Eventually a desire to flee the cottage had prevailed, forcing her from bed and into the night wearing sneakers and a sweatshirt jacket over her nightclothes—a T-shirt and ratty cut-off sweatpants. Sand sliding beneath the shoes’ smooth soles had, until then, been all but forgotten. It had only taken five minutes wandering the beach to get her rhythm back.
Paige turned toward the structural silhouette on the rise above the beach. A narrow chimney rose above the angled roof against the backdrop of the town’s lights. For some reason she’d always pictured the chimney succumbing to gravity, broken brick and mortar scattered on the ground, as if representative of what had happened to her family. But there it stood, maintaining its crazy tilt against Newton’s laws. So much for symbolism.
With her father’s passing, she wondered if the house might be empty, abandoned. She saw no lights in any of the windows, some of which lacked reflection, possibly missing panes. The cedar shakes on the walls had weathered to a color like tarnished silver in the darkness, and beneath the porch overhang a shutter on a lower casement hung canted by a broken hinge.
Paige’s stomach twisted in a spasm beneath her diaphragm. She pressed the heel of her palm against her belly.
“Are you aware there’s a penalty for trespass?”
Paige jumped, a solitary expletive flying from her lips. Heart in her throat, she hastened several steps away before turning to face the speaker. “Sorry,” she said, breathing hard. She squinted in an effort to make out a visible face in the shadows, but was unable to determine anything but gender.
“For what? The fact you’re trespassing? Or using a word that would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap as a kid?”
Paige couldn’t believe this guy was chastising her for swearing after he’d practically jumped out at her in the dark. What the hell? “You startled me.”
“You’re not from around here, are you?” the man said. Not like a question. More like an accusation. Paige bristled despite standing in the dark five feet from an unseen stranger on an empty stretch of beach before dawn. Even the ravenous gulls had abandoned their midnight repast. The waterfront was deserted.
“And what makes you so sure I’m not?”
“First, you’re trespassing. Second? The accent.”
Paige clamped her lips together. More than half a lifetime in Tennessee had altered her speech’s cadence but hadn’t fully erased the characteristics of an early New England dialect, which made for a strange accent indeed. If the man hadn’t been so antagonistic, she would have admitted as much.
“Nothing to say to that?” he nudged.
“What would you like me to say?”
“‘Goodnight’ would work.”
Her mouth dropped. “You’re right. With that attitude, I probably should say goodnight.”
“The next time you decide to take a stroll on this beach, seek permission, day or night.”
“Understood.” Paige started to turn away, but irritation got the better of her. She spun back. “I didn’t realize I needed an invitation.” Who did this guy think he was? There was only one man who could claim proprietary rights to this stretch of beach, and he was dead. Yanking her fist from her pocket, she jerked a thumb at her former home over her shoulder. “Do you live there?”
“I own ‘there,’” he said. “Bought the place from Edwin Waters just before he died.”
“Oh.” One of the things she was planning to check was the allocation of the house and land before her father’s death. The knowledge her father had sold her old home outright to someone hit her harder than if he’d walked away from it. Not that she would have expected him to leave it to her, but by selling it, he’d made it pretty clear he hadn’t even considered that option. Tears stung her tired eyes, nausea sweeping through her stomach. “Well, doesn’t look like you have much pride of ownership, I’ll tell you that.”
As soon as she spoke, she realized she should have taken a moment to gather her emotions under a tighter rein.
“You can tell that in the pitch black, can you?” His voice traveled like rumbling thunder.
Paige loosened unconsciously curled fists. “Look, I’m sorry. Again. That was out of line.”
Paige attempted to tame her annoyance. If this man had bought her old home, he might be in possession of information she could use. The predawn gloom had lightened, revealing a hulking shadow well over six feet tall. Paige slid her left foot behind her and shifted her weight over it, hoping he wouldn’t notice the movement away. She didn’t want anything in her actions to indicate fear. She had learned the tactic in a self-defense course she’d taken several years past. The course had been fairly useless except the one stratagem. Never. Act. Afraid.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked after she’d taken another step back.
She paused, not quite balanced. “I needed some air.”
“You don’t smell like you’ve been drinking.”
“I haven’t been.”
“How far did you walk?”
Paige’s nails dug into her palms, fingers curled tightly once more. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Just trying to determine where the hell you’ve come from and what you’re doing here,” he said. “My major issue is with the patrons of Cappy’s. They like to wander down to the beach to walk it off before heading home. Is that where you’ve come from?”
“What on earth is Cappy’s?”
“Answers that question. You really aren’t from around here.” His tone was dismissive.
Paige’s brow wrinkled. Could this guy be any ruder? “At the moment, I am from around here. I’m renting the cottage next door.”
He made an abrupt movement in her direction and Paige stumbled backward.
“How long?” he demanded.
“Am I staying? Not that it’s any of your business, but—”
“No. How long have you been in the cottage?”
Good Lord, was that any of his concern, either? “What does it matter?” Paige continued backing away, keeping the man in her line of sight. What had been a shadow had begun to fill in with muted color: faded blue jeans, the indistinct hue of his T-shirt, disheveled coal black hair. He possessed a handsome arrangement to his features, though the particulars remained veiled by darkness. Not what she wanted to find—the guy pissing her off in the middle of the night was good-looking. She’d rather he resemble the discarded leftovers from the vanished gulls.
“Sorry to have disturbed you,” she said with mock sweetness. “As we’re to be temporary neighbors, I’m sure we’ll run into each other again at a more reasonable time of day.”
A soft red glow appeared on the man’s face, highlighting a scar running down his jaw. Paige glanced toward the ocean. The horizon had lit up like a thin line of embers.
“Red sky at morning,” she whispered.
“Sailors take warning,” he finished.
She snapped her attention back to him. “So the saying goes.”
“That it does.”
“Are you a sailor?”
His jaw worked, dark eyes narrowing beneath