“I did not know that.” Whatever Tony was doing in the tiny cabin, he wasn’t coming out any time soon. He was biding time, leaving her to bob out here with Mr. Buggy. Nighttime sail. It sounded so romantic. She could throw herself overboard and swim to the She-Devil. She wondered what was going on inside Andy’s yacht and suddenly she wished she were—no pun intended—a fly on the wall.
“Did you ever consider getting into the bookstore business?” Kate asked, wondering when she was going to be offered a glass of wine. A bottle and two glasses were sitting prominently on the little built-in bench on the side of the boat. When staring at it didn’t clue Mark in, Kate walked over and picked up the bottle, pretending to be interested in the label. She didn’t care if it tasted like two-buck chuck, she was going to get a glass.
“You know three of the islands on the Vineyard are dry?” Mark asked, eyeing her as she searched for a wine opener.
“Yes,” Kate said. “Those are the islands I avoid.” It was a joke, but Mark’s humor didn’t seem to reach that far. “Technically,” he said, slicing the air around him with windmill hands, “we’re probably in dry waters right now.”
“Mark,” Tony suddenly yelled up from the cabin. “We talked about this. A little wine is good on a date. It doesn’t always mean she’s a loose woman.” Mark nodded, took a wine opener out of his jacket, and tossed it to Kate.
“Tony,” Kate yelled as she struggled to pierce the cork while the boat was moving. “Why don’t you join us?” Steer this boat back to shore!
“What other bad habits do you have?” Mark asked as she stuck the wine bottle between her legs and started to yank on the cork.
“Besides alcohol,” he said. “Do you smoke? Gamble? Are you promiscuous?”
“Mark,” Tony yelled. “I told you not to ask that!”
“You said ‘Don’t say slut,’” Mark yelled back. “I changed it to promiscuous!”
“I’d like to go home now,” Kate yelled. She put the bottle of wine up to her mouth and drank.
“You do have nice childbearing hips,” Mark said. “I’ll give you that.”
“Tony,” Kate yelled. “Let’s get this baby back to shore!” Shit. She should have said “puppy.” Let’s get this puppy back to shore. She didn’t want Mark to think she was acknowledging his “childbearing hips” comment.
“We planned on a couple hours of drifting,” Mark said. Kate stared at the doughy exterminator. She looked at his shirt and then imagined her hands wrapped around his neck, squeezing for all she was worth. She knew she would swim for it before she drifted anywhere with this bozo. If he was sizing her up for a potential wife, he was about to get a picture of the not-so-pretty variety. Two could be obnoxious. Kate chugged from the bottle again and flopped herself on the tiny bench. She spread her legs in a very manly, non childbearing way. She would have let out a belch, but she just couldn’t do that one on command.
“What can you tell me about Andy Beck?” she asked. Mark shifted several times and glanced at her spread legs.
“Why?” Mark asked.
Kate let out a dog whistle. “Because he’s totally hot,” she said. She leaned forward and whispered, “I’d totally do him.”
“Dad,” Mark yelled. “The North Star is in the sky.”
“Seriously—tell me everything you know about him.”
“The North Star, Dad!”
Kate chugged from the bottle again. “I heard he was going to publish a book of photography.”
“He didn’t follow through with it,” Tony said. Kate jumped out of her seat. She hadn’t even heard Tony come up, but he was sitting next to her on the bench. She closed her legs and put down the wine bottle.
“What happened?”
“He found his fiancée procreating with another man on the beach the night before their wedding,” Mark said.
“His fiancée?”
“Duh. The star of his book?” Mark said.
So that was who the woman was, Kate thought. Shyster or not, Kate could relate to the pain Andy must have gone through, and she felt for him. Suddenly the woman didn’t seem so beautiful. “That’s terrible,” she said, meaning Andy’s plight.
“It’s criminal!” Mark said. “He cost Dad thousands of dollars!”
“Mark,” Tony said. All the volume and excitement had gone out of Tony’s voice. He suddenly sounded like a little old man.
“What do you mean?” Kate asked, turning to Tony.
“We just told you,” Mark said in a tone of voice that clearly conveyed he’d crossed her off his future potential wife list.
“You mean because he dropped the book, he cost you potential sales?” Kate asked.
“No,” Mark said. His tone of voice was patronizing. Kate was really starting to dislike this guy.
“Dad spent thousands of dollars on a surprise book party for that prick—”
“Mark…”
“Not to mention we were counting on the sales. He’d just been reviewed by the New York Times—an article raving about his talent.”
“He is talented,” Kate said.
“The book would’ve been a huge hit—and Andy promised it would only be sold through Dad’s store.”
“Which was very generous,” Tony said. “It was supposed to come out at the beginning of summer, the height of the tourist season.”
“Prick!” Mark said.
“It must have been too painful for him,” Kate mused, “after what she’d done to him.”
“Bullshit!” Mark said. “It’s because he’s a phony. They were probably all crap. I’ll bet he saw how lousy the pictures were, so he made up some story—”
“They aren’t crap,” Kate said. “They’re gorgeous. I’ve seen them myself—”
“Somebody broke in—the camera was stolen—the photos were destroyed—”
Mark and Kate yelled over each other like squabbling siblings. It took Kate a moment to process what Mark was saying, and only then did she fully understand what she had just done. Looking back, Kate wasn’t sure which came first, the simultaneous gasp from father or son, or their faces, only inches from her, staring her down. She could smell their breath, which, cheap wine and all, definitely blew hers out of the water.
“You saw what?” Mark asked.
“The photos exist?” Tony asked.
“Um,” Kate said, wondering how to take it all back. “I probably saw the wrong pictures—”
“Gorgeous woman posing in a white dress at various locations on the island?” Mark asked. Kate took another sip of wine and sunk into immediate regret that she didn’t have a poker face. There was a red dress, too, she thought but didn’t say.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Tony said. “I’ll be damned.” Father and son got to their feet. Without speaking, Tony reached for the wheel of the sailboat, and Mark lowered the sails, then came back to rev the engine. The little boat jerked and then leapt out of the water before slamming back down and skidding forward.
You think they would have warned me to watch my wine, Kate thought as she was lifted off the bench and thrown back down with a thud. She didn’t have to ask where they were going. I was obvious. They were headed straight for the She-Devil.
Chapter Eight
Andy sat in the small library next to the game room, gazing out the porthole. Voices and laughter trickled in through the thin-paneled wall separating him from the poker game, but Andy couldn’t concentrate on anything other than Kate. Especially after the bet he’d just made. Had Tony and Mark already turned Kate against him? Andy had to admit, he knew Tony got the raw end of the book deal gone bad, and for that he was sorry. “We’ll stick it to the man,” Tony said, pumping his fist into the sky when Andy told him he could have exclusive retail rights to the book. “We’ll stick it to the man!” His excitement tripled when Andy told Tony he and Michelle would be happy to do book signings the first week of its release. With the buzz from the Times article, and the amount of traffic the island did in the summertime, it was bound to be a best selle
r.
Then the look on Tony’s face when Andy told him there wasn’t going to be a book—there would never be a book. How could he tell him the truth? That he’d never be able to look at those pictures of Michelle without seeing her locked in another man’s embrace? That he’d die before those pictures saw the light of day? Before he knew it, he was making up a story about a break-in. Everything was gone—the camera, the originals, the film.
“How long will it take you to reshoot?” Tony had asked. Andy couldn’t believe it. By now everyone had heard the gossip about Michelle and the wedding, yet here Tony was acting like Andy should go back to business as usual with the woman who betrayed him. As if she deserved to profit from Andy’s dream. She’d actually called to ask when the book would be coming out, and then she told him she was still planning to be there for the book signing—she didn’t want to disappoint her fans (her fans?), and would he mind very much if she brought what’s his name? Then she had the nerve to ask about royalties. That’s when Andy lost it. He set her straight on all accounts. His place had been broken into, ransacked—there wasn’t going to be a book. He felt guilty, yes, but not guilty enough to publish those pictures. Not now, not ever.
It had been Andy’s only act of revenge, pulling the plug on the book. His agent tried to persuade him to reshoot the book using a different model, but Andy wouldn’t hear of it. At the time he was too immersed in his own pain, and couldn’t imagine doing the book with anyone else. And he’d certainly paid the spiritual piper for that decision—his muse had evaporated as fast as his love. He’d experienced absolutely no creative joy since. He hadn’t even the slightest stir of interest in photography. Until Kate. The interruption. Sprawled out on his bed chugging champagne from the bottle and sucking up rose petals with his Hoover. He couldn’t get that image out of his mind. He wanted to stage it again and photograph her from every angle.
A sudden thud against the side of the yacht startled Andy out of his daydream. He ran to the porthole just as the second thud hit. When Andy looked out, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Someone was deliberately ramming their joke of a sailboat into the side of the yacht. It wasn’t going to do much other than scratch it, but it enraged Andy nonetheless. He quickly mounted the stairs to the deck with the guys in tow.
“What the hell are you doing?” Andy yelled. It took him a minute to recognize the sailboat; it wasn’t until he spotted Kate cowering in the back that he realized it was Tony and Mark.
“You liar!” Mark yelled, preparing to ram the yacht again.
“Cut it out,” Andy said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Let us up,” Tony said. Andy tried to ignore the guys behind him, jeering and laughing, and as he lowered the emergency rope ladder down to the little sailboat, he implored them to go back to the game. Apparently, they decided the show they were about to see upstairs was way more exciting than the money they stood to lose downstairs, and none of them budged.
Kate climbed up first, and as Andy helped her over, he thought whatever was about to go down was worth it for the chance just to touch her hand. But he also noticed she wouldn’t make eye contact with him, and as she slipped past he could have sworn she muttered “Sorry.” He was the one who should be sorry, especially after making that ridiculous bet. He would have to tell the guys it was off. He’d probably lose his place in the games—men didn’t like it when you retracted your bets—but it was the right thing to do.
Mark climbed up next, refusing Andy’s hand, followed by Tony, who was about to accept some help up when Mark elbowed in and hauled his father the rest of the way over himself. Andy tried to ignore the sound of laughter and bottles clinking behind him.
“Are you having boat problems?” Andy asked, hoping there was a reasonable explanation for the ruckus.
“We’re having ‘you’ problems,” Mark said. Andy glanced at Kate, who was looking overboard as if considering jumping.
“Did you lie to us?” Tony asked.
“About what?” Andy answered.
“The photo book. You told us the pictures were stolen. You told us the film and camera were stolen. You told us Michelle wasn’t willing to do the shoot over. Was any of it true?”
“Why are you asking me this? Why now?”
“Because you’re a liar,” Mark said. “You still have the pictures. She saw them!” Mark pointed at Kate. Stunned, Andy stared at her. Some of the guys murmured “whoa” and tried to clink glasses again, but the ones who knew Andy well enough to stay clear of any talk of Michelle came to their senses and guided the rest of the drunken gamblers back down to the game. To her credit, Kate looked up and met Andy’s eyes.
“I didn’t know,” Kate said. “I—”
“You gave me your word,” Andy said. He didn’t go any further. There was nothing more to say. He couldn’t believe he’d been falling for her. Once again, he was betrayed by a woman. At least he found out now before he really fell in love with her.
“Andy,” Tony said. “Just tell us the truth.”
“Obviously you know the truth,” Andy said. “Is there anything else?”
“What do you mean is there anything else?” Mark said. “Give us the book. You owe my father the book!”
“I don’t owe your father anything,” Andy said.
“Well, that’s that,” Tony said. “Let’s go.”
“No,” Mark said. “He cost you thousands of dollars, Dad!”
“Mark,” Tony said.
“What do you mean?” Andy asked. “He didn’t have to pay anything for the book—”
“He had a whole surprise party planned for you.”
“Mark.”
“It cost him a couple thousand dollars. Plus he was taking advance orders and had to pay that money back—plus he took out loans because he was counting on the sales of the book to pay them back.”
“I had no idea,” Andy said. “I had no idea, Tony.”
“It’s okay,” Tony said. “Now let’s go.”
“Why don’t you just give us the pictures?” Mark asked. “Why don’t you just publish the book?”
“Why don’t you just write a check,” Kate mumbled. She was also looking around the yacht like it was disgusting he had so much money. Well, let her think that; he didn’t care anymore. He stared at her long sleeves. She’d obviously gotten wet from the sailboat charging the yacht. Her sleeves were translucent and sticking to her skin. Andy could see a deep scar on her right arm; it was long and jagged, shaped like a lightning bolt. He had to force himself to look away.
“What if I shoot the pictures again with a new model?” Andy asked. At this, Mark and Tony perked up.
“Do it,” Mark said.
“Would your publisher still honor the contract?” Tony asked.
“Are you kidding?” Andy asked. “He’d be over the moon.”
“Who were you thinking of using?” Tony asked.
Andy paused, relishing the moment.
“Her,” he said putting his arm around Kate. The look on her face! Why didn’t he have his camera handy? He’d never wanted to snap a picture more in his entire life.
Chapter Nine
“You’re sure you don’t hate me?” Amanda asked. Kate finished zipping her suitcase and smiled even though she felt more like choking her for asking the same question over and over again.
“Of course I don’t hate you,” Kate said again. “I’m happy for you.” In the few hours Kate had been gone, Amanda and Pete had made up. Although talk of another wedding had been shelved, the lovers planned on going through with their honeymoon. Which meant Kate no longer had a cottage to stay in for the month.
“I can drive you to the airport,” Amanda said.
“I’m not going to the airport,” Kate said. “I’m checking into the Black Sheep Inn.” Amanda was right on her heels as Kate headed to the door. Just as she opened it and was about to step out onto the porch, Amanda reached around her and shut it.
“You’re staying on the islan
d?” Kate had been anticipating—and not looking forward to—giving Amanda the news. She wanted to lie to her, but the thought of Amanda catching her in a lie was enough to terrify her into telling the truth.
“I am,” Kate said. “In fact, I kind of…got a job.”
“What do you mean, ‘got a job’?”
“Um—you know Andy?”
“You know I do.”
“He wants to…take some pictures of me…for his new book.”
“You’re kidding.” Amanda and Kate turned to the voice. Pete was just out of the shower, one towel wrapped around his waist, the other his neck. “Andy’s doing a new book? That’s unbelievable!”
“You can’t do it,” Amanda said.
“You have to do it,” Pete said. Amanda seared Pete with such a look that Kate expected his towel to fall off.
“I don’t know what he’s up to,” Amanda said, turning back to Kate. “But stay away from him. He’s a user.”
“No, he’s not,” Pete said. “Andy’s a great guy.”
“That’s not what you told me,” Amanda said. “You said he was a con artist, remember?”
Pete laughed and started toweling his head. “That’s just because I was afraid you were going to get a little crush on him, and I wanted you for myself.”
“So you lied?”
Pete shrugged and grinned.
“He’s not a con artist?” Amanda asked.
“Nope,” Pete said.
“He really is wealthy?”
“Why?” Pete asked. “Is that important to you?”
“I just want to know the truth,” Amanda said. “How many lies did you tell me?”
“Panda,” Pete said. “I’m just messing with you. All I’m saying is—Andy isn’t your typical rich jerk. He’s always made his own way.”
“Oh, it must have been so rough on him with his little house and his big yacht…”
Pete walked over to Amanda and rubbed his wet head on her neck.
“Eww,” she said, pushing him away. But at least she was laughing.
“You know what your reputation was when we first met?” Pete asked.
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