Текст книги "Summer Rental"

Автор книги: Mary Kay Andrews

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Dorie shook her head. “Willa! I love her, but bless her heart, you guys know how she is. She’s so bossy. She’d tell me I’d chosen the wrong obstetrician, the wrong hospital. The wrong man, for sure. She’d be dragging me to La Leche meetings and I don’t know what all. And she’d for sure rat me out to Mama. And I can’t handle any of that right now. I need time to process, to figure it all out.” She sniffed. “I need this time at the beach with you guys, I really do. I need August like I never needed it before.”

“You got it,” Julia said. “We’re here, and we got your back.”

Ellis went to the sink and began rinsing out the wine glasses. “Listen, Dorie,” she began, “when does school start back?”

Dorie grimaced. “Don’t remind me. The week after Labor Day. Teachers report back the Thursday before, for preplanning.”

“That’s only a little over three weeks,” Julia pointed out. “Are you sure you’re up to going back to work at Our Lady of Angels? Especially with Stephen working there too?”

“I’ve got to,” Dorie said dully. “I signed a contract. Anyway, I need the money, and I’m gonna need the medical benefits, at least until after the baby comes.”

“Doesn’t Stephen have the same medical benefits?” Ellis asked. “Wouldn’t you be covered under his policy, assuming you didn’t go back to OLA?”

“I don’t know,” Dorie admitted. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not quitting my job. I love teaching the girls, I really do. The money’s not great, but that’s not the point.”

“It will be, if you’re going to be a single mother,” Julia said. “Don’t forget, you’ll have to pay for day care, and a hundred other things. And what about a place to live? What will you do about the house? Do you think Stephen will let you keep it?”

Dorie clapped her hands over her ears. She rocked back and forth in her chair. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she singsonged. “I just freakin’ don’t know. I only know I hate Stephen. Hate. Hate. Hate.”

“I hate him too,” Ellis said, yawning.

“I hate him more than both of you,” Julia declared. “I know. Let’s fire up the van, drive over to his place, and key his car.”

“No,” Ellis said, taking up the challenge. “Let’s egg his house and TP it.”

“Or key the car, egg the car, and TP his house and his car,” Dorie countered, getting into the spirit of things. “Remember when we did that to Amber Peek, senior year, after she started spreading rumors that Julia was pregnant right before Christmas break?”

“I just remember my daddy made me pay for a whole new paint job for that piece-of-crap Tercel of hers when we got caught,” Ellis said.

“It was worth it though,” Dorie said. “Amber Peek. That lying bitch.”

They were both looking at Julia now, waiting for her to chime in with her own diatribe against her mortal enemy, Amber Peek.

“Good old Amber,” Julia said. “She was a bitch, and a sneak, and I’m glad you guys screwed up her car. But she wasn’t lying. Not that time. I really was pregnant, you know.”

17

Ellis and Dorie sat back in their chairs, too stunned to speak.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Julia said shakily. “I wanted to tell you. But my mother was so mortified … so … ashamed. She made me swear I’d keep it a secret. I almost told you, that night after her funeral, back at the house, but I couldn’t do it. Not in her house. Not after I promised.”

Finally Ellis picked up the discarded deck of cards. She began laying out a hand of solitaire.

“Why tell us now?” she asked.

“I need to,” Julia said. “I’ve needed to tell you for a long time. But I was afraid of what you’d think of me.”

“Oh, Julia,” Dorie said softly. “Julia.”

Ellis wrinkled her brow. “But … you didn’t even have a boyfriend your senior year.”

Julia grinned the old Julia grin. “Not one you guys knew about. You wouldn’t have approved. He was an army Ranger, stationed at the air base at Hunter. We met at an oyster roast. He asked me out, I went. He was cute, even with those awful haircuts they made the guys get, and I could tell he was totally smitten.”

“Did he have a name?” Ellis asked, annoyed, all these years later, that Julia had managed to conceal such a huge secret.

“Jack,” Julia said. “His name was Jack, he was twenty years old, and the thing I liked best about him was that he was a good half-a-head taller than me—which sealed the deal. I mean, I was six feet tall, so there weren’t a lot of guys out there that I could look up to. We went out exactly four times before we had sex.”

“He forced you!” Dorie cried. “Raped you?”

“Nope,” Julia said. “He was nice. Horny, but nice. I wanted to. I was eighteen years old, and I’d decided I didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. After all,” she said, nodding at Dorie, “you’d already done the deed, the summer before we were seniors. And as far as I knew, Ellis might never pop her cherry. So I just decided to go for it.”

“And?” Ellis said, trying to decide how she felt about being regarded as a potential nun.

“He was sweet,” Julia said, her face softening at the memory. “Although I don’t think he had a hell of a lot more experience than I did. There were no fireworks—but then again, no nightmares, either. Anway, you know that crap we used to hear about how nobody ever gets knocked up the first time they do it? Turns out, it really is crap.”

“You had unprotected sex, with an army Ranger?” Dorie said, her eyes widening. “You could have gotten AIDS. Or syphilis.”

“It wasn’t totally unprotected. He had a Trojan, although as it turned out, it must have been a really old Trojan. I didn’t get an STD. I just got pregnant.”

“Oh. My. God.” Ellis swept the cards into a pile. “Julia, how did you manage to keep it secret? We never had a clue. Ever. Not even when Amber Peek started running her mouth.”

“The baby?” Dorie guessed. “At Christmas, when you had your appendix out? That’s what really happened?”

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Julia said. “When I missed my first period, I didn’t think anything of it. You guys remember, I never had normal periods. But when I skipped my second one, I knew. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents. It would have killed them. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. The last day before Christmas break, right after my chemistry final, I’d gone to the bathroom. My stomach was killing me. I was so damned ignorant, I just thought that was part of being pregnant. I didn’t tell you guys, I didn’t tell anybody. I was bleeding. There was so much blood, I was terrified. I remember, I bought a Kotex from the vending machine in the bathroom, and I went straight home.”

“You were hemorrhaging?” Ellis asked.

“The bleeding slowed down after a while, but I had these godawful cramps,” Julia said. “I was curled up in bed and Mama just happened to walk by my bedroom door. She heard me moaning and crying, came in, and I was in so much pain, I couldn’t even speak. But I had a fever, like 102 degrees, and then she saw the blood on my sheets, and she freaked out.

“Loaded me in her Cadillac and carried me straight to the emergency room at Saint Joseph’s, where the doctor, who just happened to be a woman in Mama’s Bunco club, had to break the news that her daughter, still dressed in her Catholic girl’s school uniform, was not suffering from a ruptured appendix, as Mama insisted, but rather, that I had an ectopic pregnancy.”

“You could have died,” Dorie said solemnly.

“Right at that moment, I wished I had,” Julia said. “If you’d seen the look on Mama’s face when I had to admit that yes, I really was pregnant. It was like she’d been punched in the stomach.”

“What … what did they do?” Dorie asked. “I’m sorry, I know this is hideous to ask, but I can’t not.”

“It’s all right,” Julia said, shrugging. “After all, I made you bare your soul, didn’t I? Anyway, they did laparoscopic surgery. Right before they sent me home from the hospital, the doctor, Mama’s friend, came in to see me. She told me the embryo had attached itself to the wall of my fallopian tube, which caused the tube to rupture, and that it never would have been a viable pregnancy. She also gave me a prescription for the pill, bless her heart.”

“What about your parents?” Ellis asked. “How were they with it?”

“As far as Daddy knew, I really did have my appendix out,” Julia said. “In the car on the way home from the hospital, Mama just told me she was disappointed in me. Jesus! Disappointed! Talk about a guilt trip. It was ten times worse than being screamed at or punished.”

Dorie shuddered. “I don’t want to think about how Phyllis would have handled that when I was eighteen. I don’t even want to think about how she’ll handle my pregnancy now, and I’m thirty-five and haven’t lived at home in fifteen years.”

“Mama said that it was Our Lady of Angels who intervened on my behalf and saved my life. I really could have bled out and died, probably would have if she hadn’t barged into my room. Mama pointed out that she wasn’t even supposed to be home that afternoon, she was supposed to go Christmas shopping, but something made her decide to cancel and stay home. Every year after that, right up until she got too sick to leave the house, she went to Mass in the chapel at OLA on December twelfth, the anniversary of the day I went to the hospital, to leave a wreath of flowers on the statue of Our Lady.”

“Your mama was a saint,” Dorie said, shaking her head. “I hope you know that.”

“I do,” Julia said, her lower lip trembling. “You don’t know how much I miss her.”

Ellis raised her wine glass in a toast. “To Catherine Capelli. God rest her soul. And to hell with Amber Peek!”

Julia raised her own glass, and Dorie, lacking one, raised her Fudgsicle stick.

*   *   *

Later, after they’d pushed a sleepy Dorie off to bed, Julia and Ellis went back to the kitchen to clean up. By unspoken agreement, Julia put away the dishes and Ellis swept the floors. “I’m turning in,” Julia said finally, draping the dish towel over the back of the kitchen door. “All this emotional upheaval just wears me out.”

“Can you stand one more question? I swear, after this, I won’t bring it up again,” Ellis said.

“I think I know what you’re gonna ask. Jack, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Ellis said. “Did you ever tell him? Or even see him again?”

“No, and no. He got shipped off to paratrooper school at the end of October, right around the time I missed my first period. He wrote me a couple times, and I wrote back once, but we were just kids. He wanted me to come see him, but I had school, and anyway, in my case, absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder. As for telling him about the pregnancy—no, I never did. I couldn’t even really admit it to myself, let alone him. I was all about denial.”

Ellis touched Julia’s shoulder lightly. “That was a hell of a secret to keep all these years. Does Booker even know?”

“No,” Julia said sharply. “I told you, aside from my mother—and that bitch Amber Peek, who only found out because her cousin happened to be in the emergency room with a broken wrist the night I was there—nobody knew.”

“Will you tell him now, since you’ve told us?”

Julia sighed. “Probably. He wouldn’t care so much about the pregnancy thing, Booker’s been around. The thing is, he wants kids. And I’m not even sure I can have a baby.”

“Oh yeah,” Ellis said, her eyes widening. “What does your gynecologist say?”

“I’ve never really asked,” Julia admitted. “At the time, they told me lots of women get pregnant and have babies after having an ectopic pregnancy, even with only one good tube, like I have. All these years, it’s never really been an issue. I had a great career, I’d seen my mother drowning in babies and diapers, and I told myself that was never gonna happen to me.”

“But now?”

“Who knows?” Julia said lightly. “Anyway, I really am going to bed now. G’night, Ellie-Belly.”

When Julia was gone, Ellis wandered aimlessly around the house. She put the deck of cards back in their box, pushed chairs under the dining room table, straightened sofa cushions. She tried the television again, but the cable was still out. She got out her phone for the first time in hours, checking to see if she had any e-mails or missed calls.

Nothing. She’d halfway been hoping for an e-mail from Mr. Culpepper. She smiled at the memory of his last message, and wondered again just how old Mr. Culpepper might be. Not that it mattered.

It was late, well past midnight, but she was oddly restless. The bookshelves by the fireplace were full of paperbacks. She trailed her fingertips across their spines—mostly romances, mysteries, and thrillers. She chose a battered Kathleen Woodiwiss paperback, The Flame and the Flower, smiling at the memory of how she and Julia had swiped Julia’s mother’s copy of the same book. They’d been what, thirteen? They’d taken the book out to the Capellis’ boathouse and read it by flashlight, giggling over the smutty parts.

Ellis went upstairs and put on her pajamas. The air in the room was hot and still. She turned on the ceiling fan and dialed down the thermostat on the window air-conditioning unit. She climbed into bed, and switched on the old-fashioned white hobnail glass lamp on her bedside table. Its shade was yellowed and coated with dust, and the bulb threw off a tiny, tired glow of orangish light. Not that it mattered. She was too keyed up to settle down with a book. She turned off the light and willed herself to sleep.

Eventually, she closed her eyes and drifted into a dream. She was in a hospital nursery, full of dozens and dozens of beautiful, pink, pudgy babies. In her dream, she leaned over a pink bassinet and saw an infant with Dorie’s strawberry blond hair, freckles, and green eyes. The next bassinet held a long, slender baby with Julia’s perfect cheekbones and dark, almond eyes. And next to that was another infant—with familiar marble blue eyes, protruding ears, and the Greene thin upper lip. The little boy opened his mouth and screamed—well, yowled—as she leaned in closer to look. Ellis’s dream self scurried away, and in the next bassinet, she saw the most beautiful baby of all: a little boy with a thick shock of dark hair like her mother’s, and her father’s calm, steady gaze. The baby was sucking his thumb, and when he saw dream-Ellis, he looked up and winked.

The wink startled Ellis awake. She sat straight up in bed, and for a moment, wondered if the dream meant anything. Eventually she decided maybe it just meant she shouldn’t drink so much wine late at night. She yawned and wished she could sleep again, but the loud hum of the air conditioner and the responding rattle of the window glass now had her wide awake. And hungry.

She went downstairs and out to the kitchen, opening cupboards and the refrigerator, trying to decide what she was hungry for, and settling for a chunk of cheddar cheese. She ate half, and then pitched the rest into the trash. Not really hungry, not really sleepy. What a mood she was in. She turned off the kitchen light, intending to go back to bed, but when she glanced out the window, she saw the full moon and reconsidered. She was at the beach, wasn’t she? Might as well enjoy it.

It was still hot out, but a breeze rustled the sea oats on the dunes, and she smelled a hint of beach rosemary mixed with the salt air. The worn boards of the walkway were cool to the soles of her bare feet. When she reached the landing at the top of the walk, she was startled. Somebody was sitting in one of the beach chairs. Suddenly remembering how she was dressed, she started to back away, but it was too late.

The garage guy turned around in his chair, a cigar clamped between his lips. The lit end glowed in the deep purple darkness. He looked her up and down, and then turned back towards the ocean.

It pissed Ellis off, him dismissing her like that. Did he think she’d turn tail and run, like the last time? She had as much right to be here as him. Pajamas or no.

“Hey,” she said, defiantly sinking down into the chair next to his.

He grunted an acknowledgment and continued staring off at the twin moons, one hanging low in the summer sky, the other reflected in the ocean.

Ellis settled back into the beach chair. She wished she’d thrown a robe or something over the thin cotton tank top and baggy pink boxer shorts with their silly design of flying cupcakes. She crossed her arms over her chest, hoping Ty Bazemore hadn’t noticed her bralessness. Or the cupcakes.

The beach below was totally deserted. It was high tide, and the waves rolled lazily in over the spot where the three women had earlier spread out their umbrella and chairs. Ellis stared up at the stars and tried to relax. This was August, damn it. The month she’d been planning for and anticipating ever since Julia’s mother’s funeral. She had earned this vacation.

But there was a lot to think about. Dorie and Stephen. Dorie and the baby. Julia’s big secret. And what about her own life? She felt guilty worrying about herself when her best friend’s life was in such turmoil, but the truth was inescapable. She felt stuck. A lifetime of planning and living by the rules had netted her a nest egg, a paid-off car and house—the safety net her father had always emphasized—and a life as dull and colorless as the sand beneath her toes. She was being strangled by that damned safety net. She would get another job, maybe move to another town if necessary, but would her life really be any different? She’d spoken glibly of reinvention to Madison, their odd new housemate, but that had just been talk, hadn’t it?

She glanced over at Ty Bazemore. His eyes met hers.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“Not so good,” she blurted, instantly regretting her own candor.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Can’t sleep,” she said lamely. “Those window units make a terrible racket. And,” she rushed on, “I lost my job. And I don’t know what I want to do next. I don’t know if I should stay in Philly, or cut my losses and move on. But I don’t know if I could sell my town house in this market. And anyway, where would I go? Back to Savannah? I love my mother, but she drives me nuts sometimes.”

Ellis clamped both hands over her mouth. Had she really just dumped her whole life out in the open for this total stranger, the guy who lived in the garage and peed off the deck?

“Sorry,” she said, feeling her face flush. “TMI.”

“Huh?”

“You know. Too much information. Don’t mind me. Guess I’m a little wired tonight.”

“What do you do?” Ty asked.

“Huh?”

“Back in Philly,” Ty said. “What kind of job did you get fired from?”

“Not fired,” Ellis corrected. “Downsized. My bank got taken over by a bigger bank.”

“But you don’t work there anymore.”

“True.”

“And leaving wasn’t your idea.”

“No. I loved my job. Or so I thought.”

“You thought?”

Ellis shrugged. “It’s really a long story. But the bottom line is, it turns out bank marketing was not the stuff of fairy tales.”

He laughed. “But you still got fired.”

Ellis frowned. Who did this jerk think he was? “It was a downsizing,” she repeated. “My department was redundant. It’s really a very generous severance package. Anyway, what kind of work do you do?”

Ty considered a moment before answering. She already knew the answer to her own question, because Mr. Culpepper had told her. But he wasn’t supposed to know that, was he?

“I do a little day trading,” he said.

“How’s that going?”

“It’s up and down. Like the market. I do all right.”

He really was infuriatingly smug.

“Got any good stock tips for me?” she asked.

“Buy low. Sell high.”

“Gee, thanks,” Ellis said sarcastically. “Let me write that one down.”

“Sorry,” Ty said. “I’m kinda in a mood myself. But that was unnecessary. No, I don’t have any stock tips. You wouldn’t want one of mine anyway.” He tapped the cigar ash into the sand, and decided to change the subject.

“This your first time on the Outer Banks?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I grew up in Savannah. Which is kinda on the beach. But it’s totally different here. The dunes and all. It’s beautiful, in a wild kind of way.”

“You should have seen it when I was a kid,” Ty said. “Most of these houses weren’t here. It was mostly dunes and beach. You know, there are still wild ponies on the beach up in Corolla. It was an awesome place to grow up. Never put on a pair of shoes from the time school let out in June ’til the time we went back in September.”

“You grew up here?”

He’d said too much. “Around here,” Ty said vaguely. “I went to high school in Manteo. I practically lived on the beach. Got my first surfboard when I was ten.”

“So,” Ellis said, giving him a winning smile, “so, what’s the deal with you? Are you hiding a wife and children in this little garage apartment?”

“Nothing like that,” Ty said. “No kids, not married. Currently.”

Ellis tucked away the word “currently” for further thought.

“And have you always been a day trader?”

“No, that’s kind of a recent thing,” he said. “I was in law school, but I dropped out. I’ve always been interested in real estate and investing, so I decided to give it a shot. Of course, I would pick the worst time since the Depression to dabble in the stock market.”

“Tell me about it,” Ellis said. “Banking’s not so hot either. But you must do okay with the market, right?”

He flipped the lid on his cigar lighter and stared out at the water. “I’ve picked some winners, but seems like I’ve picked more dogs lately. To tell you the truth, I’ve been picking up some bartending shifts at a place down in Kitty Hawk to pay the bills. Cadillac Jack’s. You ever hear of it?”

“No,” she said. “We haven’t really been going out at night much.”

“You guys should come in and check it out. I’m actually working tomorrow night.”

“Maybe we will,” Ellis said, sounding uncertain.

“Been up to Jockey’s Ridge yet?” Ty asked.

“Not yet,” Ellis admitted. “We’ve been lazy bums, just kinda hanging around on the beach. But we’ve got the whole month, right?”

“Lucky you.” Ty gave her a questioning glance. “So, seems like the three of you have been friends for a while, right?”

She grinned. “Only our whole lives. We met in grade school, in Savannah. I was the new kid, since I went to public school until third grade. Dorie and Julia have been friends since kindergarten. And we’ve just stayed close, even after all these years. Of course, we don’t get to see each other that often. Dorie still lives in Savannah, but Julia lives in London. She’s a model. And of course, I’m in Philly. Or I was.” She frowned then. “Dorie’s older sister, Willa, was supposed to come with us, but she blew us off at the last minute. Willa can be a real pain in the butt, so we didn’t really mind that much.”

“What about the new girl?” Ty asked. He’d seen her riding her bike up and down the beach road, but never with the other girls.

“Oh. Madison?” She gave Ty a furtive look. “Do me a favor, okay, don’t mention her to Mr. Culpepper. We don’t want him to jack up the rent any more.”

“My lips are sealed,” Ty said, clamping them together to keep them from twitching in amusement. “So, she’s not one of your regular posse?”

“Not hardly,” Ellis said. “Dorie met her in a restaurant, and they got talking, and Madison mentioned that she was looking for a motel room. Dorie’s been pretty worried about money, and one thing led to another, and she offered to rent her a room at Ebbtide.”

“Just like that?” Ty raised an eyebrow. “Seems kinda risky to me, inviting a stranger to live with you. What do y’all know about her?”

“She’s been living in New Jersey, but she just broke up with her boyfriend. Or so we gathered. Madison says she’s ‘in transition.’ She’s sort of odd. She keeps strictly to herself, usually won’t even eat with us. But she pays her share of the bills—with cash, so I guess it’s working out okay.”

“Yeah,” Ty said cautiously. “It must be pretty expensive, taking that big house for a whole month. How much is old man Culpepper getting for the place, anyhow?”

“Too much,” Ellis said. “The place could be nice, you know? It’s a gorgeous old house, but the furniture’s really ratty, and the house itself could use a lot of maintenance. I’ve had to really keep after Mr. Culpepper to take care of stuff like the stove and a leaking faucet. And don’t even ask about the flea situation.” She shuddered and held out an ankle. “Look—it looks like I’ve had the measles.”

Ty considered her ankle. It was a pretty ankle. Ellis had nice ankles, and good legs, and the outfit she was wearing—a tight-fitting tank top and some kinda girly boxer shorts with ridiculous cupcakes printed all over them—was an excellent look for her. It didn’t hurt that she was obviously braless, another look Ty was highly in favor of.

She caught him taking in more than her ankles, and quickly tucked her feet primly under her chair, all the while blushing furiously.

“Mind if I ask you something?” Ty said quickly, hoping she’d forgive his ogling.

“Depends on what it is.”

“What is it about women? I mean, the three of you are scattered all over the place—but you still take the trouble to rent a house and spend a whole month together. What’s up with that? I mean, I have buddies, old friends, but I can’t imagine any of us spending a weekend away together, let alone a month.”

Ellis shrugged. “Why wouldn’t we want to spend time together? These are my best friends in the whole world. We’ve been through a lot together. You know, all that teenage drama, and then college, and family stuff. Dorie’s parents had a nasty divorce when we were in middle school, and then I lost my dad a few years ago, and both Julia’s parents are dead now. And don’t get me started on the men stuff.”

She hesitated, and then plunged ahead. “I don’t know if I could have gotten through my divorce if it weren’t for Dorie and Julia. It was an awful time for me, but they were totally there for me. Julia took the train down from a magazine shoot she’d been doing in New York and actually moved in with me for two weeks. I was a pathetic mess. I eventually took a leave of absence from work, but Julia refused to let me wallow in my misery. She made me eat, get my hair cut and colored, and go back to work. And Dorie—she’s a schoolteacher, so she couldn’t just drop everything, but she called me every night and every morning, for months, just to see how I was doing.”

Ty raised an eyebrow. “You’re divorced?”

She blushed again. She really was good at it, too.

“It was a long time ago. I got married right out of college. I was young and dumb. It lasted all of three months. Crazy, huh?”

“What happened?”

Ellis gave it some thought. “We worked at the same bank. He was different from the guys I’d dated back home. He was the same age as me, but he seemed older, you know, very sure of himself, and he gave me this big rush. I didn’t really know him. He didn’t really know me. I guess I was in love with the idea of being in love with him. And then, after the big wedding, when we were actually living together, away from our families and friends and everybody, it turned out he wasn’t such a nice guy. In fact, it turned out he was a total shit.”

Ty frowned. “What, he hit you or something?”

“Nothing as dramatic as that,” Ellis said. “One night at dinner, he just announced the ‘marriage thing’ wasn’t working, and that he’d discovered he didn’t actually love me.”

“That must have sucked.”

She turned and leveled a gaze at him. “Why am I telling you all of this? I never, ever talk about my divorce, except to the girls. And here I am, spilling my guts to you.”

“And you don’t even like me,” Ty said helpfully.

“You didn’t make a very good first impression,” she reminded him.

“Hey!” he protested. “I didn’t know you were spying on me. You could have let me know you were standing there or something, you know.”

“Do you always parade around in your drawers and pee in public?” Ellis asked. “What if somebody else had seen you? Like a child? You could get arrested for public indecency.”

“It was early. Nobody ever gets to that part of the beach that time of day. And anyway, somebody would really have to work at seeing me from the beach, what with the dunes and the sea oats and everything.”

“We see you from that part of the beach,” she said pointedly.

“And I haven’t hardly walked out on the deck in my boxers at all lately, either,” Ty said. “Anyway, can I help it if you and your gorgeous friends choose to run around in your skimpy bathing suits right outside my deck? I mean, it would be un-American if I didn’t appreciate the natural beauty right there on the beach.”

“Humph,” she humphed. But the corners of her lips twitched slightly. She concluded that up close like this, Ty Bazemore wasn’t nearly as repulsive. In fact, he was alarmingly attractive, with his rumpled hair and cleft chin. She’d always been a sucker for a cleft chin.

“I’ll just bet you do enjoy looking at Dorie and Julia,” she said lightly. “I mean, Julia’s a model, and as for Dorie, well, no matter what she does to try to hide it, she’s always had the kind of looks that draws men like flies.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, they’re okay,” he said. “Especially the curvy little redhead. But actually, since you mention it, you’re pretty killer in a bathing suit yourself, Ellis Sullivan. Especially that black one-piece.”

She gaped at him, blushing furiously.

He grinned innocently. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. It’s a simple observation. A compliment. No need to call the vice squad.”

This conversation was taking a decidedly personal turn, Ellis decided. She fought the urge to cut and run. Ty Bazemore had just told her he liked her black bathing suit. She should stay and flirt. She remembered how to flirt, didn’t she?

In the meantime, he was still looking at her, lazily taking in those stupid cupcake boxers and her flimsy tanktop. Panic set in again. She yawned widely and stood to go.

“Bedtime,” she said. “Well, good night.”

“So soon?” he said, standing up lazily. “What’s your hurry?”

“No hurry,” she said lightly, starting back up the boardwalk towards the house. “It’s been a long day and I’m tired, that’s all.”

“I scared you with that compliment, didn’t I?” he called. “Funny, you didn’t strike me as a wussy.”

That stopped her in her tracks. Wussy? Who was he calling a wussy?

She marched right back to the deck, stopping when she was inches away from him. “You take that back,” she said, her fists clenched. “I killed a rattlesnake in my backyard with a shovel when I was ten. My daddy was standing right there but he was terrified of snakes. He barfed when he saw what I’d done. I was the only girl at our neighborhood pool who would backward dive off the high dive. I was the quarterback on my college coed flag-football team, and I broke my nose and played the next day anyway. I am not a wussy.”