Page 25 of A Wedding in the Bay

He shook his head, looking at the picture she was referring to. It was a black and white print of a fishing boat docked at the wharf in Blueberry Bay.

“Oh. Whose boat is it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Somebody’s.”

She paused for a second, her eyebrows going up slowly. “You mean you just have a photograph of a random boat hanging on your wall?”

He started to chuckle. “Yes, ma’am—I mean, Johanna—I do.”

She was repressing a smile. “Why?”

He shrugged again. “I like boats.”

She laughed. “Oh, Everett. I like your house. It’s very you.”

He grinned, feeling a kind of warmth swell up in his chest. He felt glad that he hadn’t tried to change his house to impress her—she already liked it just the way it was. And that implied that she liked him just the way he was, despite how different he was from her.

I’m glad I’m letting her see the authentic me, he thought as they continued to climb the staircase together. It was the right decision to not try to hide who I really am.

They reached the top of the staircase, and Johanna cooed in delight as soon as she saw the telescope. She approached it hurriedly, gazing at it as if it were some kind of mystical creature. He chuckled over how excited she was—he felt warmed by her enthusiasm, and he found her delight endearing.

“Want to give it a try?” he asked.

“Oh, definitely!” she said. “What do you have it pointing at currently?”

“That cluster of stars there.” He pointed to a group of five stars, and she leaned toward him as she peered in the direction he was pointing in. He realized that his heart had started to beat a little faster when her head came so close to his shoulder.

“Ah, yes.” She nodded and looked through the telescope. “Oh my,” she breathed, letting out a happy sigh. “They’re gorgeous. Just gorgeous.”

He stood behind her, smiling. Outside, a crescent moon lit the glittering snow in a faint blue light, and in the sky, the stars seemed to echo the pale light of the snow. It was a beautiful evening, and he reflected that he couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend it.

“You try it,” she urged him. “I know you’ve already seen it, but—I have a feeling these stars are in fine form tonight.” She laughed lightly and stepped to the side. Grinning at her, he looked through the telescope, and he sucked in his breath when he looked at the stars.

Maybe it was just how happy he was feeling, but they seemed to look brighter tonight to him too. He gazed at them for a few moments, feeling excited about spending the evening stargazing with this wonderful, unexpectedly thoughtful woman he was getting to know.

Johanna watched as Everett peered into the lens of his telescope at the glittering sky. Her stomach was fluttering with a happiness that was almost giddiness. She hadn’t felt like this in a long time—not only was she excited about looking at the stars through the amazing telescope that Everett owned, but she was also excited about getting to spend time with him. She found him more and more fascinating the more she got to know him.

“They do look wonderful tonight,” he said finally, stepping back from the telescope and turning to look at her with a warm look in his eyes. “Very pretty.”

For some reason, she felt as if she was flushing a little. His focus had been on her face when he’d said “very pretty,” and something about the way he had spoken the words it made her feel as though he might have been talking about more than the stars.

“Let’s focus the telescope on something else,” she begged eagerly. “That cluster there. You see it? Just under the moon.”

He nodded, smiling, and carefully turned the telescope toward it.

“I feel like I’m in high school again.” She laughed, finding that it was easy to share her thoughts with him. “I haven’t felt this giddy in a long time. Maybe it’s because I used to stargaze with telescopes as a teenager.”

“Not since then?” he asked, pausing in his moving of the telescope.

She shook her head. “Not really. A little bit in college, and after college, but I was so busy. And then in New York it was so difficult to see the stars that I didn’t feel as though investing in a telescope would be worth it.”

He nodded. “Too much light pollution.”

“Oh yes.” She laughed. “Can you think of a place with more light pollution than New York? The city that never sleeps. Sometimes I would look out my windows at night at all the man-made lights and all the car headlights moving back and forth, and I would think about how much I missed the stars, but that they were still up there, shining, even if I couldn’t see them.”

She gazed out the window as she said the words, glad that she was looking at real stars again. She turned to him, smiling, and saw that he had an odd gleam in his eyes. She wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but it made her heart do a somersault. “And I’ve been stargazing without a telescope for a while now—ever since I moved to Blueberry Bay—but this telescope makes it all the more fun.”

“It makes the stars feel closer,” he said, nodding and smiling at her.

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