A Month at the Shore (23 page)

Sizzling under his touch, she murmured, "And here I thought you were just trying to be nice."

"I
am
nice. You're going to find out just how nice."

"Can I comb my hair? Get my bag?"

"You're perfect the way you are."

Her heart was pumping hard, and for so many reasons.
I'm the niece of a killer,
she wanted to whisper in his ear.
Maybe a serial killer. How perfect is that?

Out the door they went, and into his shiny car. He held the door for her, shut it after her, turned off the blaring radio for her, did all the things that a proper gentleman does on a first date.

Except it wasn't a date, it was a rescue.

"Basically, you wanted to save us from
ourselves
, didn't you?" Laura said.

She leaned back on the glove-soft leather headrest, closed her eyes, and tried to blot out the day: the good, the bad
... the ugly.

No luck. "If you could have seen us huddled around the kitchen table just now," she said, because she had to talk about it, after all. "God, we were pathetic. I think we were expecting them to bring out the rubber hoses and beat a confession out of one of us."

"What is it with you guys?" Ken asked. He sounded genuinely bewildered. "Where's your confidence?"

"Easy for you to say. Tell me this. Has your family ever been hit by a scandal?"

"My mother stole my mail and forged my signature once," he said, smiling.

"I mean, a real scandal."

"You hated me for twenty years. I call that scandalous."

"Ken. I mean where people looked down at you wherever you went, as if you were lower than low."

"Now, see, I don't get that. Why would any of you feel that people were looking down on you?"

"Hello—because they were? My father didn't exactly cut an admirable figure around town," she said. "And let's not forget: he was the kinder, gentler brother."

Ken acknowledged her claim with a wry smile as he took the turn onto Main, a two-lane road that divided Chepaquit into waterview properties and affordable ones.

Laura said wistfully, "I wish I could be different. I wish I could have the confidence of someone like you—or even like Sylvia. I don't suppose you knew her."

"Name doesn't ring a bell," Ken admitted.

"If you'd ever seen her, you'd remember her. She worked for us for a little while. She wasn't local; she was from up north. But she had this
... this fearlessness about people that had Corinne and me in awe. She was our hero."

"I think what you did with your own life is pretty heroic. You followed your star—"

"Hardly," Laura said with a snort. "What I did was run away from Chepaquit as fast as I could."

"Well, all I can say is, that Uncle Norbert of yours must have been a piece of work—not only for what he did to his wife, but for what he did to you all," Ken muttered. "What a hell of a legacy he left you."

She twitched one shoulder in the barest of shrugs. "My father contributed his fair share," she insisted, because that was part of the legacy too. "He also had a temper, and he wasn't shy about using it on anyone near."

Her thoughts rocketed back to an innocent afternoon when Sylvia returned from making a delivery. She could see her father so clearly, his face red with anger, his voice raw with fury.

Where were you? I don't want you drivin' off doing deliveries. My daughters can do that. Billy can do that. Not you.

Since when
?

Since now.

But you hired me to—

You heard me. You don't leave the premises! You stay right here!

Laughing, Sylvia had said,
You're my boss, not my master.

And she had flipped him a finger before turning her back on him and going back to work. Laura had watched in astonishment. No one had ever—ever—stood up to her father that way.

D
istressed by the memory, she lapsed into thoughtful silence.

After a moment, she rolled her head toward Ken and said, "How did it go with your mother, by the way? Dare I ask?"

"Ask away; I have nothing to relate, I'm afraid. A close friend of hers was taken seriously ill and ended up at Mass General, which is where my mother spent the evening and much of the night. Needless to say, my tantrum had to be postponed."

"I'm so sorry," she said, smiling, and added, "I think I'd pay good money to watch you throw a tantrum sometime."

"I'd have to practice first," he confessed. "I've never really done one, despite the fact that I was an only child for years before my sister was born. I guess I don't consider myself spoiled, although I haven't exactly been deprived."

"It sounds as if your parents got it about right. I'm jealous," she admitted.

"And meantime, you're telling me that my parents weren't the thing that drove you away?"

"Not really."

"Huh. One less reason to throw that fit, darn it," he said as he squeezed into the last parking space in front of the restaurant.

Captain Jack's was a quintessential small-town New England eatery, a two-story Victorian house with big square windows split in four on both sides of the door. The place was painted a pleasing shade of slate blue and trimmed in ivory. Its handmade hanging sign was the most ostentatious thing about it: "Captain Jack's" was carved deep into the wood and finished in gold leaf over a relief of a fouled anchor.

"Didn't this used to be a hardware store?" Laura asked as they walked up to the double-doored entry.

"Not for at least ten years. You don't come into town on your visits much, do you?"

"Never, if I can help it."

The restaurant was crowded, which wasn't surprising; it was one of the few in town. The old wood floors from the hardware store were still intact but were varnished now instead of scraped bare as Laura remembered them; they glowed like spilled honey in the late sun that poured through
the shuttered
lower half of the windows. A dozen tables were arranged in cozy proximity. At the back was a small bar and a take-out register. It was all very casual, all very nice.

All very awkward, when conversations stopped after Laura and Ken stepped inside. It was obvious that everyone had heard about the bones in the compost pile.

Laura was prepared for their stares and murmurs; it was just like old times. What she wasn't prepared for was the sight of Will Burton, sitting at a table with three other men.

Will Burton.

Unlike Ken, he had hardly changed over the years. He had the same blond hair, the same hawk nose, the same air of cockiness that Laura had once found intimidating. The red-haired guy with his back to her had to be Dagger, Will's younger brother. The other two men could have been just about anyone; Will had always moved with an entourage.

Suddenly Laura was thrown back into the woods again, clutching her torn clothes, and with tears streaming down her face. Her heart was knocking as hard as it had those decades ago, and her crushing need, now as then, was to turn and run.

But Ken had tightened his grip on her elbow. They weren't going anywhere.

A pert hostess with a dimpled smile ap
proached them. Ken said, "Two for dinner, and
we'll be ordering takeout."

"Certainly, Mr. Barclay; this way," she said, and they followed her toward an empty table tucked under one of the side windows in a corner of the room.

Laura had no idea how to act. She wanted to take her cue from Ken, but he was now behind her. She was on her own.

Don't let Will get to you; the bastard isn't worth it,
she warned herself. But her flushing cheeks were betraying her even as she formed the thought.

And then she tripped. Somehow, some way, she had managed to stumble on pure, thin air as she drew abreast of the group.

She recovered, but not before a smiling Will Burton jumped up with infuriating chivalry and said, "Whoa, easy there. Laura Shore
... is it really you?"

There was a mixture of disbelief and amusement in his deep, grown-up voice—the voice of a radio announcer selling fine used cars.

"Yes, it's really me," she said, for lack of something catchy.

"They said you were back in town. To stay?" he asked.

The slightest smile betrayed the condescension he obviously felt. He made her feel like someone caught sneaking in under the circus tent. She didn't have a ticket. She didn't belong.

How she hated him just then. She wanted so much to be past all that, but
... how she hated him. She said in as lofty a voice as she could muster, "I haven't made any plans, one way or the other."

"Yeah? That's not what I hear." Will looked deliberately from her to Ken and back again. He leered and said, "Just call me Cupid, hey? You don't have to thank me."

She felt Ken behind her make a move for him, but she had the advantage of being in front. She brought up her arm and slapped Will. Hard.

"That's for then," she muttered.
God,
it felt good.

Will was too stunned to do anything, but Dagger jumped up from his chair, ready to rumble.

Ken shoved him back down by the shoulder. "Sit. Enjoy your food. All of you," he said with a scarily rigid smile.

Will looked around the room, which had become even more silent, and then said cheerfully, "You always did have a way about you, Laura." In an undertone he added to Ken, "This isn't over."

"Anytime," Ken murmured back.

They continued on their way to their table.

The rattled hostess pulled out Laura's chair for her. Ken took one look at her face and said in a voice clear enough to be heard around the room, "Hey, on second thought, it's a great evening. What do you say we get takeout for us, too, and have a romantic picnic on the beach?"

She could have kissed him on the spot, but she settled for a relieved smile. "I'm up for it."

Ken asked the hostess very nicely for the take-out menus and a bottle of wine. The
y ordered Szechuan shrimp, Sze
chuan chicken, Szechuan pork, Szechuan noodles, Szechuan baby back ribs, and enough rice to feed mainland China. While they waited for the food, they clinked their stemware and downed a fair portion of the bottle.

The food arrived in three reinforced shopping bags. Ken hauled two of them, and Laura, biting her lip to suppress her growing merriment, carried the third. By the time they reached the car, she was exploding with the day's pent-up emotion, all of it streaming from her in the form of helpless, inappropriate giggles.

"Did you see all their
faces
?"
she asked as she collapsed in the front seat.

"Before you slapped Will, or after?"

"Either! Both! They were apoplectic!"

"Ah, they were all just jealous. I had the best-looking woman in the room on my arm."

"Ken, don't you realize? Your reputation just went up in smoke!" For whatever reason, she found that, too, hysterically funny.

He grinned at her reaction and said, "You mean that because of you, I've finally made the transition from nerd to bad boy? I'm so impressed with myself."

He pulled into a nearby parking lot in front of Chepaquit Dry Cleaners. Seeing the sign drew more nervous giggles as Laura remembered Rosie Nedworth, fists on her hips, demanding to know about the bones.

She said, "Why are we here? To drop off your cleaning?"

"Wine. Next door."

"More wine? I'm not sure I can handle
..."

"We have food on the back seat. You didn't notice?"

More giggles. "God, right, the food. We have enough to let us hole up for the rest of the year."

"Promise?"

"Sure! Anything. Absolutely! I just had the
best
time in there. I can't believe it," she said, sitting back, exhilarated. "Why do I feel so great? I should feel mortified."

"You needed that, slugger. It was long overdue."

Ken ducked into the package store and came out minutes later with the requisite brown-bagged bottle. Laura felt like a teen on prom night, something she'd never had the chance to experience firsthand.

"I promise not to get you drunk," he said, sliding into his seat and handing her the bottle.

"
Too late!" she answered gaily. "Knowing you, this
probably isn't a screw-cap, though," she said, peeking into the bag.

"My Swiss Army knife has a corkscrew. We're good to
go
.
"

He drove the few minutes to the nursery and turned in toward the house, then carried two of the shopping bags inside for Snack and Corinne while Laura purposely waited in the car. She knew that she was walking a high wire made from a strand of a spiderweb; that it could break at any moment and send her plunging back to earth. One look at her gloomy brother and worried sister, and down she would plummet. She wanted to hold on to the high.