Whiskey Beach

by Nora Roberts

  “Go?”

  “I have to change into that short skirt and get to work, and I’m already running a little behind. The good news is that gives us both time to consider if we want to take the next natural step. That’s also the bad news.”

  She slid off the counter onto her feet, heaved out a breath. “You’re the first man who’s tempted me to break my fast in a long time. The first one I think would make the fast and the breaking of it worthwhile. I just need to know we wouldn’t be mad at each other if I did. Something to consider.”

  She picked up her purse, started out. “Come out tonight, Eli. Come into the pub, listen to some music, see some people, have a couple beers. First round’s on me.”

  She walked out, made it all the way to her car before she pressed a hand to her fluttering belly, let out a long, unsteady breath.

  If he’d touched her again, if he’d asked her not to go . . . she’d have been very late for work.

  Ten

  ELI ARGUED WITH HIMSELF, WEIGHED THE PROS, THE CONS, his own temperament. In the end he justified going to the damn bar because he hadn’t gotten out of the house for his self-imposed hour that day. This would serve as his hour.

  He’d check out what the newish owners had done, have a beer, listen to a little music, then go home.

  And maybe Abra would get off his back.

  And if under it he proved to himself as much as to her he could walk into the village bar, have a beer, with no problem, so much the better.

  He liked bars, he reminded himself. He liked the atmosphere, the characters, the conversations, the companionship of having a cold one in company.

  Or he had.

  Added to it, he could consider it a kind of research. Writing might be a solitary profession—which he’d discovered suited him down to the ground—but it did require seeing, feeling, observing and the rare interaction. Otherwise he’d end up writing in a vacuum.

  So, keeping to his vow of an hour out of the house, and getting some local color that might end up painted into his story somewhere made sense.

  He decided to walk. For one, it left his car in the drive and that might, in addition to the lights he’d left on, convince any potential B&E candidate the house was occupied.

  And it gave him a good solid walk for the exercise portion of his day.

  Situation normal, he told himself.

  Then he stepped into the Village Pub, and disorientation.

  Gone was the watering hole where he’d bought his first legal drink—a bottled Coors—on his twenty-first birthday. No more dark and slightly dingy walls, no more frayed fishing nets, plaster seagulls, tattered pirate flags and gritty seashells that had made up the incessantly seafaring decor.

  Dark bronze ceiling fixtures with amber shades replaced the ship’s wheels and added moody lighting. Paintings, wall sculptures and a trio of his grandmother’s pencil sketches depicted local scenes.

  Somewhere along the way someone had sanded and scraped off years of grime, spilled beer and very likely old puke stains so the wide-planked wood floor gleamed.

  People sat at tables, in booths, on leather love seats or on the iron stools lining the long paneled bar. Others took to a postage-stamp dance floor, just a scattering of them yet, to boogie and shake to the five-piece band currently doing a very decent job covering the Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy.”

  Instead of the campy pirate costumes, the staff wore black skirts or pants and white shirts.

  It threw him off. And though the former Katydids had been on the crumbling edge of a shit hole, he kind of missed it.

  Didn’t matter, he reminded himself. He’d get a beer like any normal guy might on a Friday night. Then he’d go home.

  He started toward the bar when he spotted Abra.

  She was serving a table of three men—young twenties by Eli’s gauge—balancing a tray with one hand while she set pilsner glasses on the table.

  The skirt—short as advertised—showed a lot of long, toned legs that appeared to start somewhere around her armpits and ended in high black heels. The snug white shirt emphasized a lean torso and the impressive cut of biceps.

  He couldn’t hear the conversation over the music. He didn’t need to, not to recognize the easy and overt flirting on all sides.

  She gave one of the men a pat on the shoulder that had him grinning like a moron as she turned.

  And her eyes met Eli’s.

  She smiled, warm and friendly, as if that mouth with the accent of the ridiculously sexy mole hadn’t been plastered to his just a couple hours earlier.

  She turned the tray under her arm and walked toward him through the moody light and music, hips swaying, sea goddess eyes glowing, mermaid hair tumbled and wild.

  “Hi. Glad you could make it.”

  He thought he could devour her in one, greedy gulp. “I’m just going to get a beer.”

  “This is the place for it. We’ve got eighteen on tap. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Ah . . .” Getting her naked didn’t seem like the appropriate response.

  “You should try a local.” The quick laugh in her eyes made him wonder if she’d read his mind again. “Beached Whale gets high marks.”

  “Sure, fine.”

  “Go on over and sit with Mike and Maureen.” She gestured. “I’ll bring the Whale.”

  “I was just going to go to the bar and—”

  “Don’t be silly.” She took his arm, pulled him—weaving when necessary. “Look who I found.”

  With an easy welcome, Maureen patted the empty chair beside her. “Hi, Eli. Have a seat. Sit back here with us old farts so we can actually have a conversation without screaming.”

  “I’ll get your beer. And the nachos should be up,” Abra told Mike.

  “Great nachos here,” Mike said as Abra scooted off, and Eli—with little choice—took a seat.

  “They used to serve bags of stale potato chips and bowls of peanuts of dubious origin.”

  Maureen grinned at Eli. “Those were the days. Mike and I try to get in here once a month anyway. A little adult time, and on weekends or in season it’s a great place to people-watch.”

  “There’s a lot of them.”

  “The band’s popular. That’s why we got here early enough to grab a table. Did you get your power back on and everything?”

  “Yeah.”

  Maureen gave his hand a reassuring pat. “I didn’t have much time to talk to Abra today, but she said somebody’d been digging down in the basement.”

  “Yeah, what’s that about?” Mike leaned forward. “Unless you want it to all go away for a couple hours.”

  “No, it’s okay.” In any case Bluff House was a key part of the community. Everyone would want to know. He gave them the basic rundown, then shrugged. “My best guess is treasure hunter.”

  “Told you!” Maureen slapped her husband on the arm. “That’s what I said, and Mike’s all poo-poo. He has no fantasy gene.”

  “I do when you put on that little red number with the cutouts on your—”

  “Michael!” His name came out on a choked laugh.

  “You walked into it, honey. Ah.” Mike rubbed his hands together. “Nachos. You’re in for a treat,” he told Eli.

  “Nachos, loaded, three plates, extra napkins.” Abra set them down smoothly. “And a Beached Whale. Enjoy. First one’s on me, remember,” she said when Eli reached for his wallet.

  “When’s your break?” Maureen asked her.

  “Not yet.” So saying, she answered a signal from another table.

  “How many jobs does she have?” Eli wondered.

  “I can’t keep up. She likes variety.” Maureen scooped nachos onto her plate. “Acupuncture’s next.”

  “She’s going to stick needles in people?”

  “She’s studying how to. She likes taking care of people. Even the jewelry she makes is to help you feel better, happier.”

  He had questions. A lot of them. And considered how to ask without moving it toward cross
-examination mode. “She’s managed that variety in a short amount of time. She hasn’t lived here that long.”

  “Going on three years, from Springfield. You should ask her about that sometime.”

  “About what?”

  “About Springfield.” Eyebrow cocked, Maureen nipped into a nacho. “And what you’d like to know.”

  “So, what do you think about the Red Sox’s chances this year?”

  Maureen gave her husband a gimlet eye as she picked up her glass of red. “More subtle than just telling me to shut up.”

  “I thought so. Nobody I like talking baseball with better than your grandmother.”

  “She’s a fan,” Eli said.

  “She can reel off stats like nobody else. You know I get into Boston every couple weeks. Do you think she’d be up for a visit?”

  “I think she’d like it.”

  “Mike coaches Little League,” Maureen explained. “Hester’s a non-official assistant coach.”

  “She loves watching the kids play.” As the band took a break, Mike caught Abra’s attention, circled his finger in the air for another round. “I hope she gets back for at least part of the season.”

  “We weren’t sure she was going to make it.”

  “Oh, Eli.” Maureen closed her hand over his.

  He’d never said that out loud, he realized. Not to anyone. He wasn’t sure why it had come out now, except he had all these new images of his grandmother in his mind, images he’d missed. Yoga and Little League and pencil sketches in a bar.

  “The first few days . . . She’s had two surgeries on her arm. Her elbow just . . . shattered. Then her hip, and the ribs and head trauma. Every day, touch and go. Then when I saw her yesterday—” Had it only been yesterday? “She’s up and using a cane because walkers are for old ladies.”

  “That sounds like her,” Maureen concurred.

  “She lost so much weight in the hospital, and now she’s filling out again. She looks stronger. She’d like to see you,” he said to Mike. “She’d like you to see her when she’s doing so much better.”

  “I’ll make a point of it. Are you telling her about the break-in?”

  “Not yet anyway. There’s not a lot to tell. And I’m wondering how many times whoever was in there last night has been in there before. If he was there the night she fell.”

  As Eli lifted his beer to drain it, he caught the look Mike and Maureen exchanged.

  “What?”

  “That’s exactly what I said when we heard about the digging.” Maureen gave Mike an elbow poke. “Didn’t I?”

  “She did.”

  “And he said I read too many mystery novels, which is impossible. You can never read too many books, any kind.”

  “I’ll really drink to that.” Still Eli just turned his glass in circles as he studied Maureen. “But why did you think it?”

  “Hester’s . . . I hate using ‘spry,’ because people use that for old people, and it’s almost insulting. But she is. Plus, I bet you’ve never seen her in a yoga class.”

  “No, I haven’t.” And wasn’t sure his mind could take it.

  “She’s got great balance. She can hold a tree pose, and Warrior Three, and . . . What I’m saying is she’s not wobbly or shaky. Not that she couldn’t have fallen. Kids fall downstairs. But it just didn’t seem like Hester.”

  “She doesn’t remember,” Eli commented. “Not the fall or even getting out of bed.”

  “That’s not unexpected, right, not after hitting her head that way. But now we know you’ve had somebody sneaking into the house who’s crazy enough to dig in the basement, I wondered about it. And whoever it was who broke in put some bruises on Abra. If she hadn’t fought back, known what to do, he could’ve hurt her more. If he’d do that, he might’ve scared Hester or he might’ve even pushed her.”

  “Round two!” Abra carried the tray to the table. “Uh-oh, solemn faces.”

  “We were just talking about Hester, and the break-in last night. I wish you’d stay with us for a couple nights,” Maureen fretted.

  “He broke into Bluff House, not Laughing Gull.”

  “But if he thought you could identify him—”

  “Don’t make me agree with Mike.”

  “I do not read too many mysteries. I read your short stories,” she told Eli. “They were great.”

  “Now you leave me no choice but to get this round.”

  Abra laughed, gave him the tab. She ran a hand casually over his hair, left it on his shoulder.

  Maureen gave Mike a light kick under the table.

  “Maybe Eli could come talk to our book club, Abra.”

  “No.” He felt panic lodge in his throat, gulped some beer to loosen it. “I’m still writing the book.”

  “You’re a writer. We’ve never had a real writer at book club.”

  “We had Natalie Gerson,” Abra reminded her.

  “Oh, come on. Self-published poetry. Free verse. Terrible self-published free-verse poetry. I wanted to stab myself in the eye before that night was over.”

  “I wanted to stab Natalie in the eye. I’m taking five,” Abra decided, and leaned a hip on the table.

  “Here, sit down.” Eli started to rise, but she just nudged him down again. “No, I’m good. Eli never talks about his book. If I were writing a book I’d talk about it all the time, to everyone. People would start to avoid me, so I’d seek out complete strangers and talk about it until they, too, avoided me.”

  “Is that all it takes?”

  She gave him a punch on the arm. “I thought about writing songs once. If it hadn’t been for the fact I can’t read music, and didn’t have any song ideas, I’d’ve been great.”

  “So you turn to acupuncture.”

  She grinned at Eli. “It’s an interest and, since you brought it up, something I was going to talk to you about. I need to practice, and you’d be perfect.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “I could work on a release of tension, and an opening of creativity and concentration.”

  “Could you? In that case, let me think about it. No.”

  She leaned toward him. “You’re entirely too close-minded.”

  “And needle-puncture free.”

  She smelled heady, he realized, and she’d done something dark and dramatic to her eyes. When her lips curved, all he could think of was the way they’d felt against his.

  Yeah, one big, greedy bite should do it.

  “We’ll talk.” Abra stood, took her tray and walked over to a neighboring table to take an order.

  “Don’t be surprised to find yourself lying on a table with needles sticking out of your bare flesh,” Mike warned him.

  The hell of it was, he wouldn’t be surprised. At all.

  He stayed more than an hour, enjoyed the company. It occurred to him he wouldn’t have to argue with himself the next time he considered dropping into the bar.

  Progress, he decided, as he said good night to Maureen and Mike, and headed out.