Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
JACE
She opened the door, and I lost my train of thought entirely.
The dress was dark green, fitted from shoulder to mid-thigh, and did things for her that I was going to be thinking about for the foreseeable future.
Her hair was up, a few pieces loose around her face, and she’d done something to her eyes that made them seem even darker than usual.
She was wearing heels, which put her closer to my eye level than she usually was, and she was looking at me with the satisfied smirk of a woman who had no regrets about what she’d done.
I opened my mouth. Nothing useful came out.
Maybe the dinner could wait.
She reached up and tapped my jaw lightly with two fingers, painted nails, the gesture pulling my mouth closed. “You’re going to have to wait, sailor.”
“Did you wear that to torture me?”
“Side benefit.” She picked up a small bag from the table by the door. “I wore it in case our host is a typical male who’ll underestimate a pair of breasts and talk more.”
“At the risk of being a typical male.” I made myself look at her face. “They’re really excellent breasts.”
“I’m aware. You can show me your appreciation later.” She stepped past me toward the truck, and I watched her go and made a decision about my priorities.
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
Koa watched us leave from the window with an obvious canine scowl that said he’d been left behind under false pretenses and intended to remember it.
“So, how exactly did this dinner come about?” Layla asked.
“I reached out to Teller through the island business association. Officially, I asked him for a conversation about local investment because I’m back on the island, thinking about what comes next, interested in what opportunities exist for someone with my family’s history here.
It’s close enough to the truth to hold up and vague enough to go anywhere. ”
“And my role tonight?”
“You’re not a reporter,” I said. “You’re with me.”
“I can work with that.” She was looking out the window at the Christmas lights on Front Street. “What do you know about him?”
“Smooth, by all accounts. Careful. Very good at being exactly what he appears to be.” I turned into the Bistro’s small parking lot. “He’ll know who I am. He’ll probably know who my father is.”
She glanced at me. “Does that complicate things?”
“It might be useful. My father has development interests. Teller’s in development, among other things. It gives him a reason to be friendly that has nothing to do with us sniffing around his other business.” I cut the engine. “Let me lead. You read him.”
“That was already the plan,” she said, and got out.
The Pelican Point Bistro was the nicest restaurant on Hatterwick by a significant margin, which on this island meant mood lighting, actual tablecloths, and a wine list that had no business existing this far down the Outer Banks.
For a weeknight in December, it was doing reasonable business—half a dozen tables occupied, four stools taken at the bar running along one wall.
The kind of place that stayed open year-round because it had cultivated the right clientele and made them feel like insiders.
Marcus Teller was already at the table. Mid-fifties, well put together in the way of men who had decided that looking effortless required effort and committed to it.
He rose when we approached, and his eyes moved over Layla in exactly the way she’d predicted—appreciative, assessing, landing on me a half-beat late.
“Jace Hollingsworth.” He shook my hand with the grip of a man who had practiced making that grip mean something. “Good to meet you. And this is?”
“Layla Murphy.” She offered her hand and a smile that was warm, slightly deferential, and about as authentic as a stage prop. Teller took it and held it a half second longer than a handshake required.
We sat. Teller had already ordered wine.
We settled into the easy preliminary conversation of people getting comfortable.
The island in winter, the upcoming Christmas market, how the Brewhouse had changed things for the local food scene.
Teller was good at this. He had the unhurried attention of a man who understood that the preliminary conversation was where you gathered the information that mattered, and he gathered it without appearing to.
“Your family’s been part of this island since the beginning,” he said, somewhere into the first glass of wine. “That’s a rare thing. Most of the people who matter to a place like this have been gone for decades.”
“My sister came back,” I said. “She’s the one who kept the thread.”
“The sanctuary.” He nodded. “I’ll admit I was disappointed when that land went that direction. It’s extraordinary property. But I respect the vision.” A pause, perfectly timed. “Your father had different ideas about it, as I understand.”
There it was. Casual, friendly, the mention of a known thing. Not a probe exactly. More like the placement of a card on the table to see what I’d do with it.
“My father has a lot of ideas,” I said. “Most of them involve turning a profit.”
Teller smiled. “John Hollingsworth is a pragmatist. Nothing wrong with that. I’ve crossed paths with him at a few events over the years. Impressive man.”
Layla was poking her salad with the focused attention of someone entirely absorbed in her food. Her foot pressed once against mine under the table.
“What about you?” I said. “You’ve been here, what—six years? Seven?”
“Six.” He leaned back slightly. “I was looking for somewhere to put down roots that wasn’t a city. Found Hatterwick by accident, honestly. Came for a weekend and started thinking about what it could be.”
“And the Bistro was the first thing?”
“First thing I opened. I have a few other interests on the island.” He said it the way people said things they didn’t need to explain. “The marina, for one. I’m one of the partners in the group that’s been running it for the past several years.”
Layla’s fork stilled for just a fraction of a second. Then she took a bite and chewed thoughtfully and said, “It must be interesting to be involved in something so central to how the island functions.”
“It has its challenges.” Teller looked at her with the slightly recalibrated attention of a man reassessing a woman he’d initially filed under decorative. “The previous ownership left some things in less than ideal condition. It’s been a process.”
“A process,” I said.
“These things always are.” He smiled again with the same practiced ease. “But the island is worth it. I believe that.”
The conversation moved on. By the time the main course arrived we’d covered the new trolley system Willa had secured grant funding for, a proposed waterfront development that had stalled under the new mayor, and whether the ferry company expansion Willa was considering would affect parking on the south end of Front Street.
Teller had opinions on all of it. Informed opinions, the opinions of someone who paid close attention to everything that happened in a place he had interests.
When Layla excused herself, I watched her cross the room and noted the heads that turned. More than a few. Her movement was purposeful, contained, entirely unaware of or indifferent to the effect she had.
One of the men at the bar tracked her all the way to the back hallway.
I kept my eyes on Teller, and my attention on the bar.
A few minutes later, Layla came back through the hallway, and the man at the bar stood up. I was already putting my napkin on the table when he stepped into her path and put his hand on her shoulder from behind.
What happened next took about two seconds.
She turned, her hand closing on his wrist. Her body pivoted, compact and precise, and slammed his head against the empty table hard enough to rattle the centerpiece. She held him bent over with his arm torqued behind him and a grip on his neck that had the entire room’s attention.
The man was stammering something that contained the word sorry.
Even from across the room, I could see the slight wildness of her eyes and the faint tremor in her frame. She inhaled a controlled breath and stilled, her face shifting to her captive with growing alarm.
I closed the distance between us as she slowly flexed her hands open and stepped back, releasing him. His wary eyes swung from her to me as he straightened up, rubbing his wrist.
I planted myself between him and Layla without touching her.
“I don’t know what you thought was going to happen, but putting your hands on a woman without her consent is a good way to end your evening badly.
As you’ve just discovered.” What little remaining color in his cheeks fled at my conversational tone.
Or perhaps the death threat I telegraphed with my eyes.
My own hands itched to finish the lesson more permanently. But that wasn’t what was needed here.
I flashed a shark’s smile. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”
From our table, Teller watched with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Something shifted beneath the practiced surface of him. Surprise? Assessment?
I glanced at Layla, who hadn’t moved since the asshole had scurried away. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes still a little vacant. Time to get the fuck out of Dodge.
Walking quickly back to the table, I scooped up Layla’s handbag. “I think we’re going to call it an evening. Marcus, this was great. We’ll do it again.”
He stood and shook my hand and said something gracious and looked at Layla one more time with that recalibrated attention. “Remarkable,” he said, which could have meant the evening, or the woman, or something else entirely.
Outside, the cold air struck immediately. Layla walked beside me to the truck without speaking. I opened the door for her. She slipped in, not meeting my eyes. I came around and sat behind the wheel without starting the engine.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She looked straight ahead through the windshield. “I’m sorry. That was—”
“Don’t apologize.” I turned to glance at her. “He put his hands on you.”
“I know. I just—” She stopped. “I didn’t make a choice. It was just there before I decided anything.”
I’d seen it before, in people who’d been through things that rewired the calculus of threat and response. The reaction that lived below the level of decision-making, in the body’s own memory.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You handled it.”
“I caused a scene.”
“You caused a very brief scene that he entirely deserved.” I studied her profile. “The way you moved. That wasn’t just your dad teaching you to protect yourself.”
She was quiet for a moment. “No,” she said finally. “It wasn’t.”
She didn’t offer more. I didn’t ask. I started the engine, pulled out of the parking lot, and drove back toward her cottage through the quiet December village.
Christmas lights twinkled in my periphery as I thought about Layla’s face in the moment before she’d let the man go.
The look of someone who had gone somewhere involuntarily and was finding their way back.
I thought about everything I didn’t yet know about her and everything I was increasingly certain I wanted to.