Then there was the knowledge that her mother had met her father right here on Nantucket, so there was always the chance when meeting Bob the grocer or Sid the landscaper that she was actually meeting a man whose DNA she shared.
“Hey, Bob, thanks for bagging my groceries, and by the way, I think I have your eyes.”
Emily shook the thoughts away. It didn’t matter who her father was. It didn’t matter if he was here on this island. Why should she waste a single second thinking about a man who’d never wanted her in the first place? He’d made his choice long ago, and there was no place in his life for a daughter. She wouldn’t romanticize the idea now.
A dog barking in the distance pulled her attention down the beach a few yards to her right. The waves lapped the shore and a black Lab raced out of the brush toward the ocean, followed by a young girl wearing a cute red tankini with white polka dots.
The girl was probably about eleven, maybe twelve, about the same age Emily had been her last summer on the island. She remembered how it felt to be on the cusp of the next stage of life. She’d been so excited at the thought of becoming a teenager, and her mom must’ve known it. Why else would she write about it in the book?
On the day you turn thirteen
Dear Emily,
While it’s hard for me to believe it now, there will come a day when you’re going to feel more grown-up than you are. I call this age “the in-between.” I hope you don’t rush through it too quickly. When you’re thirteen, you’re a teenager, so you’ll feel like you should be treated like an adult, but I guess as someone who had to grow up really quickly, what I pray for you is that you can enjoy being young as long as possible.
It’s okay if you still like dancing in the ocean under the stars. It’s okay if you sing yourself to sleep or tell yourself stories to keep from feeling lonely. It’s even okay to talk to your imaginary friend. Because thirteen might feel grown-up, but it’s not quite, and that’s okay.
The girl turned and looked at her, and Emily realized she was staring. She didn’t really want to make friends with anyone new right now. She wanted to wallow and be moody and have a little pity party for herself. In fact, she’d already made plans to find one of the old bikes in the shed and ride into town for a pint of Häagen-Dazs and turn it into dinner. She was an expert wallower.
But she was also the adult, and this was her neighbor, and she should be neighborly and kind and at least ask the dog’s name.
She walked toward the girl, whose hair was the loveliest shade of strawberry Emily had ever seen.
Emily lifted a hand to wave at her as the wind pulled several strands of hair from her elastic. “Hi there.”
The girl dropped her beach bag at her feet and waved back at Emily. “Hey.”
“Beautiful dog,” Emily said. “What’s his name?”
“She’s a girl. Tilly.”
“Do you live here?” Emily pointed toward the cottage next to her grandparents’ house—her house now, she supposed. The neighboring cottage had always been a rental property and nearly every year Emily spent on Nantucket, it was rented by the same family.
She hadn’t thought about her lazy summer days with Hollis McGuire for a lot of years, but she couldn’t help but remember them now. She might have been young, but even then she knew there was something special about the boy next door.
“I live in Boston,” the girl said. “I’m staying here for a month.”
“Lucky girl.” Emily smiled. She could sense the girl’s disappointment with her current situation. Her poor parents probably thought they were giving her the summer of a lifetime—and they likely were—but this young beauty didn’t know it yet. She’d yet to discover the magic of Nantucket.
“Doesn’t feel so lucky,” the girl said.
“Doesn’t feel so lucky for me either,” Emily replied absently.
The girl squinted up at her, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Really?”
Emily was doing a terrible job of encouraging her young neighbor. She should be ashamed. “No,” she said. “It’s an amazing place to spend your summer. When I was your age, it was my favorite place in the world.”
“Do you live in that run-down house next door?”
The way she said it made Emily realize how different things would be for her this summer than they had been all those years ago. They were a family of means. Her grandfather was well-respected. He’d single-handedly saved the arts center, not to mention his substantial gifts to the hospital and who knew how many other charities.
They fit in with Nantucket society—even as a girl, Emily had known that.
Now she was the single woman living in the run-down house that had become an embarrassing eyesore. The fact that no one had fined her grandparents or taken some kind of legal action was astonishing. Or maybe they had and Grandma had just failed to mention that.
“I’m just visiting,” Emily finally said. “I’m here to fix it up so I can sell it.”
“Why would you sell it if it’s so great here?”
Emily laughed. This girl was smart. Emily bet her parents didn’t get away with anything—not on this girl’s watch.
“It’s a long story,” Emily said. And not one she was going to get into with a child.
“JoJo!” A man’s voice broke through the brief silence and the girl rolled her eyes.
“I have a feeling he’s not going to leave me alone for a second this whole month.”
What I wouldn’t give for a dad like that . . .
A man wearing a pair of long khaki shorts and a faded-red T-shirt emerged onto the beach from the yard next door. His distressed baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes, which were covered with a pair of aviator sunglasses.
Emily took a very brief moment to notice his well-built torso. And then another very brief moment to appreciate it.
The dog raced back from the water and sniffed his hand.
“Tilly, be good,” he said.
As he strode toward them, Emily felt her shoulders straighten. It was almost as if he were moving in slow motion, as if her past were unraveling right in front of her. Her heart quickened. She hadn’t counted on this—on him.
Hollis.
“Dad, this is our neighbor,” the girl said. “She says it’s nice here but she’s selling her house, so . . .” She shrugged.
But Hollis didn’t seem to hear or see his daughter. He’d stopped moving and was now staring. At Emily.
Her pulse quickened. Her stomach roiled. Her mind spun.
What was he doing here? Why did he look like that? Did he recognize her? After all these years?
She must’ve had a dopey expression on her face because the girl huffed (loudly) and said, “Oh, please. Are you, like, one of his fans?”
Hollis still didn’t seem to hear the girl.
“Emily?” He studied her with eyes that were too intent. “It is you.”
She wanted to pull her gaze from his, but it was as if they’d been tied together by an invisible force and she couldn’t sever the connection.
“Hollis.” His name on her lips caught at the back of her throat, a slight whisper that held so much weight.
He looked as stunned as she felt as he moved toward her, then opened his arms to pull her into what was likely meant to be a friendly long-time-no-see hug but felt like so much more.
She stepped into his arms and for a fleeting moment inhaled the safety of his embrace. She could get lost here. Time could stop and the past could fall away.
And yet it couldn’t.
She inched back, despising the betrayal of her own emotions.
“I thought I saw you at the ferry,” he said. “It’s been—what? Eighteen years?”
Emily wasn’t sure she could speak. Being here, on this beach, on the island, at this house, and now with Hollis—she hadn’t planned to have to feel any of it. She didn’t want to remember the good things about Nantucket. Those memories had been swept away the day her mother died.
; There was nothing dark or sad or tragic about the Hollis McGuire she’d known. If she let herself, she would’ve remembered him only as good and wonderful and kind.
But she’d lumped him in with the rest of her Nantucket memories and thrown them out to sea. How did she reconcile standing here in front of him now?
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
Emily nodded, willing herself not to cry. She wasn’t a crier—what was happening to her on the inside?
“Wait, you two know each other?” the girl asked.
“We did,” Emily said, still connected to Hollis as if by an imaginary string. “A long time ago.”
Hollis pulled his sunglasses off and looked at her with those bright-hazel eyes. Were they greener now than when they were kids? He’d always had that special something, the thing that drew people to him like pieces of metal to a high-powered magnet. Mom had called it “the ‘it’ factor.”
“Watch out for that one, Emily Elizabeth,” Mom had said. “He’s one part trouble and two parts charm.”
She hadn’t understood then, but she understood now. At least about the trouble part. She could practically hear warning bells blaring in the back of her mind, like the sound of a European ambulance racing through the streets of London.
People might’ve made him feel like he never belonged in the Nantucket world back then, but nobody could say that anymore.
“I can’t believe you remember me.” Emily felt suddenly—and uncharacteristically—shy.
“Are you kidding?” Hollis gave her arm a shove, putting her squarely in the friend zone. Of course he did—he was standing there with his daughter. What was she thinking fantasizing about this man who was clearly taken? She shook the thoughts away, forced herself back to reality.
“Summer was never the same after you left,” he said.
Emily looked away. How would she survive being back here? How would she revisit all the unanswered questions she’d been burying all these years?
“Glad you guys are catching up and all, but I’m starving, Dad. You said burgers on the grill. Can we make that happen?” She called out for Tilly to follow her and disappeared in the sea grass.
“That’s Jolie,” Hollis said. “She’s my daughter.”
“I guessed that much when she called you Dad.” Emily smiled. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s a pistol.” He laughed, then looked away. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing with her.”
A gentle lull fell between them.
How did he do that? Instantly put her at ease? How did he, in a matter of seconds, make Emily, the girl who trusted no one, feel like he was safe?
She reminded herself that he wasn’t that boy she’d known before her life turned upside down. He’d grown up. And all sweet boys, when they grew up, became men. And she didn’t need a man in her life any more than she needed the old Nantucket cottage.
“Kids are tricky,” she said because it was something she’d heard people say, not because she knew it to be true.
“Do you have any?”
“No.” She looked away. “Kids don’t really fit into my life plan.”
His eyebrows rose. “Is that right?”
“I travel a lot,” she said. It was an understatement. She traveled. It’s what she did, almost exclusively, or what she had done before settling in to produce a play that apparently wasn’t ready for an audience.
“Yeah, I know a little something about life on the road,” he said. “It’s hard with kids for sure.”
She didn’t respond. The conversation had turned, making her long for things she absolutely did not want.
“Approach love with caution. Always guard your heart.”
She clung to that truth her mother had imparted all those years ago. So far, it had served her well.
“You seem to manage a kid, even with your big career.” She forced herself to stop daydreaming.
“You know about my career?” He looked pleased.
She found her most incredulous look and aimed it at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t know if you followed baseball.”
She didn’t, but she did follow Hollis at least a bit—much to her embarrassment in that moment, it turned out.
“You should come eat with us,” he said. “We can catch up.”
How could she bear it? Sitting at the same table as Hollis and his wife and daughter (and more kids)? The fact that he had a family and she hadn’t known about it proved how far back into her past she’d pushed her childhood friend. Best to keep him there.
“I couldn’t intrude,” she said.
“You just got in today,” Hollis said. “There’s no way there’s food in that house.”
He was right. There wasn’t. She needed to get to town or she wouldn’t even have coffee in the morning.
“I insist.”
“Won’t your wife be annoyed you’re bringing in a stray?” She looked up at him and realized he was disastrously good-looking. Whoever his wife was, she was one lucky girl.
“My wife?”
“Jolie’s mom,” Emily said.
“Jolie’s mom is on her honeymoon with a doctor named Rick,” Hollis said.
“Oh,” Emily laughed. “And how do you feel about that?”
“We were never married.” He looked away, and it occurred to Emily that even superstar baseball players had their demons.
And just like that she heard herself agree to dinner. With Hollis McGuire. Boy next door–turned–baseball phenom and quite possibly the most beautiful human being Emily had ever seen.
“One part trouble, two parts charm.”
Uh-oh.
CHAPTER 5
HOLLIS WASN’T EMBARRASSED by the small Nantucket cottage until Emily walked through the front door. Yes, her grandparents’ cottage currently looked like a “before” picture on one of those HGTV home improvement shows, but she came from money, just like everyone else in Nantucket.
And seeing her in the doorway reminded him that he didn’t.
Never mind how much he had in the bank now. Part of him would always be that kid who refused to wear plaid shorts or comb his hair, the one who didn’t fit in.
Though, he had to admit, Emily didn’t really look like someone who fit in here either—there was something decidedly unstuffy about her, like a person who couldn’t put on airs if she tried.
Maybe that’s why she’d captivated him even back at the ferry.
“So your dad bought this place?” Emily asked, looking around. “It’s amazing.”
“Yeah, he did pretty well for himself.” Hollis motioned for her to have a seat at the island in the center of the kitchen. It unnerved him, her being there. Set his senses on high alert. “They always loved it here, so it was the first major purchase he made.”
“No kidding?” Emily sat and he grabbed the hamburger patties from the fridge, willing himself to talk to her like a human and not admire her dumbly like she was a stone statue in a museum. It was hard, though—with her porcelain skin and that wavy blonde hair. He wondered if the freckles that used to spill across the top of her nose onto her cheeks would return in the sunshine. He’d like to find out.
“They’ll be here later.” Hollis unwrapped the patties and put them on a platter, then flicked on the faucet to wash his hands. “In time for dinner, I think.”
“They will?”
“It’s a family affair.” Truth be told, he was thankful he’d have some help with Jolie. He didn’t know what to do with a preteen girl all day, especially one who, despite being somewhat cordial, didn’t like him all that much.
“That’ll be so nice for you guys, to all be together.”
He glanced up from the sink and shut off the water. “Don’t think you’re getting out of it.”
She found his eyes. “What?”
He studied her, his pulse slowing just enough to let himself be amused. “You think you’re going to escape the McGuire family craziness, but you’r
e as much a part of this as I am.”
She looked puzzled. “Did you get hit in the head with a baseball?”
He laughed, and some of his nerves began to dissipate. How long had it been since a woman had made him nervous? Her big blue almond-shaped eyes could’ve made any man forget his own name, but Hollis found himself mostly trying not to stare at her full lips and the tiny gold necklace hanging perfectly in between her prominent collarbones.
Get a grip, McGuire. It’s just Emily.
Emily, who’d also felt to him like a bottle that had been tossed out to sea. Even if he could’ve seen her, he couldn’t have gotten to her, not after the way her grandparents whisked her off the island right after the accident.
It was like they’d vanished into thin air after that, leaving him sitting in a pile of confusion nursing a broken heart.
His mother said it would just take time to get over the loss of his friend, that they needed to give the Ackerman family space just now—they could reach out once the dust settled.
The dust must’ve never settled because no one ever reached out.
But Hollis didn’t care about any of that—he only cared about the girl who’d looked past everything he wasn’t straight to what he could be. She’d seen something in him when all everyone else saw was a poor kid who was out of place.
He turned toward her, thankful she wasn’t a mind reader. “Family dinners, picnics on the beach, backyard baseball games—your presence is expected. You know Nan McGuire would be crushed if you didn’t show.”
Emily swiped a stray hair away from her face.
Man, she was pretty.
She’d always been in a league all her own, and yet for some reason, she happily spent her Nantucket days hanging out with Hollis and his little brother, Hayes. Their sister, Harper, was too young for most of their crazy Nantucket adventures, but he had no doubt if things had been different, the four of them would’ve made some pretty wild memories.
But things weren’t different, and he’d be smart to remember that. He thought he might’ve picked up on a little bit of sadness at the mention of his family, but what if all Emily wanted was to be left alone? He didn’t know her anymore, after all. It wasn’t like they could carry on from right where they left off. There was a lot of life between them now.
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