This Summer Will Be Different
Carley Fortune
To Meredith, of course.
I shucking love you.
PART ONE
Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
—L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
PROLOGUE
Summer, Five Years Ago
I cupped my hands over my eyes so I could gulp down the view. A sun-drenched bay. Water glittering like sapphires beneath rust-colored cliffs. Seaweed lying in knotty nests on a strip of sandy shoreline. A wood-sided restaurant. Stacks of lobster traps. A man in hip waders.
Sea brine filled my nose and the putt-putt of a fishing boat my ears. A salt-kissed breeze sent the skirt of my dress flapping against my calves, and I smiled. It was everything I imagined my first Prince Edward Island vacation would be, minus one crucial detail. Bridget may have missed her flight, but I was here. And I was hungry.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust when I stepped inside Shack Malpeque. My attention went straight to the girl wearing fake red pigtails and a straw hat. She sat at a table by the window, and while her older brother watched the mussel farmers on the water, she plucked a thick French fry from his plate. She popped it into her mouth as she caught me staring, and I gave her a thumbs-up.
“Your problems will seem smaller once we get to the island,” Bridget had promised yesterday. I was slumped at the kitchen counter in our apartment, forehead on the granite. She rubbed my back. “Don’t listen to your parents. You’ve got this, Bee.”
Bridget never used my given name. I was Lucy Ashby to most everyone in my life except my best friend. To Bridget, I was Bee.
I stood beside the hostess stand and a hand-painted sign that read shuck it up, the tang of malt vinegar in the air making my mouth water. The mismatched wooden tables were full, and no one looked close to settling their bills. It was that kind of day.
As I was about to leave, a server with salt-and-pepper hair and three plates of lobster rolls balancing on the length of her arm called over to me.
“Take a seat at the bar, sweetie.” I twisted my neck to find a row of empty stools behind me.
And him.
He was on the other side of the counter, head tipped down, shucking oysters. His white T-shirt strained against his arms and shoulders as he worked. His hair was a shade darker than mine—a deep chocolate brown, thick and wavy—short enough that it didn’t fall into his eyes but long enough for disorderly conduct, tumbling over his forehead. The urge to dig my fingers in it was sharp.
I watched his forearms flex as he sank a small wood-handled knife into an oyster, watched his wrist twist, prying it open. He wiped his blade on a folded tea towel and then slid it through the middle of the shell. The top was tossed aside. There was another flick of his knife, and then he set the oyster on a bed of crushed ice.
As I walked closer, he cleaned his blade again. Instead of plunging it into the next oyster, he paused and glanced up at me.
I almost stumbled. His eyes were the most dazzling shade of iceberg blue, striking against his deep tan. A cleft parted the center of his chin. His face hadn’t seen a razor in at least two days, and it was a study in contrasts. Strong jaw. Soft pink lips, the bottom fuller than the top. The bright eyes trimmed in black lashes.
He held my gaze for less than a second. I saw him, and he saw me, and in that blink of time, something passed between us.
A knowing. A need. A want.
Electricity.
My pulse raced, loud and insistent in my eardrums, and the weight of all the worry and fear and shame I’d been carrying since I told my parents about quitting my job slipped from my shoulders like silk.
He went back to work and didn’t acknowledge me when I pulled out a stool. I stared at his hands as he undressed one oyster after another with incredible speed. He dismantled a full dozen and set the platter at the end of the bar.
He looked straight at me then, and for a moment we both stared. There was something guarded about his gaze, a wariness that lingered under those bright pools. For a second, I saw a flicker of sadness, but just as I was wondering where it came from, it was gone. Up close I could see that his right iris had the smallest smudge of brown below the pupil. A tiny, perfect flaw. Suddenly it didn’t seem tragic that Bridget had missed our flight. It felt like destiny. This was, without question, the sexiest guy I’d ever seen.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Starving,” I replied, and I thought I saw his lip twitch.
“Where are you in from?” His voice was deep and as dry as birch bark. His accent was thicker than Bridget’s—his you more like a yah.
“How do you know I’m in from anywhere? I could be local.”
He held my eyes. Again, an exchange. A current zipping along a live wire. His focus drifted to my hair—copper brown and braided into a crown around my head—and then to my outfit. His brow sketched up. When I planned my holiday wardrobe, I thought the dress was appropriately pastoral—an off-the-shoulder number in oversized red-and-white gingham. Anne Shirley with a modern twist. But maybe the puffed sleeves were a little on the nose.
He shrugged a single shoulder, a gesture that felt familiar. “Most islanders don’t dress like tablecloths,” he said, deadpan, as the server scooted behind him, batting him on the shoulder with a tut. I smoothed my hands over the cotton, frowning, then straightened the neckline.