‘Trouble?’ He coughed nervously and stepped back. ‘No, I wasn’t in trouble. I suppose it is a bit blowy.’
Mari blinked a few times and shook her head in disbelief.
‘Blowy? Right. I hope you know that you scared the living daylights out of me just now. How do you do it? How do you get into that boat and go out on the water in weather like this? I simply don’t understand it.’
His reply was a twitch at the side of his mouth which told her more than a lengthy answer. Oh, yes. She had been right. The boy who had become the man was still as annoyingly arrogant and self-confident that it shone out of him like a beacon to all those around him who were still trying to find their way in the dark. And straight away she was back to being the plump, geeky girl who was the constant target of his incessant teasing.
It was so aggravating she could scream.
She was different now. She could handle this man who had become a star. They had both been so young the last time they spoke—teenagers trying to find their place in the world.
So how was it that the last time she had felt like strangling someone as badly as she did now, her client had just uploaded a virus onto the brand-new server she had just installed?
Ethan took it to the next level.
Grinding her teeth together in frustration, Mari pressed her fingers into her palms and slowly closed her eyes, then opened them while her blood pressure calmed.
‘I’ve got used to bad weather over the past few years, and Swanhaven bay is positively calm compared to the seas in the Southern Ocean. But I’m sorry if I scared you.’
And with all of the extra confidence and self-assurance that ten years of a life spent in the spotlight and hero worship could bring, Ethan took one step closer and casually slid his left hand up and down the sleeve of her padded coat. ‘Are you okay now?’
And it annoyed her so much that it sucked any chance of logical thought out of her mind, rendering her speechless. A blinking, wide-eyed creature. Just as she had been all those years ago when she’d hero-worshipped him from afar and he’d ignored her for most of the time and teased her the rest.
‘You’ve changed your hair,’ Ethan said softly, his sea-blue eyes focused on her face. He grinned the kind of white smile that would make toothpaste companies queue up to arrange sponsorship deals. ‘Looks great.’
Yes, this makes my day, she thought, and found something interesting to look at on her gloves. How dare he look even better with a few years on him? When she felt positively shop-worn and decrepit? And her hair had been squeezed under a hat for ages and must look a total mess. For a moment she couldn’t think or move. Nor trust herself to look at him again, never mind talk to him in joined up sentences.
Why did he still have this effect on her? Why? He had always had the confidence, the natural charm of the handsome, gifted people who had sailed through life on a warm breeze. And knew it. Nothing had changed in that direction.
‘Thank you.’ Mari cleared her throat, lifted her chin a little higher and tried to ignore her pounding heart, while forcing her mouth and head to reconnect long enough to say something intelligent when they had zero in common. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘I was sorry to hear that your mother passed away. She was a remarkable woman,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I was racing solo in the Southern Ocean when it happened or I would have been there. You should know that.’
‘Of course,’ Mari said, desperate to take control, and managed a closed-mouth smile. ‘Did you know that Rosa is still in Swanhaven these days?’ She shook her head in amazement. ‘She loves being here so much. So at least one of us is still in the old town.’
Before he had a chance to answer, Mari made a point of pulling her scarf tighter so that she wouldn’t have to look into those blue eyes. She was a mature woman. She could do polite to a visiting celebrity who used to be close to her family. ‘What brings you here on a Friday morning in February? I thought you lived in Florida.’
‘I do, but for some reason my mother has decided that she wants to retire back home in Swanhaven. So I’ve been building them a retirement place in the next bay,’ Ethan said with the husky tone in his voice that made her very glad that she was leaning against the jetty because her knees had suddenly decided to take on the consistency of blobs of jelly. ‘Dad and I designed it together but I’m here to finish the house before they move in next week.’
He was going to stay in Swanhaven for a whole week? No, no, no. How could this be happening?
Mari whipped back towards him, blinking in astonishment, and managed to link enough words together to create a sentence. ‘Are you moving back here with them full-time?’
Then he smiled with his own unique, closed lips, one-side-of-his-mouth special smile. ‘That would be a no. I have a life back in Florida, thanks all the same. But I’ll be around for a few weeks. Things to do. Some business to take care of. Then there is the Sailing Club.’
She swallowed hard and tried to come up with something to say but was saved when the icy wind sent another shiver across her shoulders.
‘Well, good luck with that. But right now I’m freezing and I promised Rosa that I wouldn’t be out long. It was nice seeing you again, Ethan. Maybe we can catch up another time?’
When Swanhaven harbour freezes over.
He turned away and started strolling away from her towards the cliff path which led towards her old home and smiled back at her over one shoulder, one eyebrow raised as he gestured towards the path.
‘Looks like I just got lucky. If you’re heading home I’d love to catch up with Rosa again. With a bit of luck she might find me a dry crust or two to nibble on, since I’m starving. Would that be okay?’
And then he started up the cliff path, away from Swanhaven, and straight for her former home. The home which was now up for sale. The home she was going to buy back.
He carried on walking and it took a second for her brain to process what he was doing.
He didn’t know. Ethan had no clue that they had lost their home when her father left the family. But she was not going to tell him the whole bitter saga. He would soon find out for himself if he stayed around—and preferably when she had gone back to work. Rosa would tell him.
Oh, Ethan. There have been a lot of changes since the last time we spoke.
Instinctively Mari took one step forward, then stopped and called out in a loud voice, ‘Sorry, Ethan, you’re going the wrong way. Rosa lives in the town these days. And I hear the harbour café does a great range of snacks.’
He stopped and turned back to face her, the wind ruffling his hair into a set designer’s dream of rugged and his eyebrows came together in a puzzled look. ‘You sold the house? I thought your mother loved that place?’
Her breath caught in her throat as it tightened in pain. Get it over with, she told herself. Just tell him and you won’t have to explain yourself again.
She looked up at Ethan, who was standing, tall and proud and so bursting with life and vitality and all she could think about was that Kit should be standing there. Her lovely, wild, adventurous brother who loved to break the rules. She had lived her early life in Kit’s shadow, but she would have given anything to see him smiling back at her at that moment. Alive and well and so full of energy and potential.
Instead of which, she saw Ethan Chandler. Kit’s best friend. The boy who was sailing the boat on the morning Kit went over the side and died. And it broke her heart. Worse. It broke through the veneer of suppressed anger which she had kept hidden.
‘Yes,