Brendan studied her. This girl he’d pegged as a silly flirt on day one. And he found himself pulling her closer, needing to offer comfort. Wanting her to lean on him for it. “What does the recognition feel like?”

“Scary,” she said on an exhale. “But I have some guilt over ignoring this place, the past, even if it’s not entirely my fault. It’s causing me to lean into the scary, I guess. In my own way. So I gave Opal a faux hawk, and we’re giving Henry’s bar a makeover, starting tomorrow. If there are two things I know, it’s hair and partying.”

When had his thumb started tracing the line of her shoulder?

He ordered himself to quit it. Even if it felt so fucking good.

“You’re dealing with a whole lot of new information in your own way,” he said gruffly. “Nothing wrong with that. You’re adjusting. I wish I had more of that mentality.”

Piper looked up at him, her eyes soft and a little grateful, turning his pulse up to a higher setting. They stared at each other three beats too long, before both of them diverted their gaze quickly. Sensing they were in need of a distraction from the building tension between them, Brendan coughed. “Hey, remember that time you were the only one I followed on Instagram?”

She burst out laughing, such a bright, beautiful thing, that he could only marvel. “What were you thinking?”

“I was just hitting buttons, honey.”

More laughter. This time she actually pressed her forehead into his shoulder. “It makes me feel better about the world that someone out there isn’t playing games.” She drummed her fingers on her bare knee. “So which pictures did you look at?”

He blew out a long breath. “A lot of them.”

She bit her bottom lip and ducked her head.

They sat in silence for a few moments. “Which girl are you? The girl in the pictures or the one sitting next to me?”

“Both, I think,” she said after a pause. “I like dressing to the nines and being admired. And I like shopping and dancing and being pampered and complimented. Does that make me a bad person?”

He’d never met anyone like her. These luxuries weren’t part of his world. He’d never had to think about anything but fishing, working hard, and meeting quotas, but he wanted to get the answer right because it was important to her. “I’ve been on a lot of boats with a lot of men that do too much talking about women. And it seems to me that most people like being admired and complimented, they’re just not as honest about it. That doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you truthful.”

She blinked up at him. “Huh.”

“Let me finish.” He palmed her head and tucked it back against his shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d survive one night in that apartment. Piper, I wouldn’t even have stayed there, and I’ve slept in bunks with unwashed men for weeks on end. But you stuck it out. And you smiled at me when I was being a bastard. You’re a good sister, too. I figure all of that has to balance out your carrying around that ugly purse.”

Piper sat straight up and sputtered through a laugh, “Do you have any idea how much this ugly purse cost?”

“Probably less than I’d pay to have it burned,” he drawled.

“But I love it.”

He sighed, pushed a hand through his hair. “I guess I wouldn’t burn it, then.”

She was looking at him with soft eyes and a lush mouth, and if it were any other night, if the timing was better, he’d have kissed her and done his best to bring her home. To his bed. But he couldn’t yet. So even though it pained him, he stood and helped Piper to her feet. “Come on, I’ll make sure you get home all right.”

“Yes. Oh my gosh, yes.” She let him help her up. “You should get back. And Hannah will be wondering where I am.”

“Why didn’t she come tonight?”

“My sister is not a party person. All those genes landed on me. Plus, she’s still a little scarred from her winery hangover.”

“Ah.”

Side by side, they started back, taking a different side street to avoid Blow the Man Down. When she rubbed her arms, he cursed the fact that he didn’t take the time to grab his jacket when coming after her, because he would have given anything to wrap her in it at that very moment. Collect it tomorrow with her scent on the collar.

“You did it,” she murmured, after they’d been walking for two blocks. “I’m still embarrassed about crashing the party. But I feel . . . better.” She squinted an eye up at him. “Brendan, I think this means we’re friends.”

They arrived at her door and he waited for her to unlock it. “Piper, I don’t just go putting my arms around girls.”

She paused in the doorway. Looked back. “What does that mean?”

He gave in to just a touch of temptation, tucking a wind-tangled strand of hair behind her ear. Soft. “It means I’ll be around.”

Knowing if he stood there a second longer, he’d try to taste her mouth, Brendan backed away a couple of steps, then turned, the image of her stunned—and definitely wary—expression burned into his mind the whole way back to Blow the Man Down.

* * *

Later that night, Brendan stood in front of his dresser, twisting the gold band around his finger. Wearing it had always felt right and good. Honorable. Once something was a part of him, once he made promises, they stuck. He stuck. A fisherman’s life was rooted in tradition and he’d always taken comfort in that. Protocols might change, but the rhythm of the ocean didn’t. The songs remained the same, sunsets were reliable and eternal, the tides would always shift and pull.

He’d given no thought to where his life would go next. Or if it could go in a different direction. There was only routine, maintaining an even keel, working, moving, keeping the customs he’d been taught alive. Ironically, it had been those same qualities that made him a distracted husband. An absent one. He’d never learned to shift. To allow for new things. New possibilities.

Now, though. For the first time since he could remember, Brendan felt a pull to deviate from his habits. He’d sat on the harbor tonight with his arm around Piper, and it wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

But he hadn’t wanted to be anywhere else. Not serving penance for being a shit husband. Not paying respect to his in-laws, who still lived as if their daughter had died yesterday. Not even plotting courses or hauling pots onto his boat.

No, he’d wanted to be sitting there with the girl from Los Angeles.

With that truth admitted to himself, wearing the ring was no longer right.

It made him fraudulent, and he couldn’t allow that. Not for another day.

The tide had changed, and he wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice. He wouldn’t stay so firmly rooted in his practices and routines that a good thing would come along and slip away.

As he slid off the gold band and tucked it into a safe place in his sock drawer, he said good-bye and apologized a final time. Then he turned off the light.

Chapter Fourteen

Deciding to make over the bar and actually doing it were two very different things.

The sisters quickly decided there was no way to salvage the floor in the bar. But thanks to an abundance of foot-sized holes in the hardwood, they could see the concrete beneath, and thus, their industrial-meets-nautical-chic vision was born.