Page 8 of Where Sea Meets Sky

I guess I’m dreading going back to work,he thought with a sigh.Maybe I’ve been pushing myself too hard all these many months, and this first taste of relaxing is really making my head spin.

He took another bite of his salmon benedict before answering the text, chewing it thoughtfully. Maybe he needed the rest. It could very well be that he dreaded the idea of going back to work so much because his brain and body were telling him that he needed a longer break in order to restore his energy.

He texted back, answering the project head’s questions as briefly as he could while still being polite and communicative. He sent his message and then continued to eat his brunch, staring into space and wondering if he’d just caught a bad attitude or if he really did need more time to rest.

He was in the middle of riddling his way through his new contemplations when he noticed a lovely woman walk into Ocean Breeze Café. He’d never seen her before, but there was something about her wavy copper-colored hair and sharply intelligent deep brown eyes that captivated him.

From the way she was looking around the small, cozy café as if it were some kind of foreign jungle, he guessed that she was not from Rosewood Beach. Based on the way she’d done her makeup and the smart pale pink blazer she was wearing, heguessed that she was from a big city. She had a fish-out-of-water look about her that he sympathized with. He often felt the other way around when he went from his sleepy, little town to a large, bustling city.

He watched her as she made her way over to the counter and noticed that she had on a pair of glossy high heels. He smiled slightly, sure now that she was from the city—the heels were a dead giveaway that she wasn’t from Rosewood Beach.

He found himself wondering where she was from. He watched her politely, quizzing himself as to what city she might have come from. He’d been to so many different places that he felt he might be able to guess based on her vibe alone. Every city seemed to have a different energy and style, and he wondered if he could pinpoint which one she matched.

New York? No, the colors she was wearing weren’t dark enough for New York. Houston? No, she didn’t have the rough-and-ready energy that people from Texas often gave off.

He was just settling on the Pennsylvania or Virginia areas when his phone buzzed with another text. This time the project head was asking him if he could hop onto a phone call to discuss an issue that had come up.

Ryan sighed. It seemed that even on his brief vacation, he couldn’t be on vacation. He paid his bill and stood up reluctantly.

He’d lost sight of the woman while he read the text message and paid his bill, but he located her again as he walked to the front door. She was sitting at a small table near a window, lifting a steaming mug of tea to her lips with one hand, and holding a magazine in the other.

Just as he was passing her, she let out a cry and dropped the magazine. It fluttered to the floor just in front of Ryan.

“Are you okay?” he asked her with concern, stooping to pick up the magazine.

She was flapping her hand in the air as if in pain, and she set down the mug of tea hurriedly.

“Ow,” she gasped. “That’s boiling.”

He found himself smiling. He felt sorry that she’d hurt herself, but her tone was almost joking, it was so friendly. She smiled at him through her pain, and he repeated his question.

“Are you okay?”

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “In a small town like this, no one thinks about the possibility of getting a lawsuit for injuring a customer.” She laughed after she said it, although there was something about how confidently she’d made the statement that made him think she was an expert on the subject.

Sure enough, when he glanced down at the magazine he’d picked up, he saw that it was a Bostonian law publication. Clearly the woman was a lawyer—and he’d pinpointed where she was from too.

“Boston!” he exclaimed. “I knew I was getting warmer.”

The woman blinked at him in surprise as she took the magazine back from him. “Excuse me?”

He chuckled. “I hope you don’t think it’s weird of me or anything, but I saw you come in and I guessed that you were from out of town. I’ve been to so many different cities that I was playing a game with myself, trying to guess where exactly you were from.”

Her mouth curved upward in a smile. “You’re from the city too, then?”

“Basically. I seem to be always on the road. I’ve traveled to all kinds of cities for extended periods of time, so I guess that makes me a city person. It takes one to know one, I guess—I knew as soon as you walked in that you weren’t from around here.”

She wrinkled her nose. “What gave me away?”

“Oh, the heels, definitely.”

She looked down at her heels. “Huh.” She laughed. “What brings you into town?”

“I’ve got family here, so I wanted to visit them. And technically, I live here, although it doesn’t really feel like that. I’m on a short break from a construction project so I came back to Rosewood Beach to take some time to decompress.”

“Hmm. Decompression sounds nice.”

“Are you a lawyer?” he asked, still feeling curious about her.

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