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almost
imagine that he was alone in the world.
    He followed the bend and
caught sight of Tide, nestled just beyond the edge of the sand. As
he drew closer, he saw a figure silhouetted by the door. She
paused, glancing over her shoulder, and Logan dared to hope that
she was looking for him.
    He turned up the narrow
walkway that led to the Riptide. Jude raised a hand in
greeting.
    “Hey. You here to mooch off
my water and coffee again?” It had become her standard teasing
greeting.
    “I’m doing you a service,
testing that stuff you call coffee before you unleash it on the
unsuspecting public. You ought to be paying me.”
    Laughing, she swung open the
door. “Well, when you put it that way...”
    His dark brown eyes tracked
her routine movements, and he snuck behind the bar to snag a water
bottle before taking up his usual seat on a bar stool.
    “So...you make out okay last
night?”
    The look Jude flashed him
was a mix of guilt and worry, and his heart plummeted.
    “Last night? What do you
mean?”
    He chose his words
carefully. “Your first night without the kids. I know they went
back to school yesterday. So I thought things might have felt a
little...quiet.”
    “Oh.” She shook her head,
and he definitely detected relief. “Yeah. I was fine.” She paused
for a minute, measuring coffee into the machine. “Actually, I had
dinner with Matt. I think he was thinking the same thing—that I
might be lonely. So he took me out.”
    Logan already knew about
their date, but he feigned surprise. “That was nice. Where’d you
go?”
    Jude shrugged. “The new
Italian place. It wasn’t bad. Maybe a little pretentious. But you
know, restaurants...”
    He nodded. “Yeah. But it
must’ve been good to get out. Have a little fun.”
    She smiled. “It was. Matty’s
a good guy, you know? He just needs...” Her voice trailed off, and
her mouth dropped open a little as she stared out the dark
window.
    Logan frowned and followed
the direction of her gaze, but he didn’t see anything. “What? Jude,
are you okay?”
    “Hmm? Oh, yeah.” She grinned
across at him, and her eyes sparkled. Logan’s heart skipped a beat
again, but this time for a completely different reason.
    “I’ve been thinking and
thinking since last night. Matt needs someone in his life. You
know? Someone to love. Someone to love him, to take care of him. He
takes care of everyone else, the town—even me. That was what last
night was about.”
    “Okay.” Logan was cautious,
not sure where she was going with this.
    “So it just hit me. There’s
this girl I met when I was doing the grief support group. You
remember that? Right after Daniel died. She was actually from the
Cove originally, but she’s living across the bridge now. She was
younger than us. I think she graduated with Molly.” Matt’s youngest
sister was six years younger than the rest of them.
    “And you think she and Matt
would be good together?”
    Jude put her hand on her hip
and leaned against the counter. “I think they would be freaking
awesome together. Sandra is a firecracker. She’s got one little
girl, and she wants more kids—I remember she said that at one of
the meetings. Perfect.”
    Logan propped one elbow up
on the bar. “Did you and Matt talk about this last night? I
thought—”
    Jude glanced at him as she
poured his coffee. “You thought what?”
    “That maybe last night—when
you said Matt took you out to dinner, I thought maybe it was more
like...a date situation.”
    She stared at him for a
solid moment, stopped in the middle of handing him his coffee.
    “A date? Matt and me? Why on
earth would you think that?”
    Logan tried to look cool.
“You said he took you out to dinner. You’re single, he’s
single...why would it be so crazy for me to think it might be a
date?”
    She plunked down his coffee
mug hard enough that some of it sloshed out onto the bar top.
    “Um, because it’s Matt . And me . We’ve known each other since we were in
grade