Page 87 of Beach Cottage Kisses
And she got him, too.
Which was as close to truly happy as she was ever going to get.
Chapter Twenty-One
He’d been the catalyst to bring Iris out of hiding. Scott’s system reverberated with the knowledge over the next several days. In his most rational moments, he figured that it hadn’t been him, personally, so much as right place, right time. That Sage’s wedding had really been the break-free point.
For all his concern that Sage’s return was going to completely upend him and Iris, the first week his sister and her family were home there’d been very little difference. As long as he was on crutches, he couldn’t be out on the beach, which had always been the backdrop for their together time.
Sage had come down on Sunday, as soon as she’d dropped Leigh and Gray off at home, saying that she hadn’t wanted to set the active four-year-old loose in his house until she’d had a chance to assess Scott’s condition for herself.
But the whole family had come down for dinner Sunday night. Bringing in a fresh seafood feast. And while he felt better having them all home, and spent a great hour filling up on Leigh’s chatter, he wasn’t altogether at peace. While he’d been immersed in family, Iris had been home alone. Or out on the beach alone, as he discovered when they met on the road halfway between their cottages, late Sunday night.Morgan and Angel, who’d been together for almost a month of nights at that point, walked calmly back to Scott’s in front of the two of them.
The sex had been mind-blowing, as usual, but the aftermath, not as much. Iris fell asleep with her hand on his chest, and he lay there, absorbing her closeness and hating how accepting she was of being alone.
Of expecting to be alone.
She’d seen Sage and Gray and Leigh on Sunday, too. Had spent an hour on the beach with them that afternoon. There was no real reason for him to be out of sorts.
Yet, through that week, Sunday’s dinner kept coming back to him. Him surrounded by family for dinner. Her alone.
He should have invited her down.
Which would have felt odd, too. Looked odd to his sister.
The fact that he couldn’t be on the beach, as usual, where they’d probably have cooked out and Iris and maybe some others would have joined in, was the only reason there’d been a private family dinner.
But Iris had become family to him and Sage and Leigh over the years. Yet his sister hadn’t mentioned inviting her down.
Truth was, in the past, it wouldn’t have occurred to Scott to even have the thoughts. He and Sage and Leigh had shared meals alone at one or the other of their homes many times.
Maybe that point bothered him most of all.
He was changing.
He didn’t want to change.
He was comfortable, satisfied, with his status quo. He honestly liked his life.
Or had.
On Thursday night, four days after Sage and Gray’s return,he lay in Iris’s bed after a second especially passionate coupling with her, tired, but not at all ready for sleep. It wasn’t all that late. Just past nine. She had a dolphin photo session at dawn—would be catching a boat out prior to that—and they’d met up as soon as he’d returned home from work.
“Joel says I could be off the crutches by the weekend,” he told her, not sure if she’d want to head home right away, so she could get several hours of uninterrupted sleep, or just go home at their more regular predawn time, which, for her, would be time to jump in the shower and get to work.
Angel and Morgan were already curled up together on the floor.
“Do you feel ready?” she asked him, sounding…normal.
Holding her in the moonlit darkness, he looked at the ceiling and said, “More than ready.” To get rid of the damned sticks.
And yet, as eager as he was to return to full health, him being completely mobile again would bring more change to the little world he and Iris had created over the past several weeks.
Even that thought bothered him. That he was bothered at all bugged him. That he’d been getting increasingly more so since Sage’s return had him on edge, too.
Lying still so that Iris could get some sleep—she wasn’t making any move to leave so he figured she’d be staying—Scott told himself that he was just tired of being laid up. Missing the freedom to walk the beach. To put on his wet suit and get in the water.
But he suspected it was more than that.
