Page 31 of Me and Mr. Just Right

Lia looked out to where Haydn was chatting with Bennett, and tried to reframe how she’d pictured him in her mind. She hadn’t thought him a player, but she also realized she’d pictured him with at least a few steady girlfriends over the years. And was he not happy with his job? He gave her a concerned look and nodded his head toward Jules, as if asking if she needed to be saved. She shook her head slightly. He said something else to Bennett before he started walking in their direction.

The exchange did not go unnoticed by Jules. “But he’s drawn to you,” Jules said, watching his brother come closer. “I just haven’t seen that before.”

Lia’s heart skipped. She didn’t know how to take that. She’d thought Jules was warning her away from Haydn, but it sounded like he was doing the opposite … encouraging her to pursue him. “I’m not looking for a relationship,” she said quietly, quickly, but Jules was already walking away, and Haydn took his place only a second later.

“Is he giving you grief about staying?” Haydn asked, a protective note in his tone.

“No, not at all,” Lia assured him. Jules had unsettled her, but not for any reason Haydn was worried about. She didn’t even want to consider being in a relationship again so soon. Especially not with someone who, according to Jules, would never leave Alaska. And could she blame him? She breathed in the fresh, outdoorsy air until it filled her lungs. It was gorgeous here. And quiet. It gave her creativity space to stretch.

“Did you get any good pictures yet?” she asked, in an attempt to distract herself. As he showed her his photo reel, though, she couldn’t keep her mind off of what Jules said. Yet in the end, it didn’t matter if she was ready for a relationship or not. Or if Haydn would leave Alaska or not. Because he didn’t know who she really was, and she wasn’t ready to tell him.

Chapter 14

Themorningstretchedintoa beautiful afternoon out on the coral-covered beach. They’d eaten the sandwiches and chips Bennett had prepared for them, and now the clouds had parted and the sun had sprung out to give them the kind of gorgeous sunny afternoon you didn’t take for granted in southeast Alaska. Haydn had taken so many pictures, his memory card was nearly full—he had several extra back at the cabin, so it wasn’t a big deal—but he still captured a few final pictures of the island bathed in poppy-yellow sunlight.

Lia had found a large, flat rock to lie out on, and had fallen asleep. Man, she was gorgeous.

He was eager to get back to the cabin and edit a few photos to send to his editor at the magazine. The idea of doing a more personal write-up of the island kept niggling at him, giving him the same kind of excitement he’d gotten when he’d thought of working forNature Adventure Magazine.It confirmed that he’d made the right choice by passing up their job offer, and he was ready to dig into this new feature.

“I’m going to head back to get dinner started,” Bennett said. “Should we wake her up?”

All three brothers looked out to where she slept. She appeared more at peace than she had since they’d met her, and he knew they were all loath to wreck that.

“I’ve got to send some emails,” Jules said, “if you guys want to head back.”

Haydn tried not to bristle at how quickly Jules offered to stay. Logically, he knew that Jules really did need to send some emails—he seemed to have a never-ending email task list—but he didn’t have to be quite so eager about it.

He wasn’t proud of it, but when he’d seen her talking to Jules earlier, a flare of jealousy had lit up inside of him. If Jules liked Lia, then Haydn wanted to stand back and let him have a chance at getting to know her. But his feet hadn’t agreed, apparently, because the next thing he knew, he’d been heading in their direction to break up whatever conversation they’d been having. Who was he? He didn’t do things like that, but the impulse had been impossible to deny.

As if to prove to himself that he could control his impulses, he agreed. Yet he nearly ran back to the cabin in his eagerness to finish editing his photos and get back to the hill to send them.

“Slow down!” Bennett complained, but Haydn pretended not to hear him.

When he got back to the cabin, he used a cord to move his pictures over to his laptop, groaning when every picture seemed to take forever to download. Bennett shook his head and muttered something under his breath as he got dinner started, but it seemed like he was fighting a smile. Whatever. Haydn would never understand his brothers.

He scrolled through the pictures, pausing on the few he’d taken with Lia in the background. There was one of her holding a starfish, and another of her hopping from one rock to another, blue ocean above her ankles. He’d also captured one of her lying on the rock—and it made his breath catch in his lungs. This was it. The perfect photo. She was only the smallest portion of the photo, while the rest of it was hill and flowers and endless sky. If he could capture what southeast Alaska felt like in one single image, it would be this.

He didn’t take long to edit the photo—these wouldn’t be going in the final article, but were merely to capture his editor’s interest—and then moved them back over to his phone and raced out the door.

“Tell everyone dinner will be ready in an hour!” Bennett yelled after him, elbow deep in some sort of dough.

When Haydn got to the beach, he was sweaty and out of breath, but he didn’t care. He scanned the beach, half expecting to find Jules and Lia snuggled together on the rock. His stomach twisted at the thought, and relief filled him when he realized the rock was empty.

He scanned farther down the beach, relieved to find Lia sitting on their picnic blanket, reading the book Bennett had finished earlier, and Jules was still up at the hill, emailing. Haydn resisted the urge to go straight to Lia and instead joined Jules. He’d been the one to discover that he could get one bar of signal at that location, and Haydn didn’t want to know how many places he’d had to test out before he found it.

“Here to give me a hard time?” Jules asked distractedly, his fingers flying over his phone.

“No. I’m here to join you.”

Jules looked up with a raised eyebrow as Haydn pulled out his phone and opened his email app. “You never email out here.”

“I have a story idea I want to float past my editor atRidges.”

Jules grunted, and Haydn could tell his mind was already back on his work.

He wrote up a few sentences outlining what the photographs would be like, attached a zip file with several photos to showcase the location and style, and pressed send. Nerves swirled through him in a way they normally didn’t anymore after he emailed his editor. He’d never proposed anything so personal before, either.

Lia’s voice carried out to him on the wind, and he realized she was singing something. Like a sailor drawn in by a siren, he moved in her direction almost against his will. She smiled when she saw him, and any trepidation he might have been feeling fled. He picked up his pace.

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