Not the least of which was Jeremy Newhall.
It was probably best not to think about Jeremy, but, oh, God. It was hard not to. There was just something about him. He couldn’t be more than a year older than she, but he had a quiet reserve and a way of carrying himself that made him seem older than any of the senior boys in her class. Maybe it was the fact that he’d spent time in Cedar Village outside of town. Everyone knew that place was designed to reform bad boys.
Ooh. Bad boys. Just the words gave her a little shiver.
“For God’s sake, girl, get a grip!” As if she’d have the first idea what to do with one of those anyhow, even given the opportunity.
She pulled into the driveway to Marni’s house and parked behind Mrs. Dreesen’s Buick Enclave. Turning off the engine, she sat for a moment, staring at the back of the house.
When Peyton had moved here midterm in the eighth grade, Marni had been the first kid on the school bus to and from the school in Silverdale to talk to her. The Dreesens had welcomed her into their home as if she were one of their own. If she counted up all the hours, she wouldn’t be surprised to find she’d spent more time at their house since moving here than she had in her own. She definitely felt better here than anywhere else.
She unbuckled her seat belt and exited the car, admiring the stars hanging low and bright in the sky as she crossed the brick-paved back patio to the kitchen door.
Expelling the air in her lungs, she drew in a final calming breath and peeked in through the door window. The room was dimly lit and empty of Dreesens. She pressed the doorbell.
Pandemonium broke out inside. She heard Marni’s mom yell “Somebody get that!” from the depth of the house while Beckett and Castle, a dog small enough to hold in two cupped hands and a motorcycle-sized mutt, skidded around the corner on the hardwood floor, barking their heads off. Marni’s Tutu, a ginger-striped tabby who must have been sleeping somewhere in the kitchen, barreled out through the cat door, making Peyton leap to one side to avoid being run over. She’d run afoul of Tutu’s claws in the past, and it was an experience she’d as soon not repeat.
Marni appeared in the same archway the dogs had come through, and she was dressed in a stretched-out black leotard and pink toe shoes. She reached the door in two long grand jetés. Landing lightly in front of the door, she opened it and gave Peyton a happy-to-see-you smile. “Hey.”
Something about Marni always made Peyton smile. Her dishwater-blonde friend had the sweet friendliness of a young Drew Barrymore, with the same kind of girl-next-door prettiness. “Hey, yourself. Am I mixed up? Is this dance-class day?” But, no, that couldn’t be—it was Friday night.
“Nah, I was just practicing.” She went over to pull the fridge open and leaned in. Her leotard cut up over a J-Lo-full butt to her invisible hip bones. Marni didn’t have the usual dancer’s body; she was a far cry from anorexic stick-straight, instead possessing full breasts, a small waist and round hips and thighs. But her aunt Stace had a dance studio in Silverdale, and Marni had been taking classes there since she was four. She was a kick-ass dancer.
One who glanced over her shoulder now at Peyton. “Want an ICE on ice?”
“Yeah.”
Marni pulled out a bottle of the black cherry flavor and grabbed two glasses, filling them with cubes out of the fridge-door dispenser. She divided the tall, skinny bottle of carbonated water between the glasses, rinsed out the now-empty bottle, tossed it in the recycle bin and handed Peyton her drink.
“Who’s there?” her mother called from another room.
“Peyton!”
“Hey, darlin’! There’s cookies in the jar. Be sure to grab a couple.”
Marni made cutting motions at her throat and mouthed, “No! No!”
Peyton grinned. Mrs. Dreesen cooked like an angel but was a notoriously bad baker. “Thanks, Mrs. D.!” She made a production of opening the glass jar, then rattling it noisily closed again without withdrawing any of its contents.
She loved coming here. Marni’s family was what Peyton always thought families should be: close, loud and loving. There was always something going on, it was always chaotic and it was such a contrast to the silent mansion on the bluff where she lived. The Dreesens didn’t give a flying flick about climbing any social ladders. They owned this million-dollar house, but it was lived-in comfy, full of clutter and only minimally stylish.
Behind Marni’s back, several of the other girls in their crowd made fun of her home and often of her figure as well, because it wasn’t a size six. If you asked Peyton, they were stone blind. Marni radiated happiness—and that was sure as hell nothing to sneeze at. Plus, this was the most comfortable house in the world.
Even if it sometimes made her ache a little for what she lacked herself.
Marni grabbed a bag of pita chips out of the cupboard. “Let’s go to my room.”
“Yeah, I have something I want to talk to you about.”
When Marni opened the door to her bedroom, it was to find her twelve-year-old sister, Bree, snooping through the baskets on Marni’s shelves. “Get out of here, you little shit!” Marni snapped, then raised her voice to yell, “Mom! Tell Bree-the-Brat to quit coming into my room uninvited and pawing through my stuff!”
Bree’s nose went in the air. “Like you have anything worth looking at,” she sneered and strolled toward the door slowly enough to make the point that no one was running her out of the room. She slammed the door behind her.
“God!” Marni flopped on her back on the bed. She looked up at Peyton. “You’re so lucky to be an only child.”
A snort escaped Peyton as she dropped down next to her friend. “That’s one way of looking at it,” she said, rolling onto her side and bracing her cheek upon a drawn-up arm to better see Marni’s face. “My house is quiet as a morgue half the time.”
“Like I said.” Marni sighed. “Lucky.”
“Maybe not so much. My parents are getting a divorce.”
“What?” Marni, too, turned onto her side and propped her head in her palm. “Aw, Peyton, I’m sorry. That really sucks.”
She nodded. “And that’s only part of the problem.” Sharing the things that had led up to the dissolution of her parents’ relationship with her friend, then admitting that her stepfather was cutting her off financially as well, she found that, rather than feeling mortified the way she’d expected when someone else knew how dicked up her life was, she actually felt better to have shared some of the crap that had been bottled up inside of her for so long.
“What are you going to do?”
“The good news is my grades should qualify me for some pretty decent scholarships. The bad news is I doubt I’ll qualify for a full ride. But I guess there’s always student loans. Plus, I got myself a job tonight and I’m going to start putting away as much money as I can.”
“You got a job? Where? How?”
“Bella T’s.” She shared the events of the night with her friend and held her breath, waiting to see how Marni would react.
“Are you serious? You’re gonna work with Jeremy Newhall? Omigawd.” Marni laughed deep in her throat. “That is so awesome.”
“I know, right?” She grinned at her blonde friend. “I hope I don’t say something incredibly stupid.”
“Nah, that would be me. You always seem to know just what to say.”
She sobered, because in truth, so much of her personality was a great big act. She heard Tasha in her head telling her not to pretend. “I...don’t really. I’m scared a lot of the time and just do my best to make sure no one can tell.” And, please, oh, please, don’t spread that around. It was the most vulnerable she’d ever allowed herself to be in front of another girl, and she didn’t know what she would do if it turned around and bit her on the butt.
“Well, it doesn’t show.”
“Nobody knows about my parents’ divorce yet.”
“Then I won’t say a word.”
That simple. Peyton blinked back tears. “Thanks, Mar. You’re the
best.”
“I know what a lot of our group say about me, you know,” Marni said with sudden fierceness. “About my figure and about my family, too. It’s funny how as individuals, they’ll make a point of telling me so-and-so said such-and-such—as if they’re so righteous for not saying it themselves, even as they rush to make sure I hear about it. I also know that you haven’t joined in to bash me.”
She snorted. “As if. You and I both know you’re probably fitter than the rest of us combined. And I wish I had your family.”
“Well, that works out pretty handy, then. Because as far as the Dreesens are concerned, you do.”
CHAPTER NINE
TASHA HADN’T HAD a day off since the end of May. The summer rush was becoming an ever-shrinking speck in her rearview, however, and while she hadn’t quite weaned herself from the pizzeria’s seven-days-a-week schedule, she was quickly developing a particular fondness for Mondays. That was the day the pizzeria didn’t open until three o’clock in the afternoon, when the after-school rush began.
Bella T’s had become the unexpected favorite in-town teen hangout, making the post–school day income a lucrative part of her business. And when it came to Monday’s schedule, it didn’t hurt that she’d applied her own logic and made up for the late opening by closing early. People in Razor Bay had learned all there was to know about the new hours pretty damn quickly once word got out that you’d better pick up or consume your pizzas by seven-thirty Monday nights, because Tasha was serious about her closing time. She shut down Bella T’s on the dot.
This particular Monday found her still lounging in bed at almost ten in the morning. It was a beyond-rare activity, or non-activity as the case might be, but she’d crawled out of bed this morning only long enough to make herself a mocha and now sat propped against a pile of pillows, sipping her drink and reading book two in a Virginia Kantra trilogy—a luxury she rarely had time for these days. She had errands and chores that had been steadily piling up, but they could just cool their jets a
little
bit
longer.
She was feeling so mellow that when her phone rang she reached out a languorous hand, swept it off her nightstand and brought it to her ear without taking her gaze off her book. Things were just beginning to heat up between the woman who’d been fired from her job in the big city and come home to the Carolina island town that as a teenager she couldn’t wait to escape and the guy she’d tried to forget.
She pushed the talk button and murmured, “Good morning.”
“Good morning, baby doll,” her mother’s voice sang at the other end of the line. “Guess what? No, no, don’t bother. You’ll never guess!”
With a regretful sigh, she shoved a strip of paper into her book to mark her place, then set it on the nightstand. Throwing back the comforter, she swung her legs over the side of the mattress. “Oh, let me try anyhow, Mom. Hmm. Could it be...you’re in love?”
“Yes!” Her mother laughed in delight. “I guess you have heard that before.”
“Maybe a few times.” Try a few hundred.
“Ah, but this time it’s different!”
“I’m sure it is,” she murmured, not sure at all. “So, tell me all about him. What’s his name? What does he do for a living?”
“His name is George. Oh, honey, I wish you could see him—he’s so tall and handsome.”
Tasha waited, but it soon became apparent her mother didn’t intend to say anything else. “And he does what?”
“He’s, uh, sort of between jobs at the moment. Employers can be a little judgmental when they find out he has a record.”
“Yeah, go figure.” Okay, so she’d been arrested herself, which one might think would make her reserve judgment. She thought she’d hold off on bonding with the guy over their respective arrest records, though. Because going by experience, she gave her mom’s new relationship two months.
Tops.
As Nola sang George’s praises, Tasha attended to the conversation with only half her attention. The other half began prioritizing that list of chores and errands.
Yet the minute she said goodbye, she changed into a bikini, topped it with a cover-up and donned a pair of water socks. Grabbing a beach towel out of the bathroom closet, she shoved it into a tote. After adding her keys, phone, SPF and lip balm, she slung it over her shoulder and let herself out of her apartment.
Screw the errands and chores; she was gifting herself an hour to play. The weather was gorgeous, and that probably wouldn’t last much longer. The tide was closer to high than low, which she preferred for what she had in mind, and she could be at a spot she liked between the bay and the inn in ten minutes. That left her fifty for one of her favorite things: swimming.
She’d worked like a dog for months. It meant she was growing her business, so she didn’t begrudge the sweat equity that required. But it also meant she’d missed out on most of the highlights of summer. She could spare an hour to give herself a taste, at least, of one of the delights of that season in Razor Bay.
She’d love to talk Jenny into joining her, but being general manager at the inn meant working with the public. That meant dressing up and, face it, swimming was notoriously tough on the ’do. She supposed Jenny could try keeping her hair out of the water, but where was the fun in that? Preserving your ’do wasn’t swimming. At least not the way they did it.
Come to think of it, preserving the ’do was actually more her thing than Jen’s, since unlike her own, Jenny’s hair was enviably stick-straight. All she usually had to do to have it dry as sleek and shiny as a model’s was run a comb through it when it was wet. It would be quite irritating, really, if she didn’t love her friend so much.
Tasha pulled her Droid out of the towel bag as she strode along the boardwalk and gave her best friend a call. It went straight to voice mail, which meant Jen was tied up.
“Hey, girlie-girl,” she said after the beep. “I’m gonna grab a swim off the boardwalk at our usual town-side spot and was calling to see if you could join me. Guess not, though, huh? Your loss—I’ll wave as I go by.” Laughing, she hit the End button, then threw the phone back in the tote.
Moments later, closer to the inn than to town, she climbed over the boardwalk railing on the high-bank side and dropped to the beach. Grateful for the protection of her aqua socks, she picked her way over small smooth rocks to a sun-bleached log up near the bluff.
After spreading out her towel in the patch of sand in the log’s lee that made this one of their preferred swimming spots, she shucked out of her cover-up and dropped it atop her bag, then headed back the way she’d come. She had to climb over the boardwalk again, but the only other place to score a patch of sand was quite a distance past the inn, and she didn’t intend to spend her free hour doing more hiking than swimming.
The pebbles gave way to rocks in a mix of sizes. They were interspersed with the sand-and-water polished detritus of oyster, muscle and clam shells, and she employed care to avoid their razor-sharp edges. Old-timers who’d lived in Razor Bay since mid-last-century told stories of how the beach had once been all sand. None of them could agree on what had caused it to change, only that the change had been gradual. And it was true that Tasha remembered a lot more pockets of sand when she was a kid than you found these days.
But she shrugged as she approached the water, because, really, it was what it was. Besides, a moment later she reached a long narrow mostly shell-and-rock-free spot and, whooping, she raced across the last few feet of gently sloping beach and entered the water. Resistance against her legs slowed her down as it rose around her thighs, and she dived beneath the surface.
“Damn!” she yelled as she surfaced, flinging her hair to get it out of her eyes. “That’s cold.”
She loved the canal. It was salty and chilly and buoyant, and there was no other place like it—at least not that she’d ever been. She struck out several more feet from shore, then turned to swim parallel to the beach, lazily propelling her forward momentum
with a freestyle stroke that cut through the calm water.
She stopped to get her bearings a while later, but as she trod water, she found she’d picked a particularly cold spot for pinpointing her exact location. Peering down through the crystalline water, she noticed she was over what was a large sand flat at low tide and side-stroked until she floated above a rockier patch. When the tide was out, the rocks and shells on the beach collected the heat of the sun. Those in turn warmed the water above them once the tide turned to come back in. Sand flats just didn’t possess the same thermal absorbing properties.
Hearing voices from the shore, she realized she was nearing the inn, and as she swam past the float, she did as she’d promised in her message to Jenny and waved. She grinned to herself when she turned her head to breathe—because, please. Like anyone she knew would see. But a promise was a promise.
A while later, seeing a landmark that made her realize how far she’d swum, she decided it was probably time to turn for home. Executing a flip turn, she headed back the way she’d come. She wanted a little time to lie on her towel in the sand and soak up the day’s lazy heat. Given her pale skin, she couldn’t afford much sun exposure, but ten minutes this early in the day and late in the season would give her all of the joy of sunbathing and none of the damage.
She was maybe three-quarters of the way back to her spot when something sleek brushed up against her right side. It startled her so much she almost breathed in water, but lifting her head in time, she saw a dark-haired, deeply-golden-skinned man swim past.
Her heartbeat, already beating like a bongo drum, went crazier than an orangutan on crack. Because, dammit, she knew that hair, that skin.
What she didn’t know was what the hell Luc Bradshaw was doing horning in on her swim time.
* * *
REALIZING TASHA WAS no longer swimming alongside him, Luc stopped as well and turned to face her, lazily treading water. “Hi.”
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