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“I have this irresistible urge to pull up Ryder’s website and buy sports equipment.”

She laughed, took a little bow. “But seriously, did you notice any glitches, dead ends, wrong turns?”

“Maybe a hockey stick,” he considered. “I don’t play hockey, but I feel this sudden need to own a hockey stick. Sonya, I don’t know much about marketing, advertising, but I know smooth when I see it, and I just did. Smooth and smart. Playing up the history of the company, the family? Smart.”

He set the cat aside and rose.

“I—more or less—got what you were doing with the photos you had my mother take. But seeing how you’ve used them, put this all together? That’s a different level.

“And I really want that hockey stick.”

“Crushed it.” Cleo rubbed her hands together. “Told you.”

“It feels right. It may be my first major presentation for my own company, but it feels right. I don’t know what angles By Design’s going for, but it’ll be smart and slick and sleek.”

“Yours is smart,” Trey reminded her. “It’s not slick and sleek. Smooth is different from slick and sleek.”

“It is. Yes, it is. Nothing much more to do than see if Ryder prefers slick and sleek or smooth.”

“I said it before and don’t mind saying it again. Crushed it. Now I’m going to make some tea and head up to play with a new idea of my own.”

“Want to share?” Sonya asked her.

“Not yet. But I can make tea for three if you want.”

“Tea on a cool, rainy night sounds good.” Sonya took Trey’s hand. “We’ll all go down. I need to put this presentation aside so I don’t obsess.”

After they brewed tea, Cleo took hers, and Pye, upstairs.

“Is she making herself scarce because of me? I don’t want that.”

Sonya shook her head as they started to take their tea to the parlor with the idea of starting a fire. “If that was it, she’d have said she was just going up. If she said she has an idea to play with, she has one.”

As they approached the music room, music—slow and dreamy—flowed out.

“That doesn’t sound like Clover’s style.” Sonya stopped at the doorway. “It’s a record. It’s the Victrola playing a record! That’s new. And here I am finding that really charming.”

“I’d say that’s old—as far as the music goes. Ah, ‘Body and Soul.’ I’ve heard my grandparents do this one.”

As charmed as she, Trey took her hand, drew her inside the room. Then setting his tea and hers aside, took her in his arms.

Swayed into a dance.

And here and now, he thought as they held close, matched steps, while the old music played, and the rain fell, it felt perfect.

Chapter Seventeen

Through the night, while others walked, wept, plotted, or grieved, they slept undisturbed.

The gray haze of dawn held back the light, shrouding the day to come, and all its demands. In the hearth, the fire simmered low, adding warmth, bringing a hint of gilded light as Sonya woke. Content, she curled a little closer to hold on to the quiet, and him.

Bodies fit, curve to angle, angle to curve.

In that gray haze, his lips found hers. Soft, slow, sleepy. And on a sigh, she answered in kind. They embraced the warmth and each other in the old bed while the sea drummed its steady beat, while the last of the stars winked out.

As his hands moved over her, slow and sure, contentment became a yearning.

With tender touches, with gentle tastes, in the stillness of that softening edge between dark and light, yearning spilled into need.