Page 6 of Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy

This time he harrumphs, and it’s precisely the harrumph I’ve always imagined.

“Wrong Dylan Sterling?” I guess.

He raises a brow, looking deeply unimpressed with my deductive reasoning. Then he trudges down the porch steps, picks up my suitcases—one in each hand—and with no display of effort whatsoever, carries them up the stairs and pauses in the doorway, casting me an over-the-shoulder glance that suggests I should stop dawdling in the yard, gaping as though I’ve just seen a very famous, very not-real pirate greeting me in faded jeans from my doorstep.

My mind is buzzing with questions, but Zane/Dylan’s impatient expression suggests any questions will have to wait—or possibly never be asked at all—so I head inside, following him up the stairs and into the second-floor bedroom I used as a kid. A powerful wave of nostalgia washes over me as I take in the pink striped floral wallpaper that’s peeling at the edges and the dotted Swiss curtains running from floor to ceiling, tied back and no longer bright white. Dark maple furniture matches several heavy picture frames on the wall behind the headboard, each frame holding a family photo that jogs another memory. Sailing. Snowball fights. Wildflower crowns. Lemonade. The wood floor is desperate for a scrub, and the entire room is dusty and dim in the evening light, but the bed looks freshly made, with crisp white sheets neatly folded over the top edge of a fluffy, pale-blue duvet that has replaced the ancient quilt I used to sleep under.

“I figured this room,” Dylan says, thus far proving himself to be as sparing with his words in person as he was in his emails. When I frown in confusion at his vague half statement, he nods at a cluster of embroidery-floss friendship bracelets that ring one of the bedposts. I made them the summer I turned sixteen, even though I didn’t have anyone to give them to.

“Right, of course,” I say. “This room’s great. And thanks for picking up new bedding. I’ll reimburse you. Or buy extra groceries or whatever feels like a reasonable exchange.”

“No need. Least I could do.”

“Well, thank you,” I say. “And I’ll still cover some groceries. Or make you dinner one night. Or both. We can start a list of things to pick up and pin it to the fridge or somewhere else we can both easily add to it so if either of us is heading into town—”

“I’ve been using the east room on the third floor,” he interjects. “That okay?”

I reel at the interruption. Maybe I was babbling, but still . . .

“Of course. It’s fine. Like I said in my email, I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

He tips his chin in a way that might mean thanks, okay, or please let this be the last conversation I ever have to have with this woman. Whatever it means, this conversation appears to be over because he steps past me and into the hall, though he turns around in the doorway.

“One question,” he says.

I attempt a friendly smile. “Sure. Anything.”

“Are you here to sell it?”

“The house?”

His brows lift. His only reply.

Okay, yes, obviously the house. What else would he be asking about?

“No,” I say. “I have no plans to sell the house. I just need a place to stay until I figure out what I want to do with my life. And yes, I realize I should probably know by now, and I did know for a while, but things didn’t work out the way I thought they would, so now I don’t.”

He replies with a barely discernible nod, one I might interpret as dismissive, but his gaze remains steady, as though this time, if I chose to say more, he wouldn’t interrupt.

“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.

Another barely there nod, but one that’s much easier to interpret.

“Why do you look exactly like Zane Scarlett from my grandmother’s romance novels?”

His inky brows rise with surprise. “She never told you?”

I choke out a laugh. “That she magically ripped you from the pages of her stories?”

“That I modeled for the covers. It was how we got to know each other. By the time she needed someone to help with her books, we were pretty good friends.”

I feel my eyes go wide with surprise, though I’m not sure what surprises me more, that my bubbly, chatty grandmother was friends with a conversationally minimalist male model less than half her age or that of all the people she could hire to assist with her work and help write her series, a guy who looked good in tight pants and tanning spray was the way to go.

“She only ever referred to you as ‘the writer,’” I tell him. “And only in those last years.”

Another nod, a slow one, like he’s taking this in and maybe even pleased by it.

I set a hand on the bedpost. He shoves his hands into his pockets. I shift. He shuffles. The silence between us grows agonizing as awkwardness radiates off both of us like the bad perfume drugstores make people walk through before we can buy tampons or toothpaste. One of us should say something, but I have no clue what that something should be.