Page 23 of Tempting the Heart

“You’re Zen.” I laughed and shrugged. “It figures you’d be beautiful, smart, ambitious, and then… Zen about it all.”

Her gaze focused on me, and she tilted her chin. “I thought you thought I was wild?”

“A bit.”

“That’s a tad contradictory, don’t you think? How can I be calm and wild at the same time?”

I smiled, loving the challenges she still threw my way. “You’re a force to be reckoned with, but even the wildest storms signal a calm right beforehand.” I shook my head. “I don’t know how to explain it, Mae. Maybe I’m wrong, but you strike me asa woman who sets goals, throws herself into them with every ounce of your being, and then stops to enjoy the moment.”

Her lips curled into a smile as she locked her gaze on mine. There was something about her that just drove me wild. Over the years, I’d thought that maybe I’d let my teenage hormones warp my memories, but standing in front of her only made it worse.

“I guess I can see that.” Mae sucked on her bottom lip for a second and glanced toward the waves. “But there are many times when I feel like a wreck or like I don’t have a strong grip on reality. Does that make any sense?” She turned to look at me.

And it did, more than she knew.

“You dared to dream to do something other than work at your folks’ store, and you not only accomplished it, you crushed it.” I shook my head, thinking back to the line to the door this morning from the rush-hour crowd. “Yet, you stopped your day to lead me down here.”

She reached for my hand and twisted her fingers with mine with a slight tug. “That’s because you need a break. I can tell.”

“More than I realized,” I said, sighing. “But that’s something special I noticed about you, even when you were a kid. You always cared about others.”

Mae kept my hand in hers, and she squeezed it. “I wish I’d known what was going on when you were a kid.”

I nodded slowly and smiled. “Would it have changed anything?”

Chapter Seven

Mae

His words rattled around loosely. Would it have changed anything?

Probably not.

I’d still be hopelessly in love with my brother’s best friend, and he’d still need to follow his heart off this island and away from his parents.

Because that was the truth of it.

For some strange reason, I fell in love as a teenager and never broke free.

Was it true love or puppy love?

I didn’t know anything except how this man made me feel when I was around him, even now.

Shaking my head slowly, I looked into his scalding blue eyes. I could feel the intensity behind his gaze, and I wondered what put it there. Was it all this talk about the past or some sort of primal need to escape from this island and away from us all?

“I doubt it would have changed a thing,” I said honestly. “But I like to understand things, which would have explained why you were always at our house.”

His smile widened, and he stepped closer. “I was always at your house because ofyou.”

It felt like the bottom of my stomach fell out, and everything gushed to my toes. I could barely stand as his words sank deeply into my soul.

Had I imagined what he’d just said, or did he actually say it?

“Me?” I stumbled over the one word.

Tyler’s fingers pushed back some dark hair that had flattened against my cheek from the latest gust of wind. His touch sent electricity through me, and it felt like every breath was a gasp for air.

“Yeah, Mae.You.” He took another step forward, and his hand didn’t move away from my cheek.

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