“And how did Marcus . . . how did he . . . help you all?”
“He’s got a little sister who can’t hear. Justine McCree is like ninety-five percent deaf, but she can read lips. He knew bad shit was going down with Eddie Clarkson because the East Hampton cops had called him, as I mentioned. He worried about the family, you, the kids. Marcus used to place his sister nearby to spy on Eddie during meetings. Marcus told me she’d even eat in the same coffee shop downtown in Alphabet City with the French guys. He would go to this restaurant, and his sister would sit across from Eddie so she could watch and take notes. Then, Marcus tipped off law enforcement. He thought Eddie was getting in too deep, and it wasn’t safe for you and your kids.”
“Marcus would help the police, to do what’s right.”
“Yeah, he’s an amazing guy,” Joey said. “I never believed selling a few dozen joints to a few high schools every week would sink us in so fast, but Eddie . . . he just, he never got enough. Then a few years ago, I changed my plan. I started hearing how deep in he was. I realized that someone had to stop Eddie before he really did put you in danger.”
“I can see Eddie thinking it’s all cool, but he’s been super jumpy recently,” Caroline said. “He must have known he was in way over his head with the horse complex.” Caroline’s mind raced through the years, focusing on small things that started to make more sense. She thought of Maryanne and her cold stares. All those fifty-thousand-dollar payments. She kept the books—she had to know most or all of it.
And then, Rosie’s olive skin. Now she wondered what Rosie’s mother was like, or who she was. Regardless, she’d pay it forward to her, give that child more fierce mothering than she could hope for, wherever she was up there. She did need her father too.
“I think Eddie’s going to be okay,” Caroline said. “James Vincent told us that if he filled in some blanks. I mean, he’s my kids’ father, I . . .”
Joey threw a rock at the water harder than he meant to. “Well, he’s your husband too,” Joey said, sitting up cross-legged, feeling impatient. He sat on his hands again to keep from mauling this woman next to him. He knew that he’d have to give Caroline time.
He stood up and walked a few steps to the water’s edge. “Officer Vincent was in heaven. I love James. He was so fully in control. He’s hated Eddie since seventh grade. Eddie was actually arguing that he was innocent. I was there watching the whole thing from a horse stall with Marcus, who was terrified of the animal, he’s got some city in him, that guy.”
“Marcus has only good in him. But you really think Eddie will be okay?” Caroline whispered. “Tell me, reassure me.”
“Yeah, he’s fine. James is going to make him suffer though. We made a deal with the feds: let him go in exchange for the big fish we handed them on a platter, the real dealers. And, well, they got them, so they don’t honestly care much about people like Eddie. The stuff at the stables was child’s play. They get it. They are going to seize Eddie’s cash though.”
Caroline sat up, starting to realize that the simpler life she’d been imagining was in place before her. “Worse things could happen,” she said. “As long as my kids’ father is alive, and he’s able to see them and . . .” she couldn’t find the words to complete that sentence.
Joey paced along the blanket’s edge, kicking up sand, and said, “And, well, I’m moving home. Now I can. People are going to wonder what the hell game I was playing, and I won’t ever be able to explain the drug dealing, or what I knew, or the threats against me, but it’ll be nice to be home. Maybe I can keep the restaurant down in San Andrés and build another one here too. The world is moving too fast for me now, but with the big fish caught, it’s safe for me, finally. I can come home.”
“So, you’re coming back?” Caroline looked up at him, coughed, and rubbed her mouth a little.
“Don’t try to hide that gorgeous smile.”
“I’m not.”
He fell to his knees and guided her shoulders back down. “Just rest, because there’s a lot of thinking you have to do. And I don’t want you leaving this safe little space of ours,” he said. He lay down next to her, propping up his head on his palm again. But this time, he was closer to her. “So, one thing. That Ryan guy. He’s really great. I saw him outside the complex when I was hiding near a tree, talking to the cops. Some of them were arriving when he was leaving. I remember him. He remembered me and shook my hand before he left. Volunteer firemen force, he said. He was talking to the cops about you, making sure the guys kept you safe. And I hate to pry, but I just had this weird feeling you and he were . . .”
“Only on Tuesdays!” Caroline blurted out. She leaned up, very much wanting him to know it was over with Ryan. “I swear only Tuesdays and only until the end of . . .”
Joey reached over and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “You’re as ridiculous and anxious as always. Only on Tuesdays? You’ve got some things going on, I see.”
“It was Annabelle’s idea.” She looked at him and laughed.
“You don’t need to defend anything. It’s not like you cheated on me,” he reminded her. “Or maybe that’s not true. You did go and get married on me.”
That cracked her up. She wouldn’t admit that it felt like she had.
“I like it better when you laugh,” Joey whispered. “You should be crying about fifty crazy things going on in your life, but I do like the laugh. You look just as pretty laughing, despite the mascara raccoon eye thing you got going.”
He edged closer to her. Neither talked for a few moments; both resisting the pull toward the other as if against the force of a giant magnet. The silence was almost awkward now. Could he hold her? He placed his hand on her hip. This time she allowed it to stay there.
She said, “Could you just . . .”
“Just what?” His dark eyes sparkled with the knowledge that he knew what she meant and exactly what she wanted, as he always did. It was more fun to make her say it, though.
There was silence again, and she looked down.
“Could you just please, in here, with the globe spinning a million miles an hour . . .”
“It’s actually a thousand miles an hour . . .”
“Stop,” Caroline said, and she smiled.
“Stop? Oh, that’s what you want?” He yanked his hand back in a big, exaggerated arch. Torturing her was better, and more like old days. She did marry Eddie, so she owed him, he figured. Then, what the hell, he put his hand right where it had been. He pressed his fingers harder into her flesh. It took everything for him not to slide his hand down the back of her pants and grab that body he knew too well, had waited to touch for too long.
“No, I don’t want you to stop,” she admitted.
“So, what do you want, Caroline?”
“Like I said, I want you to help me, help stop me feeling like everything’s spinning so fast. And,” she paused again, “I really want you to . . .”
“To what?” He edged an inch closer, their bodies hovering side by side, only millimeters separating them.
“To kiss me.”
“You think that’ll stop that crazy world outside?” He inched closer, his chest touching hers.
“I have no idea, but maybe it’ll help. Just kiss me. Please.”
And so he did.
For a very long time.
Acknowledgments
During the writing of a novel, the characters become great company for the author. They talk to each other in my head all day long and often in dreams at night. They argue, laugh, cry, reenact, and challenge how I depict them on the page. Thank you to my family for allowing me time to sit in the library to write and to stroll in the city parks and on the beach shorelines to think and converse with my characters.
Thank you to my friend Lynne Greenberg, who is always the first to dive in as only an English professor can. Juju Chang and David Saltzman gave me thorough and early reads. Electra Toub provided a late and much-needed read. Leslie Bennetts mentored me in the art of wr
iting fast and furiously. Bill Uhrig handled technology and airplanes, Jenny Landey helped with Hamptons geography, Susan Fales-Hill with characters, Amanda Ross with style and tone, Ashley McDermott and Ann Coley with funny and clever ideas (as is their way). Grant Ginder talked me off the cliff and waved his wonderful editing wand. Richard Demak provided a generous and robust copyedit. My William Morrow editor, Tessa Woodward, always has the most astute observations; Elle Keck brings it together; and Molly Waxman and Erin Reback help blaze the word out.
For all I am grateful.
About the Author
HOLLY PETERSON’s previous novels include It Happens in the Hamptons, The Idea of Him, and the New York Times bestseller The Manny. In addition, she has curated an outdoor-cooking book, Smoke and Fire: Recipes and Menus for Outdoor Entertaining, and written Wellington: The World of Horses. She has been a contributing editor for Newsweek, an editor-at-large for Talk magazine, and an Emmy Award–winning producer for ABC News, where she spent more than a decade covering trials of the century and politics. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, Town & Country, The Daily Beast, Vogue, Elle Decor, Departures, and numerous other publications. She lives in New York City.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Holly Peterson
Fiction
The Manny
The Idea of Him
It Happens in the Hamptons
Nonfiction
Smoke and Fire: Recipes and Menus for Entertaining Outdoors
Wellington: The World of Horses
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
it’s hot in the hamptons. Copyright © 2019 by Holly Peterson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Yeon Kim
Cover photograph © Netfalls Remy Musser/Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Peterson, Holly, author.
Title: It's hot in the Hamptons : a novel / Holly Peterson.
Other titles: It is hot in the Hamptons
Description: First edition. | New York : William Morrow Paperbacks, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009607 (print) | LCCN 2019012087 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062867384 (E-book) | ISBN 9780062867377 (trade paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | FICTION / Family Life. | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3616.E8428 (ebook) | LCC PS3616.E8428 I87 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009607
Digital Edition MAY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-286738-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-286737-7
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