The Griffin's Mate (Hideaway Cove 1)

“I’m sorry,” Harrison said. Lainie just shrugged again.

“It’s okay. We were never—we weren’t close. My mom brought me up.”

Lainie couldn’t help glancing up the hill at the old house. From here, it was practically invisible against the dark shadows of the hill, and the black sky. Only a few straight lines in the shadows hinted at something man-made up there.

Lainie turned her back on it and started walking back along the sidewalk. She made herself walk slowly. Not like you’re running away. Which you’re not. The whole point of coming here was to return to the house. Just… not right now. Tomorrow.

Harrison kept pace with her. “I’m sorry,” he said again, his voice low. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Lainie flashed a grin at him. “It’s old news, really. Water under the bridge.”

For a few minutes, there was nothing but the sound of waves lapping against the shoreline, and the distant murmur of voices spilling out of the restaurant. Lainie relaxed. She was aware of Harrison’s presence beside her, but it wasn’t a prickly, uncomfortable awareness, like all those eyes back at the restaurant. Even his silence was comforting.

“You were right,” she said after a while.

“I was? About what?” Harrison sounded genuinely confused, and Lainie pinched back a giggle.

“About the lights.

”

The bay stretched out ahead of them. The land curved around the water like a sleeping cat, a patchwork of gold and yellow lights gleaming out through house windows and from streetlights. The light reflected on the constantly moving water, shimmering in the darkness. The water was black, blending into the sky in the distance. The lights moved on its surface, glimmering as though they were coming from deep below the waves, instead of from the houses nestled around it.

“It looks beautiful.”

“I’ll let Pol know you said so,” Harrison said. Lainie frowned before she remembered: Pol, the electrician who worked for Harrison.

Was it her imagination, or was there a hint of jealousy in Harrison’s voice?

She glanced sidelong at him in time to catch a fleeting self-deprecatory grimace flit across his face. She hadn’t imagined it.

“You can’t tell me one man is responsible for all the lighting in the town,” she said, needling him. “Doesn’t the municipal council have anything to do with that? Anyway, what about you? You said you’re the builder around here—does that mean all the buildings in town are your handiwork?”

She watched Harrison as she spoke, still out of the corners of her eyes. He smiled to himself, deep creases forming along his cheeks.

“I wish I could say yes,” he admitted. “But there isn’t much call for new builds here. Mainly just keeping the old buildings from falling apart.”

“And floating into the sea, right?”

“Funny you should say that right now,” he said. He stopped and took her arm. “See that house over there?”

Lainie forced herself to look where he was pointing. She was acutely aware of his hand on her arm—and the rest of him, so close to her. His bare, tanned arms, and the movement of hard muscles under the worn fabric of his shirt.

The top button of his shirt was half-undone. It must have been working its way loose as they walked. A curl of brown hair poked out from under it. It was hard to tell in the light of the streetlamps, but Lainie thought it might be a shade darker than the hair on his head. Like his tanned skin, his hair must have been lightened by a summer spent working outdoors…

Lainie shook herself, trying to escape the vision her imagination had called up. Harrison, working on a construction site under the blazing sun. Shirtless. Sweat running down his forehead, and along the hard curves of his chest.

“Um,” she said, her mouth dry. Get a grip!

She frowned, and squinted along Harrison’s arm—Don’t look at his arm, come on, keep it together—to try and make out the house he was pointing at. The houses along here were set down and back from the road, at the edge of what looked in the darkness like a shared yard.

“Which house, sorry?”

“Next along from the colonial with the French doors. With the cat parked out front.”

Lainie’s frown grew deeper. The cat…? All she could see was a single-level weatherboard house with a small boat tethered to the front porch.

Oh. Cat. Catamaran.