Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“Well,” Professor Vitucci said, “good thing you’re not a private investigator or anything, because that would make it far too easy.”
Evan laughed, and it felt good. Something shifted inside, feeling suddenly lighter. “True enough.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Evan stepped from his car, looking around with some amount of awe. He felt like he’d arrived in a different world. Off to his left, just over a slatted walking bridge flanked by tall grass swishing in the slight breeze, the ocean cast off diamonds, sparkling in the sun. The call of a bird gliding up above caused Evan to raise his head and squint into the cloudless blue sky before looking back to the wooden sign announcing that he’d arrived at the right place: SWEETGRASS COTTAGES.
Where Noelle lived and worked.
His heart sped, and he took a deep breath of the salt-tinged air before shutting the door of his rental car and heading toward a brick walkway flanked by grand moss-draped trees that led to a plantation-style home.
Wow.
The website he’d looked at had been well done, but it didn’t do justice to the beauty of this property in person.
The grounds were beautifully maintained, some sort of fragrant red flowers growing in beds along the porch and vining through the slats of the rails. He climbed the short set of steps, taking in the comfortable-looking wicker furniture—currently unoccupied—the hanging ferns, and the pots of cascading flowers. Underneath the eave, fans rotated slowly. Evan stepped to the vast mahogany door with a small gold sign next to it that read RENTAL OFFICE. With another flutter in his chest, he pulled the door open and stepped into the air-conditioned lobby.
“Hello, sir,” a smiling blonde in a white blouse and navy shorts greeted, stepping behind the curved mahogany counter that sat in the middle of the foyer. There was a sweeping staircase behind her, with a velvet rope at the base that declared the upstairs private. “Will you be staying with us?” the young woman asked.
“Ah, no, actually. Well, maybe.” He cleared his throat. “What I mean is, I’m here to see one of your employees. Noelle Meyer.”
Her brows moved slightly, but her smile remained. “Noelle? Oh. Sure. Let me call her and tell her you’re here. Your name?”
He hesitated, worried that she’d decline to see him. It was why he’d taken a flight here to South Carolina after he’d made the effort to locate her and find where she’d been living for the last seven years. He tried to convince himself it wasn’t overkill that he hadn’t just called her. He tried to convince himself that once he’d gotten it in his head to see her, he simply couldn’t shrug off the yearning. The slight desperation he felt wasn’t the same as it’d been. It was merely a want now. The need to see her. To make sure she was doing well. To reconnect in some small way, even if that simply meant getting some closure. But he couldn’t force her to see him, even if it had taken him half a day to get here. “Evan Sinclair,” he said.
The woman nodded, picking up the phone and dialing. After a minute, she set it down. “I’m sorry, she’s not answering. She’s probably making the evening rounds to the cottages and should be done in an hour or so. Do you want to wait?” She gestured to a small grouping of red upholstered furniture to her right.
He was far too antsy for that. “I think I’ll take a walk to the shore and come back.”
“Sure.”
Evan left the house, descended the steps, and turned toward the shaded path, where he saw the side of a smaller building around the main house. The cottages? According to the website, there were ten cottages of various sizes and guest capacity, stretching out behind the main house, where the owner of the property still lived, a Mrs. Chantilly Calhoun.
Instead of heading to the shore, he took the path that led around the house, passing a sign that said COQUINA and had an arrow pointing toward a quaint bungalow that he could partially see through the foliage. Several paths lay before him, and he stopped, simply curious about the layout of the property.
He heard a little girl’s voice saying something excitedly and then the sound of a woman responding. The child laughed, and then he heard the scamper of little feet as she ran down one of the paths nearby, her white dress flashing through the trees and bushes as she passed him.
Lured by the sound of that second voice, Evan moved through the trees, another larger cottage rising on his right. There were towels flung over the railing of that one and sand toys sitting on the porch. What a beautiful, serene place. Each of the cottages was tucked away among trees and foliage just off the meandering main path that he assumed stretched quite a way back.