Page 60 of Piece By Piece

Not just metaphorically, but physically beside her, holding the other end of the scavenger hunt banner they were trying to hang between two posts without a ladder, which was going about as well as one could expect.

“Higher on your side,” she said.

“If I go any higher, I’m going to need a chiropractor.”

“Oh, good Lord, you’re six foot two. Use it.”

He stretched, secured the corner with a zip tie, and then stepped back.

The banner read, Seagrove Scavenger Hunt. Follow the clues in hand-lettered text that Liza had painted the night before, with Grant’s steady hand guiding hers when the S kept coming out wobbly.

Something had shifted between them since the reveal.

Not dramatically.

There was no grand declaration or defined label.

No conversation that started with, so what are we doing?

But the air between them had certainly changed.

All the sharp edges were gone.

The careful distance he’d maintained for weeks had narrowed into something that looked a little bit like closeness.

And the good thing was, neither of them was pretending it wasn’t happening.

They moved through the setup together with such ease that people started to notice.

Liza would start a sentence that Grant would finish.

She’d hand him a zip tie without looking, and he would take it without asking.

They weren’t a couple, at least not officially, but they moved around like one.

And Seagrove was a small island where people loved to talk.

At one point, she was standing on her toes trying to pin a clue card to a corkboard outside the bakery when Grant stepped up behind her and reached over to pin it himself.

For a second, they were standing very close, his arm over her shoulder, her back almost flat against his chest, and neither of them moved as fast as they should have.

The bakery owner, SuAnn, watched them through the window and then turned to a customer and said, “$10 says they’re together by the end of this festival.”

Meg’s daughter Vivi had appointed herself their assistant.

She ran between the shops delivering clue cards to each station, reporting back with updates.

“The bakery is ready, and the marina guy put his clue card upside down, but I fixed that. Also, there’s this dog on the beach who’s wearing a bandana, and I think we should invite him.”

Grant looked at Liza.

“She’s just like you.”

“She is not, but she might be running this town by next summer.”

Vivi beamed and sprinted off to check the next station.

Across the square, SuAnn’s pie-eating contest prep was reaching a level of chaos that could only be described as SuAnn-grade.