Summer Rental (28 page)

“Hey, dude!” Ryan, clueless, held out his hand, but when Kendra shot him a withering glance, he dropped it back to his side.

“How
are
you?” Kendra gave him a hug, standing on her tiptoes, even in heels, to do it. He was enveloped in a toxic cloud of her signature scent, which, to him, smelled like overripe pineapples.

“Just fine,” Ty said, extending only a wooden, one-handed half hug. When she finally released him, he took a step backwards, just in case Fuckface got any ideas. He would throw away this blazer and shirt when he got home
. If
he got out of here alive.

“Really?” Kendra said, frowning. “You’re sure? I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Ever since we moved back. Did you know? Daddy finally talked me into joining the firm. Of course, I think he only did it because he knew he’d get Ryan as part of the package. A twofer, he calls it.”

“Great,” Ty said. “Congratulations.” If there was a bigger, more pompous asshole than Boomer Wilcox on the Outer Banks, Ty had never met him. Ryan and Boomer deserved each other.

“We heard you’re day trading,” Kendra said, her voice oozing concern. “I know that’s got to be tough in this economy, right?”

“It’s all right,” Ty said, managing to unclench his teeth. “
You win some, you lose some.” He looked desperately around the room, hoping that something, somehow, would make this horror show grind to a halt. A lightning bolt, maybe. But he’d settle for a minor grease fire.

And now he saw Ellis, still seated, looking up at him, smiling expectantly. In his mind’s eye, he could see his grandmother’s flyswatter hovering at the back of his neck, just waiting to deliver a smack, should he forget his upbringing.

“Kendra, Ryan, this is Ellis, my, uh, friend.”

“Oh, hi,” Kendra said, her voice going up a decibel. “Alice?”

“Actually, it’s Ellis,” Ellis said. “With an E.”

“Hiya, Ellis,” Ryan said, automatically extending his hand. Ellis, who had apparently also undergone some rigorous training—and who, after all, had no history with Kendra or Fuckface—stood, smiled radiantly, and shook both their hands.

“Ellis is such an unusual name,” Kendra was saying. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a woman named Ellis before. Are you from around here?”

“No,” Ellis said, “I’m originally from Savannah. My friends and I are visiting here for the whole month.”

“How did you happen to pick the Outer Banks for vacation?” Kendra asked. “I mean, of course, we adore it, but then, I grew up here.”

“It was sort of a compromise,” Ellis explained.

“Wonderful!” Kendra trilled. “Where are you staying? Here at Duck?”

“We’re staying down at Nags Head,” Ellis said.

Ty felt his scalp prickle at the mention of Nags Head. A slow dread started to work its way south. He knew what was coming, and he was powerless to stop it.

“Oh!” Kendra said. “Nags Head. That’s my old stomping grounds, you know. Mama and Daddy have Cedar Haven. Do you know it? It’s that huge, rambling, old pile of junk on the Beach Road.”

Ryan wrapped a proprietary arm around Kendra’s waist. “She calls it a pile of junk,” he said with a chuckle. “What she doesn’t tell you is that Cedar Haven is one of the original houses on Nags Head. There’s only about a dozen of ’em. The ‘unpainted aristocracy,’ they call them. It’s a show
place. Five thousand square feet, and it sits on an ocean-side double lot. Her grandfather built the first swimming pool on Nags Head there.”

“I think I know that house,” Ellis said excitedly. “It’s about a mile from where we’re staying. On Virginia Dare, right?”

Don’t say it, Ty pleaded silently. Do not go there.

“Where are you staying?” Kendra asked.

“The house we’re renting is kind of a dump,” Ellis confided. “I mean, it could be wonderful, but it hasn’t really been maintained in a while.”

Ty looked frantically around the dining room. The waitress was approaching with a basket of bread and a cruet of olive oil. Deliverance. He wanted to kiss her on the lips.

“Hey, listen,” he said. “Here comes our bread. We don’t want it to get cold. They have awesome yeast rolls here. Eddie makes them himself.” He pulled Ellis’s chair away from the table and practically shoved her into it. “Good to see you guys,” he said, giving Kendra and Ryan a dismissive nod.

Kendra gave him an odd look, but she allowed herself to be herded back to her table.

“They seem nice,” Ellis said, helping herself to one of the yeast rolls.

If you only knew, Ty thought.

Dinner was agony. He ordered for both of them, and he tried to act normal. But every time he looked at Ellis, he saw the table just behind her. Kendra and Fuckface, laughing, talking, their golden heads bowed together. Every once in a while, Kendra would see him looking, and she’d lean in closer, her hand hiding her mouth, whispering something in her husband’s ear. They were talking about him, he knew. Mocking him in his yellowing dress shirt and frayed college graduation blazer with the sleeves just a quarter inch too short. His stomach burned.

Their entrées took a lifetime to arrive. He couldn’t have said what he ordered. It was hot, and it was vaguely seafoodish looking. Somehow, he managed to choke it down. Ellis picked at her broiled swordfish, nibbling delicately at the steamed broccoli and the couscous on her plate.

At one point, the waitress appeared with a bottle of chilled wine. It was Moët & Chandon Nectar Imperial Rose; Ty knew the label well. Six
ty bucks a bottle, and that was if you bought it at Harris Teeter. “We didn’t order this,” he said, pushing the wine bucket away.

“The lady and gentleman at that table there sent it over. With their compliments,” the waitress said.

He looked up, and Kendra gave him a little finger wave. The Imperial Rose was her favorite, and it had triggered many a fight when they were practically penniless first-year law students at Carolina. Their friends were all in the same boat, living on ramen noodles and Hot Pockets. When they had parties, they were glad to swill whatever rotgut was on sale. But Kendra, who said life was too short to drink bad wine, would appear with a bottle of her Moët & Chandon, paid for with the money Boomer had transferred into their checking account every month.

“How nice,” Ellis murmured. Ty couldn’t send the bottle back, not without making a scene. So he allowed the waitress to pour Ellis a glass, but he’d be damned if he’d touch the stuff himself. Instead he asked for another draft Blue Dawg.

He emptied the glass in a couple of long swigs. Ellis sipped hers slowly.

A dead, awkward silence fell over the table. He thought he’d averted disaster, but he’d been wrong.

The waitress came back to their table. She was a local, with purple-streaked blond hair and too much black eyeliner and a tattoo of an octopus whose swirling tentacles slithered all the way across her chest and probably cost more than the girl made in a week working for Eddie. She looked down at their half-eaten meals and shrugged, although she didn’t bother to pick them up. “Dessert?” she asked, putting a large black slate on a stand on the table. “Eddie’s got fresh peach cobbler with homemade lemon-basil gelato, and the cheesecake tonight is turtle track, which means it’s done with toasted pe
cans and butterscotch topping…”

Ty gave Ellis a questioning glance. “I don’t know,” she started to say.

“Just the check, please,” Ty said brusquely.

And of course it took her forever to come back with the check. Ellis sipped her wine and Ty drummed the tabletop with his fingers, determined not to look over at Kendra’s table.

Finally, the waitress brought the check. He was tucking the cash in the leather-bound check holder, his escape imminent, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ryan get up from his table and start to approach.

Ty tried to calm himself. Even Fuckface had a right to go to the men’s room, and he couldn’t get there without passing the table where Ty and Ellis had been seated.

But no, Ryan stopped right beside their table. Ty stood and pulled Ellis’s chair out, his back to Ryan, determined to make his escape unscathed, even if it meant ignoring Fuckface.

“Hey Ty, buddy,” Ryan said, putting his hand on Ty’s sleeve, leaning in, talking low, confidentially. Like they were old pals. “Look, Kendra and I were just talking. We saw the notice about Ebbtide in the legal ads. Kendra was saying Ebbtide’s been in your family as long as Cedar Haven’s been in hers. Helluva note, losing it after all these years. Thing is, we’re in the market for a place of our own. So maybe we could help each other out.”

Ty froze. Could this really be happening?

Ryan reached into the inner pocket of his sport coat and came out with a sterling silver monogrammed card case. Somewhere, in the boxes he’d never unpacked after moving back to Nags Head, Ty had an identical card case, although with his own initials monogrammed on it. His had been a wedding gift from Kendra’s mother, who was never noted for her originality.

Now Ryan was holding out a business card, casually, between his thumb and forefinger. “Gimme a call, will ya? No need to let the bank take Ebbtide.”

Ty dropped the card onto Ellis’s plate of half-eaten swordfish. He took Ellis’s hand and pulled her not so gently away from the table. Away from a restaurant called Fish Food. And Kendra and her fuckface new husband and their sixty-dollar bottle of pink wine.

28

Ellis allowed herself to be rushed out of the restaurant and practically slung into Ty’s Bronco. She managed to keep her temper tamped down for maybe five minutes. Then she exploded.

“
You
own Ebbtide?”

He winced, then nodded. “I do. For now, anyway.”

“And Mr. Culpepper? Our crusty-but-kindly landlord?”

Ty sighed. “You’re looking at him.”

“This whole time? I’ve been e-mailing
you
? Asking Mr. Culpepper about
you
? Complaining about
you
?”

“Afraid so,” Ty admitted.

“Cute,” Ellis said, biting off the word. “I bet you think you’re really cute, pulling one over on me like that. I bet you’ve been laughing your ass off at me, over there in that garage of yours.”

“Look, it wasn’t just about you,” Ty said. “I never tell my tenants about Mr. Culpepper. If they knew the landlord lived just over the garage, I’d never get any peace. They’d be hammering on my door at midnight, bitching abou
t the hot water heater, or the bugs, or any damned thing. Or they lose their key. And I’m supposed to drop what I’m doing because they can’t keep track of something as simple as a key? You wouldn’t believe what a pain in the ass people can be. This way, I’m just some anonymous slacker dude next door. If they want something from Culpepper, they have to e-mail him. And he takes care of it. Eventually.”

“And I’m the biggest pain in the ass of all, right?” Ellis said. “Bitching night and day.”

“Well, yeah, at first,” Ty said truthfully. “I mean, I thought you were a pain in the ass at first, but then, when I met you, well, it was different. Hey, I got you a new stove, didn’t I? And those dishes with the pink flowers? Those were my grandmother’s dishes, you know. And I wanted to tell you about Mr. Culpepper, I really did.”

“But you didn’t,” Ellis said, crossing her arms over her chest. Julia’s underwire bra was cutting into her rib cage, and the corset thing was tied so tightly she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t dare touch the ribbons lacing it together, for fear she’d explode out of the stinking thing. Why the hell had she let the girls talk her into this outfit? What was she doing with this loser, this liar?

“I was going to,” Ty said. “Like, tonight. I was going to tell you. But I didn’t get the chance.”

“Unbelievable,” Ellis said. She turned and stared out the window.

Eventually, they pulled into the crushed-shell driveway at Ebbtide. He parked the Bronco beside the garage, and before he could get out and come around to open her door, she opened it herself and was out of the car like a shot.

“Ellis,” he started.

“Thanks for dinner … Mr. Culpepper,” she said. It was all she could do to keep from running into the house. Anyway, she couldn’t have run in those damned high-heeled sandals Madison had loaned her. She walked, head up, back straight, just as fast as she could, without as much as a backward glance at Ty Bazemore, aka Mr. Culpepper. And when she got to the screen door at the house, its slam echoed in the still, hot, summer air.

*   *   *

Dorie and Julia heard the screen door slam from the kitchen, where they’d been playing a desultory game of Hearts.

“What the hell?” Julia said, glancing at the kitchen clock. It was barely nine o’clock.

They heard the furious tapping of the stiletto heels on the worn wooden hall floors, then heard them ascending the stairs, and then the second slam, of a bedroom door.

“Uh-oh,” Dorie said. “That can’t be good.”

“Damn,” Julia nodded in agreement. “And I had such high hopes.” She raised an eyebrow. “Do you think we should go up there and talk to her?”

“Ix-nay,” Dorie said, yawning. “If she wanted to talk about it, she’d come looking for us. You know how Ellis is.”

“I do,” Julia agreed. She sighed loudly. “I really thought this guy might be it, you know? He’s totally hot, and he’s hot for her, and I thought she was kinda hot for him.”

“You know something I don’t?” Dorie asked suspiciously.

“I kinda saw them making out the other night,” Julia said sheepishly.

“What?” Dorie slapped her cards down on the table. “And you held out on me? In my condition?”

“It was totally by accident,” Julia said. “Not like I was spying on them or anything. It was late, and Booker called, and I was kinda pacing around the room talking to him. I just happened to look out my window, and I saw this couple—just, wrapped up in each other, out on that boardwalk over the dunes. And it was just so sweet, you know? Summer love, that whole thing. It wasn’t until they pulled apart—reluctantly, I might add—and the girl was walking back towards the house, that I realized it was our Ellie-Belly. With garage guy.”

“I’d never say this to Ellis, but Ty doesn’t really seem like her type,” Dorie mused. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think he’s adorable, but nothing like the guys she used to be attracted to.”