Meet Me at Sunset (Evening Island) - Olivia Miles

Chapter One

Gemma

Gemma Morgan should have been staring at the blinking cursor on her computer screen, not looking down at her now bare finger, the indentation of her two-carat, brilliant-cut engagement ring still fresh, even though months had passed since she’d taken it off. Five months. Five long, hard months. She rubbed at the skin, trying to banish the mark, but, like the memory it carried, it seemed determined to stay.

She sighed and pushed her chair away from her desk. The rain that had been falling since early morning had stopped, replaced just as quickly with bright sunshine and a clear blue sky, and she walked to the window of her living room, looking out onto Lincoln Park. It was her favorite thing about this apartment—the view. Ironic, she supposed, that she had come to Chicago thirteen years ago specifically to live in the city and be part of the whole urban experience, and yet the apartment she’d chosen overlooked nature instead of the buildings that had once appealed to her.

The only way she’d even been able to afford this apartment was because of her grandmother, who had left all three Morgan sisters a not completely insignificant trust and equal ownership of Gran’s house on a small, carless island in northern Michigan, about seven hours from Chicago. When Gran had passed away last summer, Gemma had used her inheritance to upgrade her apartment, allowing enough left over to quit her rather soulless job as an account executive at the advertising agency so she could write fulltime (in theory). Her older sister, Hope, had put her share into a compounding-interest savings plan for her twin daughters, and Ellie, the youngest, had rented an art studio on the island where she lived year-round in Gran’s house, so she could pursue her painting career, or at least try to do so until her funds ran out, as their father liked to grumble.

Ellie’s decision was the only decision that their father didn’t support, but then, Bart Morgan had never agreed with Ellie’s choices, from the way she spent her free time growing up (wandering and daydreaming rather than studying and excelling at music or sports) to where she applied to college (art school). But as their mother was quick to point out, it was Ellie who had stayed at the house and taken care of Gran in her final years, so there was really nothing that Bart could say about anything. He had been free to run his steel company in suburban Ohio, and Gemma’s mother, Celia, had been free to enjoy her private tennis lessons at the club.

It had been nearly a year now since Gran had died, peacefully, at the island hospital (something else that Bart didn’t agree with, thinking she should have gone to Cleveland for better care). Nearly a year since Gemma had moved into this apartment. And nearly a year since she’d given her notice at the agency and walked home to the smaller walk-up she had then shared with her fiancé Sean, feeling purposeful and excited, knowing that now she would have all the time in the world needed to write the second book on her publishing contract. But the months had passed quickly, almost in a blur, and now that book was due in a month. Twenty-seven days, really.

And she only had seventy-three pages written. Well, seventy-two if you took away the title page.

Gemma turned from the window. The day was slipping away, as the days seemed to do lately. She glanced down at her attire: pink tee and grey sweatpants that still bore the stain of spilled pizza sauce from last night (yes, she had slept in them, too), because she hadn’t yet showered. She had cleaned the apartment, though. Scrubbed the floors on her hands and knees and even dusted the blinds. But she hadn’t written anything. And now it was already after two.

Was it any wonder that Sean had broken up with her?

Though, really, back when she was with Sean, she didn’t walk around the apartment wearing the same clothes for days on end, eating exclusively from takeout menus. Back when she was with Sean, she had written seventy-three (okay, seventy-two!) pages of her second contracted novel.

She could blame it on the time it had taken to undo her wedding plans; the endless calls to the photographer, band, church director, and hotel event coordinator had left her hot with humiliation and unable to do much more than sit in her lovely new apartment in flannel pajamas