprised Zeke allowed her to have it even for a visit, but he didn’t question her claim.

“My partner wants us to use this place for a company retreat, so I’m just here checking it out.” After a moment, she added, “My business partner.”

“It is a nice a place,” he said—out of basic integrity. He might have been annoyed about having his phone taken away, but he wasn’t going to complain about it to a stranger. Not when everyone here had been good to him. “It would be good for a company retreat.”

Her little nose wrinkled. “Maybe. So they really don’t let you have a phone?”

He shook his head.

“And you’re okay with someone taking it from you?”

“I didn’t really have a choice. What would I do? Get in a fist-fight over my phone?”

“I would.” Her voice was dry and her eyes were intelligent. He recognized that most men must find her incredibly attractive.

It wasn’t her fault he kept comparing her to Betsy.

“Do you want to borrow mine for a minute?” she asked, reaching the phone out toward him. “You must feel completely out of touch with the world.”

He did.

He really did.

He didn’t like the feeling.

But he shook his head. “Thanks, though.”

“I guess that’s why that weird guy in the purple shirt kept glaring at me. Because of the phone.”

John chuckled. “I think he glares at everyone, whether you have a phone or not.”

“What’s his deal, anyway?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“I’m Vivian, by the way.”

He held out his hand to her, smiling. “John.”

“Viv!” The voice was male and new. John had never heard it before. He looked over his shoulder to see a man coming out of the lobby. He looked about John’s age, and he wore glasses and had an overall rumpled look to him. He was frowning.

“I’m here,” she said, without turning to look at the approaching man. “No need to shout.”

“If you’re done flirting with strangers, we’ve got some other stuff to look at.”

This must be her business partner. It wasn’t a difficult guess to make.

“No need to be rude about it. Anyway, I wasn’t flirting.” She turned to John. “Was I flirting?”

John didn’t know either of these people, but he felt more loyalty to Vivian than to this other man. He said, “She wasn’t flirting.”

“Uh-huh,” the man said wryly. “Let’s go.”

Vivian shook her head and gave John one last significant look. “See what I have to put up with? He doesn’t even seem to care that I’m the senior partner.”

“Viv,” the man said impatiently.

John chuckled at Vivian’s eyeroll as she and the man walked down toward the pool.

He was still watching them idly when a voice came from over his shoulder. “Who was that?’

He gave a dramatic and rather embarrassing jerk.

Betsy.

She was here, and he hadn’t even realized it.

Excitement vied with confusion inside him as he tried to process her presence and how delectable she looked in a pink top and tan capris with her hair hanging down over her shoulders again.

“Well?” she prompted, after a minute.

He remembered then that she’d asked him a question. “Who was who?”

“That woman you were talking to.”

“Oh, I don’t know. She just sat down.”

Betsy frowned. “You seemed very friendly to be strangers.”

John’s mouth fell open slightly at her disapproving tone. “I was just talking to her,” he said. “She had a phone, and I was asking her about it. What’s the problem?”

“There is no problem. Why would there be a problem? I was just asking.”

It was only then that John realized Betsy was reacting exactly the way he’d reacted when she mentioned Dennis the Dentist.

She was acting jealous.

Jealous.

About him.

Pleasure and excitement tightened in his chest at the realization.

She’d never acted jealous around him before. Maybe she wasn’t as interested in the dentist as he’d feared.

“I talked to her for about five minutes. She and her partner are looking at this place for a retreat.”

“Oh.”

“I just met her.”

“That’s what you said.”

“And I meant it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He wanted to smile—because he was suddenly happy—but he didn’t want her to think he was laughing at her. She looked adorably flustered. Her eyes were lowered, and her hair was hanging down to partially block her face.

He wanted to see her expression so he reached out to push her hair back behind her shoulder.

She raised her eyes with an audible breath, and they stared at each other for a moment.

He wondered what she would do if he just leaned over and kissed her.

He wanted to so much his eyes clouded over slightly and his whole body got hot.

But the problem wasn’t what she would do, if that happened. The problem was what he would do.

If he let himself kiss her, he wouldn’t be able to stop.

Her cheeks flushed pink, and she looked away from him.

He realized he better start acting normal, or they couldn’t even be friends. He cleared his throat. “You’re here early again today.”

“Yeah. I can come in the afternoon, if that works better for you.”

“No. No. Any time is great. What else do I have to do?”

She was looking at him again, and she seemed more like herself. Her eyes were observant. “You don’t look as annoyed with the world as you did last week. You must not be having a terrible time here.”

“I’m not. I’m really not. I even slept well last night and didn’t wake up until after eight.”

“Really?” Her face brightened at this piece of news. “That’s great. So you don’t mind it too much?”

“It’s okay. I understand the purpose in it. I wouldn’t want to do it for long, though. It’s not even the lack of phone and computer. It’s strange, not being able to go out and do something on my own.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Nowhere in particular. It’s just not being able to do it that’s the issue.”

She nodded slowly, like she was trying to understand. “We can go do something, if you want to get out. You’re not trapped here, you know.”

“That would be great. Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t have anywhere in mind, but we could do something.” Her expression changed in a way he recognized. She’d obviously just come up with an idea. “I know.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this plan?”

She giggled. “You’ll like it just fine. We’ll get to go out and about for a while.”

“And do what exactly?”

“My mom asked me to find her a new hat.”

John’s eyes widened. “What?”

“A new hat. For my mom.”

“What kind of hat?”

“A hat with a big brim to keep the sun off her face when she’s in the garden. Hers is nearly in tatters.”

“You want me to go shopping with you to find your mom a hat?”

“She asked me to.”

“Did she ask me to go with you?”

“No, of course not. That would be strange. But you wanted something to do, didn’t you?”

John was having trouble holding back his amusement at Betsy’s sparkling eyes and twitching mouth. But he managed a stony look. “Shopping for hats wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“Don’t grumble. You’ll love it.”

***

As it turned out, John did love it.

It didn’t really matter that they were looking at hats at a number of tacky beach shops—which seemed to be the extent of shopping locales in the area. It didn’t matter that Betsy didn’t like any of the very reasonable options of hats he showed her, and so the shopping lasted longer than it should have.

And it didn’t matter that John had never liked to shop and always ended up grabbing something easy because anything else left him restless and impatient.

It was really nice to have a change of scenery for a while. And Betsy was in a laughing, teasing mood, so it was impossible for him to not to keep smiling and laughing himself.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a good time.

They were on their fourth store, and he was fake grumbling that she had to find a hat here or he would declare the quest a lost cause and her mother would go hatless. Then Betsy got the idea that he needed a hat himself because he had gotten too much sun over the last week. So she kept putting different hats on his head and rippling with laughter at the result.

He enjoyed her laughing so much that he hammed it up for her benefit.

She finally decided on a hat for her mother, and she insisted on buying one of the less offensive hats for him as well. John didn’t have the will to argue, even when she put it on his head as they left the shop.

“Did you want to get something to eat?” he asked, realizing he was hungry and it was lunchtime.

“Oh.” She glanced at her watch, evidently as surprised by the time as he’d been.

“If you have something else to do, that’s fine.” His stomach churned slightly at the idea that the other thing she needed to be doing was meeting Dennis.

“I don’t have anything else. We can definitely have lunch, if you want. There’s a good place just down the road, if you don’t mind hole-in-the-wall ambience.”

“Sounds like my kind of place.”

The restaurant turned out to be a basic beach hangout, but the seafood was fresh and the service was good. He and Betsy sat at a table on the deck outside, and he wasn’t in any hurry for the lunch to end.

They faded into silence after laughing at the elaborate backstory John had made up for one of the more unsavory fellow patrons, who’d clearly been sitting at the bar inside for more than an hour, even though it was barely after noon.

John kept shooting surreptitious looks at Betsy, wondering what she was thinking, wondering if she was enjoying today as much as he was.

She caught him during one of his looks and smiled at him shyly.

He smiled back, and they sat and gazed at each other for a minute.

Then she gave a little jerk and looked away.

He wondered what she was thinking, why she broke the gaze so abruptly. Like she wasn’t supposed to be looking at him that way.

He didn’t know why not.

He was sometimes grumpy and occasionally unreasonable, but he wasn’t a bad guy over all.

“This feels so far away,” she said at last in a slightly wistful voice.

“What does?”

“This does. Being here. It’s like you said the other day. It just feels so far away from… from the rest of life.”

It did. He knew it did. It was the only reason he was indulging these feelings that he normally would be bundling into a tight ball and hiding away somewhere.

“Yeah,” he murmured.

“Do you think it will all go back to… to the way it was before—when we get back to work?”

“l…I don’t know.”

“Me either.” Her face was sobered now—for the first time since he’d seen her first thing this morning.

He didn’t like the change in expression. He didn’t like that something in her thoughts had upset her. He reached out and covered her hand with his on the table.

Her eyes flew up to his face. She was obviously surprised by the gesture.

He didn’t care. He adjusted his fingers so he was taking her hand in his. Her hand was a lot smaller than his. And cooler. He held it gently.

Her cheeks grew pink again and she smiled, a little fluttery. She didn’t say anything.

He didn’t either.

His blood was pulsing in his veins now—not with physical desire so much as emotional pleasure. He couldn’t remember ever feeling like this before, but he didn’t want to let go of Betsy’s hand.

So he didn’t.

He held it as they finished their drinks, and then he reached for it again as they were leaving.

She didn’t pull her hand away.

Maybe it was young and sappy—silly, and not the kind of man John had always imagined himself—but he didn’t care. He almost never felt this way, and he didn’t want it to go away.

***

Later that afternoon, after Betsy left, John took a walk on the beach.

Thinking of Betsy, he even took off his shoes and walked barefoot through the surf, feeling the sand between his toes and cool water lap around his ankles.

He wanted to keep thinking about Betsy—about how happy he’d been with her lately—but it felt like there was a gathering wave in the back of his mind, ready to crash at any moment.

He didn’t quite know what the threatening wave was, but it got stronger every time he thought of his work, of his unread email, of Jamal. And even in his downtime, it always felt like he was mentally trying to hold all of that back before it buried him.

If all of that was waiting to crash into him the moment he left this place, then he might as well enjoy his time here while he could.

He gazed out at the water and noticed a small speed boat, zooming over the waves in the distance.

He would like to be out on a boat.

Maybe Betsy would go with him.

He wondered if there was a boat around here he could use.

He would ask Zeke or Cecily when he got back to the center.