Page 37 of Me and Mr. Just Right

“It seems like it’s working out pretty well to me,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Have you checked yet to see if your editor wants your story?”

“No. I think I’ll wait until I get home.” He let out a sigh that was heavier than she expected. “I’m not quite sure what I’ll do if they turn it down. Just the same thing I’ve been doing, I guess.” He tried to laugh it off, but it sounded like a nervous laugh.

She lifted herself up on her elbow so she could look down into his face. “There are other magazines.”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah. But none with national reach likeRidgesdoes.”

“I mean outside of Alaska.”

He didn’t say anything and still wouldn’t look at her.

“It’s going to be a good story, Haydn. I don’t want to see it disappear.” All week, while they’d been going on their adventures—or not-so-subtly set-up dates—he’d told her all about the feature he wanted to write. The excitement lit up his eyes whenever he talked about how he wanted to frame it, or what stories he’d share, or what photographs he’d pair with it. He went into details about color and texture and the importance of variety.

She couldn’t imagine anyone ever not being interested in Haydn’s stories. While he photographed and wrote down notes about the stories he could tell, she wrote song lyrics that flowed from her as fluidly as the shoulder-high waterfall Haydn had taken her to yesterday. Apparently, he and his brothers would sometimes skinny-dip in the ice-cold, shoulder-deep water. And they would race down the beach—the loser having to do all their laundry for the week. And they’d spend hours scouring for seashells for their mom’s collection, which Rosie now kept on her boat. All stories he wanted to include in his feature somehow.

The story of this island was really the story of the Forrester brothers. And Lia couldn’t get enough—especially of Haydn. She wanted her hand in his. Her cheek on his shoulder. Her arms around his waist. Her mouth pressed against his. She wanted to breathe in the fresh, outdoorsy scent of him and taste the sea salt on his lips, touch the warmth of his skin, immerse her every sense in him.

She suspected he felt the same. His arm wrapped easily around her shoulders whenever she sat beside him on the couch. He found excuses to tickle her side and make her giggle, or to brush imaginary hairs away from her face. He watched her in a way that made her forget that it wasn’t just the two of them alone in a room, but that Jules and Bennett were there too. Until they weren’t, and she’d blink her eyes to find that the two other Forrester brothers had slipped from the room while Lia was caught in Haydn’s spell.

It was hard to believe that an entire week had nearly passed. It was almost time for Lia to go home. Time to face reality. She didn’t want to. Wasn’t ready for it yet. Didn’t want to think about it.

So she wouldn’t.

Instead, she snagged Haydn by the front of the sweater and pulled him close for a kiss that made her every sense curl up like a kitten before a golden fire.

Chapter 17

Thecabinhadneverfelt so like home than it did right then. Bennett was reading a book on birds indigenous to Alaska—with a highlighter in hand. Jules played solitaire with an actual deck of cards. Lia strummed her guitar, stopping occasionally to jot something down in the notebook beside her, before continuing again.

And Haydn sat on the couch, attempting to read a thriller, but he’d barely made it a hundred pages in and realized he couldn’t even say what the last chapter he’d read was about.

Instead, his mind and gaze kept wandering to Lia and her magical, effortless connection with the music she was creating. She fit so seamlessly into the dynamic with his brothers—where they could all be in the same room, doing separate activities, but in the same space. Where Bennett might read aloud some interesting fact he’d learned about puffins. Or Jules would make his self-satisfied grunt-laugh when he won another round. Or his frustrated grunt-snarl when he was stuck, and Haydn leaned forward and moved the right card for him like it was easy.

He never dreamed he’d meet a woman who not only understood the dynamic of him and his brothers, but could so easily slip into it.

“I like that,” Bennett said to her when she hit on a particular chord progression.

“Hmm. What about this?” she asked, changing something Haydn couldn’t explain but somehow made the sound even fuller. He knew Lia didn’t need Bennett’s input or approval—or any of theirs—but she seemed to like these small interactions within their separate activities.

“That’s the one.”

She smiled softly in response. RIP, Haydn’s reading comprehension. He might as well have been reading one of Jules’s legal briefs for all he was retaining.

He recalled learning about parallel play in school—where children often played different things in the same room together. He and his brothers had never grown out of that. He didn’t know if it was having their father leave and their mother die soon after that bonded them, or being close in age. Sometimes they’d joke that they were meant to come as triplets, but Haydn was too eager to be born to wait for Bennett, who had probably gotten derailed watching some sort of animal, while Jules had been distracted by something Rosie was doing.

Lia jotted down something else, then set her guitar in the case before heading toward the bathroom. The door had barely clicked closed behind her before Haydn felt two sets of eyes burning into his.

“What are you going to do?” Bennett asked. He’d set his book face-down on the coffee table and pulled his socked feet under him on his favorite chair.

Haydn tried to pull his mind away from the haze that listening to Lia—just being with her—put him in. “About what?”

Jules let out a disgusted huff.

“Lia,” Bennett said slowly. “She goes home tomorrow.”

Haydn had been doing his very best not to think about that. Instead, he’d rather think about Lia’s mouth pressed against his, and how silky her long, blond hair felt when he ran his fingers through it.

Even more, he loved the tender lilt to her voice when she talked about music. Or the way her laughter made him feel like he was surfing above the foamy waves. He knew trust didn’t come easily to her, but he’d seen her slowly opening up to him over the last few days of adventuring together on the island.

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