She surveyed the landscape ahead too, but she was actually doing it for a dual purpose. One, to make sure there wasn’t any danger ahead, that the teens on the beach around their bonfires were being smart, and that the rules were being followed.
Two, she wanted to find a nice, secluded place where she could share her first kiss with Paul. They’d been out twice before tonight, and Laurel thought a third, amazing date was the perfect time for their first kiss.
He’d been holding her hand since the first date. On the second, he’d walked her right to her door, kissed her cheek and hugged her goodnight.
He planned dates too, which was something new for Laurel, as most of the men she dated wanted her to suggest things for them to do. Not Paul. Their first date had been a scooter tour of the island, with a miniature concert at three venues along the way. She’d really enjoyed a different way to experience Diamond Island, and she’d still been able to talk to Paul on the ride.
Their second date had been more traditional—dinner and a movie, but he’d taken her to the local drive-in, which was more of a dive-in, where they only showed old movies. They’d watched Jaws, shared popcorn, laughed, talked, and snuggled in the back of Paul’s pick-up truck. Laurel had enjoyed herself immensely, as Paul was articulate and kind, broad-shouldered and bearded, and just about everything that attracted Laurel to a man.
Tonight, he’d taken her to a couples cooking class, and they’d made their own stuffed pork chops, garlic mashed potatoes, and basted asparagus. The whole night had been an experience, and Laurel liked watching Paul work with a knife in his hand, his movements slow but sure.
She’d learned that he was a decent cook; it was just a matter of having recipes to make that he knew he’d like. She’d told him about her family and her road to becoming a detective in Five Island Cove.
She hadn’t been born on the islands, but her father was a native. Her parents still lived in Nantucket, where her dad lived, breathed, and sold real estate. Laurel had come to the cove to visit her aunt one summer just out of college, and she’d fallen in love with the islands, the people, the food, and the traditions.
She loved the classic car parade, and the saltwater volleyball tournament. She loved the sailboats that dotted the waters, the many ways to eat seafood, and the hot air balloon festival.
“You said your sister is here?” Laurel asked as she spotted a set of stairs they could take down to the sand. The last bonfire sat twenty feet behind them, and perhaps she could persuade Paul to go out to the water’s edge to dip in their toes. Then they’d be more secluded, and maybe she could get her kiss.
“Yeah,” Paul said. “For the weekend is all.” He smiled down at her. “What do you think about meeting her?”
Surprise moved through Laurel. “Meeting your sister? Wow.”
He chuckled and swung their hands a little harder than he had been. “It would be like meeting my mother,” he said. “Since she’s gone now, the only female I have in my family to constantly nag me about my bachelor status is Julie.”
Laurel laughed with him, her whole body warming in the cooling night. “Maybe we can get together for brunch on Sunday.”
Paul sobered and looked at her. “If you mean that, I’ll text her right now.”
Laurel beamed up at him. “I mean it.”
He dropped her hand and got out his phone. While his fingers flew across the screen, Laurel checked her phone too. Chief Sherman had messaged her through a private app where she’d turned notifications off. “Erin” had said, We need pickles tonight at ten.
Her heartbeat leapt into the back of her throat, and she glanced at the clock. Just after nine. She really needed to wrap this date up if she was going to make that appointment.
A touch of annoyance ran through her. Didn’t he spend Friday nights with Eloise? How was he going to get out of the house?
You just assume I’m free on a Friday night, she sent. I’ll do my best.
On a date? came right back.
Yes.
Name the time. I can get away almost any time after ten.
Let’s do eleven, she sent.
Later is better, he said. Midnight?
Laurel saw her beauty rest disappearing right before her eyes. Midnight it is. She’d barely sent the message before Paul looked up from his phone.
“She’s thrilled,” he said.
Laurel shoved her phone in her back pocket without looking at Aaron’s last message. “What did you tell her?”
Paul turned his phone toward her, and Laurel scanned the few messages. “Oh, I see an interesting word,” she teased.
“Yeah?” Paul looked at his phone too, his eyebrows drawing down in the most adorable way. “Which one?”
“Girlfriend,” she said, re-taking his hand and tugging on it to get him to walk with her.
“Is that interesting?” he asked.
Laurel giggled and led him down the steps to the sand. “It is to me.”
“Why’s that?” Paul let go of her hand and slipped his fingers along her waist. “We’ve been out a few times now. I’m thinking of you like that.”
Laurel paused and faced him. “Do you usually kiss your girlfriends?”
He swallowed as his eyes dropped to her mouth. “Yeah, usually.”
“I don’t really count a man as my boyfriend until that first kiss,” she whispered, tiptoeing her fingers up the front of his shirt.
“Let’s take care of that then,” he said, putting his other hand on her lower back and bringing her close. He hesitated, and Laurel kept her eyes closed, all of her other senses on high alert.
Paul’s lips finally touched hers, and Laurel sucked in a breath through her nose. Fire licked down her throat and through her stomach, and then Paul really kissed her.
Hours later, Laurel crossed the dark bit of asphalt from where she’d parked her car behind the short trees to where Aaron had pulled up in his cruiser. The doors unlocked a moment before she reached for the handle, and she slid into the car in the next moment.
The overhead light had not come on, and anyone who happened to drive behind the grocery store wouldn’t be able to see her car or her in the passenger seat.
“Evening,” Aaron said.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Laurel said in a disgusted tone.
“Did you find anything?” he asked, ignoring her attitude. They’d met a couple of times in his office, which no one had questioned. But the last two times had been right here, later at night, as they passed documents and information back and forth in person to avoid leaving a paper or email trail.
“The birth certificate is from Maine,” Laurel said, handing him a sheet of paper. “It’s got his mother’s name on it, as well as a man named Hugo Oakwood.”
“So he’s not Kelli’s half-brother.”
“I’m almost one hundred percent sure of that,” Laurel said. “His mother died last year; she’s not in a nursing home. The birth certificate was changed three days later, and only ten months ago. Here’s a record of that.”
Aaron took the second paper from her and studied it. “Good work, Laurel.”
She couldn’t help swelling under his compliment. They were hard to earn from Aaron Sherman, and while she didn’t crave them now as much as she once had, it was still nice to hear him praise her.
He drew in a long breath and pushed it out. “What am I going to do about this guy?”
“He hasn’t done anything illegal,” Laurel said.
“Yet,” Aaron said. “He has harassed the mother outside her home. He has asked Kelli for the Glassworks. If he tries to use his fake identity to get it…”
“Then we’ll close in on him,” Laurel said.
“I don’t have the manpower to tail him all the time,” Aaron said, looking out his window. His unrest carried like a scent on the air, but Laurel didn’t know what to do about it.
“Maybe,” she said carefully. “It’s time you looped Eloise and Kelli in on this.”
“No,�
� Aaron said instantly. “El is swamped at the inn, and she’s not in a good place to hear this too.”
“What about Kelli?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I could talk to her. Eloise told me she’s found the stuff about the children’s wing in Savannah.”
Laurel had found that the very next day after Aaron had asked her to start digging into Zach Watkins. But she hadn’t had to find a place to live, register her son for school, or find a job.
“Let’s talk to Kelli on Monday,” Laurel said. “Then maybe we can sleep at this time of night.”
“I wasn’t asleep yet,” Aaron said.
“I’m sure you weren’t,” Laurel said, smiling at him.
He grinned back at her, and he was so boyishly handsome when he did. Laurel still felt a tiny spark of attraction for the man, but she told herself any woman would. He was gorgeous, strong, and hardworking. What wasn’t to like?
“Who are you seeing?” he asked.
“Oh, uh.” Laurel quickly moved her gaze out the window. “We just made it official tonight.” She worked hard not to lift her fingertips to her lips, which still tingled with Paul’s touch. “We were going to come talk to you on Monday.”
“Oh? One of my guys, then?”
“Yes,” Laurel said. “Paul Leyhe.”
Aaron’s chuckle filled the cruiser. “I can see you two together. He’s a great guy.”
“Yeah, I kind of think so too,” Laurel said, finally looking at her boss. “We’ll fill out the paperwork on Monday.”
“Be sure you do,” he said. “I can’t have you two working together on anything, or we’ll find ourselves in a heap of trouble.”
“I know, boss,” she said, smiling. “We hardly ever work together anyway. He’s narcotics.”
“Yeah, well, I was thinking of a change for you,” he said. “But maybe now I’m not.”
Laurel gaped at him. “I don’t want narcotics—or a change. I like what I’m doing.”
“I’ll leave you alone, then,” Aaron said. He nodded to the folder. “Anything else in there?”
“No, sir.” She handed him the folder anyway, and he replaced the documents she’d found in it.
“Thanks again, Laurel. I better get back to Eloise.”
“Oh, she’s living with you now?”
He shook his head, his jaw tightening. “No, she just stays over some nights.”
Laurel’s imagination went into overdrive, and she wondered what it would be like to even kiss Aaron Sherman.
Her whole body flushed. Eloise was a very lucky woman, and Laurel really needed to get out of this cruiser.
“Goodnight, sir,” she said, slipping away as quickly and as quietly as she’d arrived.
On the way home, she thought about calling Paul and asking him to come spend the night with her. She couldn’t get the images of being intimate with Aaron out of her mind, and that bothered her. She’d been steadily getting past her crush on him, and tonight felt like a complete setback.
She didn’t call Paul; she just drove home and went to bed. She wasn’t ready to be intimate with anyone, not after her last relationship. Just kissing Paul had been a big step, and as she relived that, her finally found her focus.
Hopefully this thing with Kelli and Zach Watkins would be over soon, and Laurel wouldn’t have any reason to be in a car alone with Aaron, and she wouldn’t have to hear about his love life with Eloise Hall.
Chapter Eighteen
Kelli gripped her son’s hand as they approached the lighthouse. “You can go down that path to the beach,” she said, indicating the smudge of dirt that led to the left of the lighthouse. “I used to go down there all the time when I was a little girl.”
She smiled at her son as he looked up at her. “Really, Mom?”
“Really,” she said. “Well, I was a little older.” She’d been almost thirteen when she started coming to the lighthouse for the Seafaring Girls classes her mother had insisted she take. Kelli hadn’t wanted to go, because the ocean scared her—and that was precisely why her parents had signed her up.
She hadn’t gotten over her fear instantly, but steadily and slowly over time, Kelli had come to appreciate the beauty of the undulating waves and the way the sky could take on a personality all its own.
Today, it was a happy, bright blue sky, with puffy, popcorn clouds that made Kelli think of simpler times. Like lying on the beach, the khaki sand hot, with a bag of her favorite red licorice nearby. She could turn her face into the salty, sea breeze, and remember what it was like to be a child running along the sand, trying to get up the eight-legged octopus kite her father had given her for her eighth birthday.
Sometimes the sky was like an angry bear, foaming with gray clouds that warned anyone and everyone away from the shore. She sometimes imagined the sky to be weeping and wailing for some great person who’d died that day, and she wondered if it would ever do the same for her one day.
Other times, the sky took on a color that wasn’t quite blue, and wasn’t quite white, and wasn’t quite lavender. It existed in unnamed shades of gray, with low-lying clouds that suggested the world was thinking of something sad.
Or perhaps something good, but with a type of reflection that required silence and serenity.
“Can I go down?” Parker asked, and Kelli nodded to him.
“Sure,” she said. “Mom’s going to go sit on the second-level deck, okay?” She nodded to the navy blue door on the lighthouse. “You just go through there, and up, up, up. It’s five or six flights. The very top door is white and metal. Come through there, and I’ll be up there.”
“Okay,” he said, releasing her hand. She paused and watched him go, a special kind of love filling her. He was such a good boy. Quiet and reserved, but willing to have fun and try new things in a way Kelli didn’t understand.
Her mind flowed back to New Jersey, and the new thing Julian wanted to try. Kelli hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him and her life there, though she’d started to build a brand-new one here. She’d taken the job at the junior high, and she actually enjoyed working with the students and Mrs. Hewes.
She was definitely ready to retire, but she didn’t let the teens she taught railroad her into anything. They treated her kindly too, and though Kelli had only been there for three days, and she still had plenty to learn, she’d felt a special spirit of mutual love and respect in the huge, industrial classroom that Mrs. Hewes manned.
She postponed going into the lighthouse by pulling out her phone and snapping a picture just as Parker took a big step over a break in the path.
Unable to cut Julian out of his son’s life, she sent the picture to him, sans caption. He didn’t need one. He’d only come to Five Island Cove once, and she didn’t need to detail every aspect of the islands for him.
Familiar bitterness crept into her throat, as well as an awakening to her own permissiveness. She should’ve insisted they come spend time with her mother together. Instead, she’d always brought Parker alone, and not even that often.
Her mother had been such a blessing to her in the two weeks since she’d been back in Five Island Cove, and Kelli had given her a long hug the last time she’d seen her and said, “Thank you, Mom. I love you.”
They’d embraced silently after that, and Kelli caught her mom wiping her eyes when they finally parted.
“Let me know if you even see Zach hanging around,” Kelli had told her. “I know the Chief of Police.”
She hadn’t involved Aaron beyond the incident from over a week ago, and she was glad about that. Even Eloise talked about how busy he was, and she hadn’t gone straight to him about all the documents she’d found because of it.
Unable to postpone going into the lighthouse any longer, Kelli finally reached for the doorknob and heaved open the heavy door.
She only went to the first landing before knocking on the door there. It bore a wreath made of seashells, and Kelli thought of a time when she used to decorate her townhome for every occasio
n she could.
The door opened before she could contemplate too long on it, and Kristen stood there. “Good morning, dear.” She moved right in to embrace Kelli, and streams of gratitude moved through her that she didn’t have to approach Rueben alone. “Come in.”
Kristen stepped back, and Kelli entered the once-familiar space. It was different now that Rueben and his wife, Jean, had taken over the lighthouse, but it still smelled like coffee and chocolate, and Kelli wondered if the smell had ingrained itself in the walls for generations to enjoy.
“I sent Parker down to the beach,” she said as she saw Rueben and Jean sitting on the couch together. “We’ll have maybe ten or fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll go down,” Jean said, standing.
“Oh, you don’t need to do that,” Kelli said.
“I want to.” Jean smiled at her in such a kind way that Kelli just acquiesced.
“Thank you,” she murmured as the woman passed. She was probably ten years older than Kelli, just like Rueben was, and they didn’t have any children of their own.
Once the door closed, Rueben stood too. “My mother says you have something you want me to see.”
“Yes,” Kelli said, pulling the folder from her purse. She set it on the kitchen counter as he approached. “You worked as an architect in Savannah, on the children’s wing of the library there.”
A smile crossed his face. “That feels like another life.”
“I bet.” Kelli opened the folder “You knew a man named Zach Oakwood.”
“Yeah, sure,” Rueben said easily, obviously not concerned about the topic or the conversation. “He was the artist. Brilliant, too, by the way. He did sculptures of children and animals in a unique, whimsical way. He could paint too, and the library board gave him a bonus for the fairy garden mural he did in the rotunda.”
He picked up the newspaper clipping and looked at the picture. “What do you want to know?”
“Did he and my father…?” She looked at Kristen, who nodded and smiled. “He showed up a few months ago, claiming to be my half-brother. He had a birth certificate with just his mother’s name. He said Guy was his father. I guess I’m wondering if they seemed like they had that kind of relationship, or if you ever heard him talk about his family, or…anything.”
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