Brendan unlocked the door, flipped on the lights, and turned to watch her reaction. She’d be able to see most of it at first glance. The downstairs was an open concept, with the living room on the right, kitchen and dining room on the left. It wasn’t full of knickknacks or cluttered with pictures. Everything was simple, modern, but what furniture he did have was handmade locally with driftwood—and he liked that. Liked that his home was a representation of what the people of his town could do with wood from the ocean.

“Oh.” She let out a rush of breath, a dimple popping up in her cheek. “Brendan . . . you set the table already.”

“Yeah.” Remembering his manners, he went to the kitchen and took the bottle of champagne out of the fridge. She came to stand by the dining table, seeming a little dumbfounded as she watched him pop the cork and pour. “You’ll have to tell me if this is any good. They only had two kinds at the liquor store, and the other one came in a can.”

She laughed, set her purse down, and removed the sweater in a slow, sensual movement that nearly caused his composure to falter. “Why don’t you have some with me?”

“I drink beer. No champagne.”

Piper edged a hip up onto the table, and he almost overflowed the glass. “I bet I’ll convince you to have some by the end of the night.”

Jesus, she probably could convince him to do a lot of things if she put her mind to it, but he reckoned he should keep that to himself. He handed her the champagne flute he’d purchased that very afternoon, watched her take a sip, and the memory of their kiss rolled through him hard.

“It’s fantastic,” she said with a sigh.

Relief settled in next to need. He ignored the latter. For now. “Just going to put the fish in the oven, then I want to show you something.”

“Okay.”

Brendan opened the fridge and took out the foil-covered baking dish. He’d already prepared the sole, drizzled it with lemon juice, salt, and pepper. In Westport, you learned young how to make a fish dinner, even if you never honed another skill in the kitchen. It was necessary, and he thanked God for that knowledge now. As he turned on the oven and slid in the dish, he decided his kitchen would forever look boring without Piper standing in it. She was something out of another world, posed to seduce with her killer body angled just right, elbow on hip, wrist lazily swirling her champagne.

“Come on.” Before he could give in to temptation and lift her onto the table, forget about dinner altogether, he snagged her free hand, guiding her through the living room toward the back of the house. He slapped on the light leading to his back patio and opened the door, gesturing for her to precede him. “Thought I’d show you what’s possible with the outdoor space at the bar, if you wanted to add some greenery.” It occurred to him then that maybe gardening wasn’t exactly a sexy trait for a man to have. “I just needed something to do on my days off—”

Her gasp cut him off. “Wow. Oh my God, Brendan. It’s magical out here.” She walked through the roughly cut stone pathway, somehow not tripping in her heels. The ferns, which he really needed to get around to trimming, grazed her hips as she passed. The trickling sound from the stone water feature seemed to be calling her, and she stopped in front of it, trailing a finger along the surface. There was a single wrought-iron chair angled in the corner where he sat sometimes with a beer after a long trip, trying to get his equilibrium back. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a gardener, but now I can see it. You love your roots.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “You’ve got everything carved out just the way you like it.”

Do I?

He would have thought so until recently.

His going through the motions, doing the same thing over and over again, had become less . . . satisfying. No denying it.

“I do love this place,” he said slowly. “Westport.”

“You’d never think of leaving.” A statement, not a question.

“No,” he answered anyway, resisting the urge to qualify that definite no somehow.

She leaned down to smell one of the blooms on his purple aster bush. “What about a vacation? Do you ever take them?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck. “When I was a kid, my parents used to bring me camping on Whidbey Island. They moved down to Eugene, Oregon, a while back to be closer to my mother’s family.”

“No leisure trips since childhood? Nothing at all?”

Brendan shook his head, chuckling when Piper gave him a scandalized look. “People take trips to see the ocean. I don’t need to go anywhere for that. She’s right here in my backyard.”

Piper came closer, amusement dancing in her eyes. “My mother warned me all about you king crab fishermen and your love affairs with the sea. I thought she was being dramatic, but you really can’t resist the pull of the water, can you?” She searched his face. “You’re in a serious relationship.”

Something shifted in his stomach. “What do you mean, she warned you?”

Her shoulder lifted and dropped. “She loves her husband, Daniel. But . . . I think there was some unprocessed grief talking. Because of what happened to Henry.” She stared off into the distance, as if trying to recall the conversation. “She told me and Hannah that fishermen always choose the sea. They go back over and over again, even if it scares their loved ones. Based on that, I’m guessing she wanted Henry to quit and . . . you know the rest.”

This wasn’t a conversation he’d planned on. Would he ever give up the more dangerous aspects of his job? No. No, battling the tides, the current, the waves was his life’s work. There was salt water running through his veins. Making it clear that he would always choose the ocean, no matter what, put him at a deficit with Piper already—and they hadn’t even eaten yet.

But when she turned her face up to the moonlight, and he saw only honest curiosity there, he felt compelled to make her understand.

“Every year, I get a couple of greenhorns on the boat. First-time crabbers. Most of them are young kids trying to make some quick cash, and they never make it longer than the first season. But once in a while, there’s one . . . I can see it from the wheelhouse. The bond he’s forming with the sea. And I know he’ll never get away from her.”

She smiled. “Like you.”

A voice whispered in the back of his head, You’re screwing yourself. He was an honest man, though, often to a fault. “Yeah. Like me.” He searched her hairline. “That bruise on your head is finally gone.”

She reached up and rubbed the spot. “It is. Did I ever thank you properly for sending Abe to pad the upper bunk?”

“No thanks necessary.”

Piper eliminated the remaining distance between them, stopping just shy of her tits touching his chest. She was soft, graceful, feminine. So much smaller than him. With her this close, he felt like a tamed giant, holding his breath and waiting, waiting to see what the beautiful girl would do next. “You could have just kissed it and made it all better.”

His exhale came out hard, thanks to all the blood in his body rushing south to his cock. “You told me your flirt was broken with me. It doesn’t seem like that’s the case tonight.”

Her lips curved. “Maybe because I came dressed in body armor.”