“And you’ve lived in New Jersey your entire life?”

Mark laughed. “Yup. Born and raised right in Edgewater. I’ve never been to the Hamptons either. Guess I should rectify that sometime soon.”

“You really should. I personally could do without the Hamptons. In the summer it’s mostly just upscale shops and mobbed with polished people. Montauk is way more laid back, for the most part—an old fishing village and more casual. I love it out there.”

“Well, then, I’ll have to make a point of coming out this summer. Maybe you can give me a tour if I do.”

“Sure.” I looked at Allison and Desiree. “Really, guys. Let’s keep in touch. You’re all welcome if you come out.”

We hugged and promised to call soon, and then I headed to my car. I’d had to turn off my phone before the test started, so I powered it back on. As soon as the screen illuminated, Ford’s name popped up with a new text message.

Ford: Well, how’d it go? Don’t keep me hanging…

I smiled. Ford and I had been texting all week. Initially, the texts had been about Bella—he’d asked if I’d seen her and how things were going. But the last few days they’d had nothing to do with his sister. It felt like we were back to when we’d first started texting, before I knew Donovan620 was Ford—the boy next door.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy our communications. He was witty, and, though I shouldn’t have, I looked forward to hearing from him. I might’ve even been checking my phone like a teenage girl the last few days. I knew it was wrong, but I could justify it in my head as keeping in contact because of Bella. It was the right thing to do. And now, he was just being cordial—asking how my test had gone. That was it. He was being neighborly… I couldn’t not respond.

I sighed, knowing full well that I was full of shit, yet texted back anyway.

Valentina: I feel like I did okay.

He texted back immediately.

Ford: Excellent. We’ll need to celebrate this weekend.

I hated that I got a flutter in my belly reading that he’d be in Montauk again soon.

Valentina: You’ll be out this weekend?

Ford: Already here. Got back about an hour ago.

I masked how I really felt.

Valentina: Oh. That’s nice. I’m sure Bella must be happy with some company.

Ford: Forget her. Hoping you’ll be happy with some company, too…

I didn’t want to answer truthfully, so I decided against responding at all. The man made me flustered to begin with, and I needed to drive. I’d see him tomorrow. So I tossed my phone into my purse and started the car.

The man made me flustered.

Boy.

Think of him as a boy, Valentina.

I wanted to so badly.

But it was becoming harder and harder to remember his age.

***

“Hey,” I yelled over to Ford as I walked out onto my back deck. He blinked a few times and looked up from his laptop. I thought he’d seen me come out, but apparently he hadn’t.

“You’re back.”

“Just got in a few minutes ago. How’s Bella?”

“She’s good. Just left for work. The house is still standing, so I guess things went okay.”

I smiled. I’d planned to sit on the back deck and enjoy the late-afternoon sun, but it felt weird now since we were both alone. Our houses stood so close together that we could probably jump from one deck to the other if we had to.

“Glad it worked out. You look busy. I’ll let you get back to work.” I waved and turned to go back into the house.

Ford’s voice stopped me as my hand hit the handle to the sliding glass door. “Wait,” he called. “What are you up to now?”

“Umm. I…uh…I was going to go for a walk,” I lied. “It took me almost four hours to get here with all the traffic. Figured my legs could use a good stretch.”

“Mind if I join you? I need to stop staring at this computer.”

“Uh. sure. That’d be great. I’m going to go change. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Changing turned into fixing my hair, brushing my teeth, and touching up my makeup. I was really disappointed in myself for putting in so much extra effort.

When I walked back out to the deck, I found Ford waiting at the bottom of my stairs with two glasses of wine. I had two beers in my hand. “Guess we both had the same idea.”

“Great minds. Do you want to leave one here or double-fist it for our walk?”

“Why don’t we sit for a few minutes before we start walking? I’m not sure I’m capable of maneuvering through the sand without spilling both.”

“Good idea.” We sat side by side on the third stair from the sand. I chose to drink the wine first, while Ford picked up the beer.

“Did you bring beer because you know I like it?” he asked.

I smiled. “Did you bring the wine because it’s what I drink?”

He smiled back. “Only because we don’t have any olive juice in the house. I’ll have to remedy that.”

Our legs brushed against each other, and arousal shot through me. Seriously, it was just a leg. What the hell was wrong with me? My libido had been dead for so long, and it had to pick a totally inopportune time to wake up? Nothing like a smidge of alcohol to put it back to sleep. I swallowed half my glass of wine and tried to be myself.

“You looked like you were stressed sitting in front of your laptop. Everything okay at work?”

“Nah, it wasn’t work. I was weeding through the mountains of women on Match.com who messaged me.”

The burn of jealousy crept through my body, making me feel warm.

“Oh. That’s nice.”

Ford bumped my shoulder with his. “Kidding. I haven’t been on Match since we started talking. You?”

I shook my head. Not wanting to analyze why either of us hadn’t gone back to the dating site, I moved our conversation along. “I must’ve misread concentration for stress.”

He shook his head. “You actually didn’t. I have some big decisions to make at work that are weighing on my mind.”

“You said you work in real estate, right?”

“Yeah. My family owned a commercial storage business, and my dad and I had started to move into temporary office space, too. The commercial storage side of things doesn’t do as well anymore, so we’d begun transitioning the buildings we own into something new. The storage facilities convert into pretty nice temporary office suites—high ceilings, exposed ductwork, and brick. We converted one before the accident, and it’s done really well. People love the idea of having a place to go work with everything available to them—receptionist, printers, Wi-Fi, furniture—but without the long-term lease commitment and expense. Most people only work from an office a few days a week, so sharing the cost and space with others works out.”

“Wow. That’s amazing. Were you a business major in college?”

He shook his head. “Architecture.”

“Well, I guess converting the space goes with that, then, right?”

“Yeah. My dad was the business side of things. I just saw the potential in the old buildings. It was something we were doing together.” He pushed around the sand with his foot and grew quiet.

“It must’ve been a lot to step into everything after your parents…”

He nodded. “My parents were smart about contingency planning, though. They had a trust in place so if anything happened to them, the stock in their corporation went to me and my sister, but their CFO became the president until I graduated college and turned twenty-one. Once I did those things, I had the option of becoming co-president, which I did. Then at twenty-five, I became the sole president.”

“So you’ve had help the last few years, but now you’re on your own?”

“Technically, yeah. But Devin, the CFO, is still there for me whenever I need him. We have a few more commercial storage buildings with leases coming due, so I’m struggling to decide whether to convert them into more temporary office space. Now would be the time. That’s the stress you read on my face while I was on my laptop.”

“I take it that’s not an easy decision.”

“It is and it isn’t. The storage business still makes a profit, but the office space is a much higher return on investment. One of the buildings that could be available to convert soon is the first one my parents bought twenty-five years ago. It was special to them, so it feels wrong to change things… They worked so hard to build what they had.”

I might not be a business mogul, but I knew adding emotion to any business decision made it so much harder. “Let me ask you something. If your father was still here, and he saw the numbers for the office space compared to the storage business, what would he do?”

Ford smiled. “He’d convert them all except for the building they started with. He’d keep that one for my mom.”

I shrugged. “Well, maybe that’s your answer, then.”

He thought about that for a minute and then nodded. “You know what? You’re right. I’m looking at it wrong. I should be honoring my father by doing what I think he would do, not by freezing his business in time.”