Moonpie heard her coming before he did. The setter went bounding off to greet her, jumping up and planting his paws on her chest, then sniffing anxiously at the bucket, before racing back to Tate to announce her arrival with a short, sharp bark.
He glanced up from the fire, trying to act casual. “Hey,” he said, half standing, half crouching under the shelter of the boat. “You’re back from exploring.”
What a totally lame thing to say. She was dressed now, of course, which too bad, because she looked sort of bedraggled, in a drowned-rat kind of way. Well, not a rat, really, more like a drowned mouse. But a cute drowned mouse.
Gina held out her bucket. “Look what I found. Oysters!”
“Oysters?” Tate reached down into the bucket and held one up. “Pretty dinky. And you can’t eat oysters in June. They’re poisonous. Or something.”
Wounded, she snatched her bucket back. “Wrong. That’s an old wives’ tale. I read up on it last night. The Geechee people on these islands always ate oysters in the summer months. They preferred the fatter, juicier ones from colder months, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with oysters in June, as long as they’re harvested from clean waters, which these were.”
He stuck his nose into the bucket and sniffed doubtfully. “They smell okay. Where’d you say you found ’em?”
“Over on the other side of the island,” she said.
That would be the naked side of the island. He slapped his forehead, trying to dislodge the image of her, which was stuck there now, in the permanent data bank in his brain, a mental photo album where he filed other memorable images.
Like the forty-pound snook he’d caught on ten-pound test on a blistering day in Sarasota, the twelve-point buck he’d bagged as a nine-year-old, and, yes, he wasn’t proud of it, but the first set of naked breasts he’d ever seen outside National Geographic, which belonged to a girl named Khandee, Miss December 1989, who, come to think of it, also liked long walks on the beach.
“Something wrong with you?” Gina asked, looking at him oddly.
“Sand gnat,” he said, scratching a nonexistent bite. “You hungry?”
“Starved.”
“The fire’s almost ready,” he told her, gesturing toward the grill he’d rigged with the odds and ends from the trash dump.
He’d scrubbed the grease-and soot-caked metal grill with a bit of rag dipped in wet sand, and propped it up on a couple of sand-filled Mr. Pibb cans over the fire. He’d also flattened out a wadded-up piece of aluminum foil, which he laid over the grill.
As Gina watched, he carefully placed the redfish fillets on the foil.
She leaned back on her elbows on the plastic mat and enjoyed the novelty of having somebody else cook for her.
Tate had stripped off his wet shirt and draped it over a piece of driftwood he’d stuck into the sand, near the fire. His cargo shorts rode low on his hips, and it occurred to Gina that he was, as Lisa would put it, “going commando.” Why hadn’t she thought of that? No underwear was supremely superior to damp ones. She flicked her eyes over him, appreciating the view. He was deeply tanned, and he was, as Lisa had aptly put it, “Fine.” Very fine, in fact.
He sat down beside her on the mat. “I cleaned your bluefish, and put the fillets in my cooler. There’s only a little bit of ice left, but maybe they’ll keep till we get back to Eutaw in the morning.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I should have thought of that myself. My daddy always says it’s best to clean oily fish like mackerel and bluefish just as soon as you catch ’em, to keep them from tasting too strong.”
He was sitting so close that his bare shoulder touched hers, and his bent knee knocked casually against hers, and the thrill of it nearly sucked the breath out of her chest.
“The morning,” she said weakly. “You think we’ll be able to get back by then?”
“If the wind doesn’t change again, and the rain quits,” he said.
Let it rain, she thought.
Her hair smelled like rain, and her wet shirt clung to her body, and he could see the faint outline of her nipples beneath the undershirt sort of top she wore beneath the work shirt. He was trying hard not to stare at that work shirt, at the buttons, all six of them, wishing he had supernatural comic-book powers, like martian mind-meld, that could magically unfasten the pesky mother-of-pearl buttons, one by one.
Tate found himself suddenly loopy, unaccountably tongue-tied by her proximity. “What do you want to do with your oysters?”
Mental head-smack.
His question brought her abruptly back to reality.
“I’m a sissy,” she admitted. “I don’t do raw oysters. How ’bout we grill ’em?”
“Be my guest.”
She heaped the oysters on the edge of the grate, and soon the smell of roasting fish and grilled oysters was wafting out from under the overturned johnboat.
Her eyes watered from the smoke, and her stomach growled in appreciation. When Moonpie ventured too close to the fire, Gina coaxed him away, emptying one of her bottles of water into her empty cooler. He lapped it all down in moments.
“Hey,” Tate said, ashamed that he hadn’t thought of it himself first. “Thanks. That was nice of you.”
She reached over and scratched the dog’s chin, which he obligingly stretched out for her. “He’s my bud. Aren’t you, Moonpie?”
Tate took the blade of his knife and flaked the fish fillets, grunting with satisfaction. “Just right,” he said, sliding the foil off to the side of the grate.
When he stood and stretched, Gina noticed an odd bulge in his cargo shorts. She motioned to the pockets of his shorts. “What ya got there?”
He actually found himself blushing. “Uh…”
And then he remembered. Reaching into both pockets he whipped out the cans of beer, brandishing them like an Old West gunslinger’s pearl-handled Colts.
“These were floating in the water, over near the abandoned garbage dump where I found the raft and the grill. Some fisherman’s cooler must have tipped overboard.” He extended one to her. “I was saving ’em for dinner.”
She took one of the cans and considered it. “Warm beer?”
He popped the top of his own can and took a swig. “The English drink warm beer all the time. They think Americans who insist on beer being ice cold are barbarians.”
“These are the same people who eat cold baked beans on toast for breakfast,” Gina pointed out.
She set the beer down and helped herself to an oyster. “Not bad,” she said. “But I’d kill for some cocktail sauce and lemon slices.”
Tate tipped an oyster into his mouth and followed it with a swallow of beer.
“Perfect,” he pronounced. He opened another shell with the tip of his knife blade and tossed the oyster to Moonpie, who caught it in midair.
They lingered over their dinner, sitting close together on the plastic mat, as much for companionship as for the warmth of the fire, eating with their hands. The fish was tender and flaky, perfectly sweet and fresh.
“This was great,” Gina said finally. “I take it all back. You really can cook.”
“Of course,” he said, annoyed. “What did you think?”
She considered whether to tell him the truth. Which was that she’d assumed he’d gotten his hit cooking show because of his great butt and killer abs, which she’d been staring at off and on all day.
“Who taught you to cook?” was what she actually said. “Your mama?”
That made him laugh out loud. “My mama? No, sweetheart, my mother didn’t teach me how to cook. She barely knows how herself. She just retired as vice president of corporate communications for the Bales Group. You heard of them? Insurance, banking, securities?”
She shook her head. “Nope. So who did teach you how to cook?”
He lifted the last of the fish from the grill and set it out on the lid of a cooler for Moonpie, who greedily scarfed it all down.
“Different people. My dad liked to hunt and fish. We b
elonged to a fancy hunting club that had a quail plantation down near Tallahassee, so I learned a lot from the women who worked in the kitchen there. In college, we had an old guy, Gilbert, who did all the cooking at my frat house. He’d been a cook in the navy. I’d hang out with him, watching the way he fried chicken, how he made sawmill gravy. Like that.”
She took a tentative sip of the beer. It wasn’t so bad after all. “You never went to cooking school?”
He grinned. “You found my shameful secret.”
“And you’re not really a redneck, are you?”
He leaned back on his elbows and lazily stretched out his legs. “Never said I was. Just because I drive a pickup truck with a gun rack and live in a trailer with my bird dog—you’re the one who made that assumption, Reggie.”
“So you’re not exactly what my mama calls po’ white trash. You’re college educated….” She stretched herself out beside him, hip to hip, and rolled over so that their faces were only inches apart. “Since you’re sharing all your secrets—what about telling me how you managed to kill that pig?”
“Swear you won’t tell another soul?”
She flashed the Girl Scout pledge again. “I’ll take it to my grave. Now give.”
“Pure dumb luck,” Tate said. “I hit it with my golf cart.”
“No way!” she exclaimed, giving him a playful punch.
“Afraid so,” he said, laughing. “It just ran out in front of the cart, and boom—next thing you know, me and Moonpie are knee-deep in hog. I managed to get it on the cart the next day and take it over to Iris and Inez’s. I swore ’em to secrecy in return for a year’s worth of pork chops and fatback. Now it’s your turn. Tell me all about the secret life of Regina Foxton.”
“Nothing else to tell. I’m Birdelle Foxton’s oldest girl, thoroughly boring, predictable, and white-bread, through and through.”
He stared right through her, and the image came back, unbidden.
“I know about your secret life, Reggie,” he said quietly. “I saw you on the beach today. Earlier. On the other side of the island.”
The color drained from her face. “You saw me?”
“I didn’t mean to spy on you.” His words came rushing out. “Moonpie took off with the lighter, and I went running after him, and well, there you were.”
“Naked.” Her voice sounded strangled. She closed her eyes. “Oh, God. I thought I was alone. You saw me making a fool of myself.”
“Hey…” He touched her cheek. “I’m sorry. It was a private moment, and I spoiled it.”
Her eyelids flew open. “You were watching the whole time?”
“Kinda. Look, I swear, I’ll never say another word on the subject. I’ve forgotten it already. Swear to God.” He held up the three fingers on his right hand, in his own version of the Scout’s oath. But behind his back he crossed the fingers on his left hand. Forget, hell.
Gina rolled onto her back and concentrated on the night sky. She’d never seen so many stars. A tear rolled from one eye and slid off her cheek.
“I saw a shrimp boat out on the sound over there. Earlier. While I had my clothes on. And at one point, the clouds cleared and I could actually see Eutaw. I had no idea we were so close.”
“Yeah, we’re not far from it at all,” Tate said, glad for the change of subject. “Only thing keeping us over here tonight, like I told you, is the tide and the wind. Once the tide changes, we should be able to row back across with no problem. Long as the boat holds water.”
“You’re gonna think I’m an idiot when I tell you what I did when I saw that boat,” she said, helping herself to another sip of beer, which really was beginning to taste better and better.
“Oh?”
“When I saw that shrimper, I waded out into the water and actually tried to flag it down,” Gina said. “As if they could even see me over here. Dumb, huh?”
“Scott is probably pretty worried. You did disappear. At the same time as me.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “What about your producer? Won’t Val be worried?”
“Nah,” he said. “She knows I can take care of myself. She’ll be pissed that I messed up the shooting schedule, that’s all. What about your sister? What’ll she think?”
“Lisa?” It was the first time she’d considered how her sister would take her disappearance. “She’ll probably assume I ran away with you. Deliberately. She’ll think…I mean, just because we were alone together like this, that we hooked up. Lisa thinks you’re totally hot.”
“Hooked up?”
“Her word, not mine. It means—”
“I know what it means,” he said, chuckling. “She doesn’t know you very well, does she?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gina sat up so suddenly she felt dizzy. She chugged the rest of the beer in one swallow and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What? It’s so hard to believe somebody like you would go off with somebody like me—and that we’d hook up?”
He frowned. “I hate that phrase. It’s…crude.”
“Crude?” She hooted, and scooched over closer to him, peering into his face. “Who are you, Tate Moody? You see me naked on the beach, alone, and you just turn around and walk away? Is there something wrong with me, or is it just you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, sitting up now too. “You’re gorgeous. Amazing. And there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not somebody who just…anyway, it doesn’t matter, ’cuz Reggie, you sure as hell aren’t the kind for a hookup.”
“How do you know what I would or wouldn’t do?”
“You said it yourself. You’re the cautious sister. The apron-sewing, cake-baking, training-wheels-on-the-bike nice girl.”
She didn’t let him finish. Instead, she climbed onto his lap and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Nice? I’ll show you nice!”
Her kiss was fierce at first. She wanted to show him the new, improved Gina Foxton. The one who’d been born on that island. Who didn’t care about appearances, who did exactly as she pleased. No inhibitions.
But his response wasn’t what she was expecting. Not by a long shot.
“Hey,” he said, pulling away. He held her face between his hands, studying it in the orange glow of the firelight. “What’s this about, Reggie?”
She pulled him closer. She kissed the hollow of his throat, warm from the fire. He tasted salty. “This is me…being nice,” she whispered in his ear.
“Oh.”
He ran his hands slowly up her back, and she shivered.
She kissed him again, and this time managed to part his lips with her tongue. He kissed her back, telling himself it was the polite thing to do. And then, because he was nothing if not polite, he helped her with the buttons on that shirt of hers.
Gina wriggled out of the shirt and flung it aside. He kissed her neck, and her shoulders, and he thoughtfully pushed aside the skinny little straps of her undershirt, and then he cupped one of her breasts in his hand, and he realized she hadn’t done such a good job of sand removal….
And the next thing he knew, she was tugging at the waistband of his cargo shorts.
“Wait.”
She looked up from her work. “Wait?”
“Is this really what you want?”
“No,” she said flatly. “What I want is a bubble bath and air-conditioning and Porthault sheets and Marvin Gaye on my iPod singing ‘Let’s Get It On.’ Preferably in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead. But we’re on an island. I’ve got no job and no boyfriend and no future. So we’ll have to make do with SpongeBob here. Improvise. Now, are you gonna take off your pants, or do I have to do all the work?”
Chapter 56
Lisa Foxton squinted through the salt-flecked window of the trawler’s cabin, but night had fallen, and despite the running lights mounted on the shrimp boat’s bow, all she could see was the inky blackness of a night at sea.
“I can’t see anything,” she wailed. “Don’t you people have a searchlight or somethin
g?”
“A searchlight!” Mick Coyle snorted. The wiry, sunburned captain of the Maggy Dee ran his hand over his bloodshot eyes to make sure they were still open. He still didn’t quite know how he’d gotten mixed up with this crazy crowd he’d met up with on Eutaw Island. Especially this chick. “We’re shrimpers, not the Coast Guard,” he reminded her. “Anyway, there’s nobody out on the water tonight. We’ve been all around Eutaw twice, talked to other boats out of Darien, nobody’s seen any sign of your sister. Diesel fuel ain’t cheap, you know.”
“She’s out here someplace,” Lisa said fiercely. She clutched at the sleeve of his grimy T-shirt. “She’s gotta be. We’ve looked everywhere else. You’ve gotta help me find her.” She turned those big brown eyes of hers on him and blinked back tears.
“Shit,” Mick muttered. It was the eyes that had gotten to him. He’d tied up at the ferry dock at Eutaw shortly after the storm started kicking up. His intention was to sell some shrimp to the woman who ran the lodge at Rebeccaville, maybe sit out the weather. He’d just popped a cold beer when the girl came running down to the dock, screaming that her sister was missing, caught out in the storm.
Pretty soon she’d been joined by two more men, a squirrelly-looking guy in his early twenties, dressed head-to-toe in black, and the older one, kind of a bodybuilder type dressed in what he probably thought was foul-weather gear—an expensive-looking raincoat, khaki slacks, and mud-spattered loafers.
The bodybuilder seemed to be the self-appointed sheriff of the search party.
“How much to charter the boat?” he’d demanded, pulling a fancy ostrich-skin billfold from his back pocket and flashing a platinum American Express card.
Coyle ignored the credit card and took another sip of his beer.
“Well?” the sheriff repeated. “What about it?”
“You wanna go shrimping? In this weather?”
“Zeke, Scott, make him listen,” the girl cried, stepping between them. “We think she’s out there—in a boat. You’ve got to help us. Please?”
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