Chapter 18
A warm front arrives with tea and a new gray hair
Sawyer said we could still be friends, but he lied.
I haven’t seen him in four days.
Actually, that isn’t quite true. I saw him. Avoiding me at the grocery store. Standing next to Cain outside the bar with his eyes down, hands stuffed in his pockets, pretending I didn’t exist when I walked past on the other side of the street.
I slump in my chair behind the reception desk.
The sound of the TV is a constant bark of loud infomercials, and I can’t focus on the mountain of filing I need to finish before lunch.
Even the drawing that a little girl proudly stretches onto her tiptoes to show me over the desk doesn’t keep a smile on my face for long.
I’m miserable.
Last night, at the community center, Kristen sniffed blood in the water.
Her beady blue eyes zeroed in on the awkward hello that Sawyer and I barely stammered through, and she torpedoed through the crowd to stake her claim.
He tried distancing himself by putting a wide step between the two of them after she put her hand on his back, but that didn’t slow her down.
“We’ve got so much to finalize before the festival starts tomorrow,” she said to him. “Let me help you.”
Help.
Sure.
She helped herself to the sandwiches and beers I brought, then stood with one hip cocked, smiling up at Sawyer as she twirled a strand of hair around her finger like a bashful teenager. Revolting. He tolerated her obnoxious jokes, but he declined her invitation to have a drink… Or so I thought.
“That man.” Kristen sighed into the restroom mirror when she reapplied her lipstick. “I can’t wait to show him off at the bar. It’s about time he came to his senses and noticed me.”
Did he, though? I crushed the paper towel in my fist. “He said he was busy.”
“Oh, honey.” She patted my arm. “He didn’t want to hurt your feelings. We’ve all noticed that you’re a little attached to him.”
“I always thought you were interested in Luke,” I grumbled.
She snorted. “You can keep your flashy city boy and his boring blah blah blah about food. Sawyer’s the keeper. He’s a man.”
My heart dropped to my loafers. I obviously missed the signs, but…
Not her.
Sawyer has every right not to settle. He wants a relationship, and it burns me hollow under my ribs that some other lucky woman will snap him up. Kristen’s attractive, even if she has the personality of a black widow spider, but, please, whoever is up there in Heaven looking out for me…
Anyone but Kristen.
When the clock hands finally meet for midday, I escape the clinic and head straight to the waterfront.
Ten minutes later, I’m still a wet noodle sprawled over the bench.
I’ve taken two bites out of my sandwich.
My notebook is open beside me, but I haven’t glanced once at the carefully labeled Polaroids or the scrawled notes I took at the jewelers.
I should be cramming. I haven’t read a word.
“There’s got to be some way of getting out of presenting,” I mumble to myself, forcing another bite of sandwich past the sandpaper in my throat.
I’m going to make a complete fool of myself.
Public speaking. On a stage. With a microphone.
Dante never contemplated this situation when he wrote his Inferno. He should have included a tenth circle of hell: humiliation in front of a group of your peers.
I slump lower on the bench. I’ve sorted through enough patient charts to come up with a convincing excuse to get out of this mess. Hay fever. An incurable brain tumor. Well, no one in town has been diagnosed with that, but it sounds like a plausible excuse.
A white porcelain teacup and saucer appear before my eyes. The world shutters in a series of rapid blinks, and I snap up straight.
“I bribed the cafe to let me bring it over to you,” Luke says. “You look like you need it.”
My head whips in every direction. “Wha–what?” Where the heck did he come from?
Luke smiles down at me. “A good, strong tea is a cure for just about anything. This is Assam.”
“You carried that all the way over here?”
“Painstakingly. I sprouted a new gray hair because I was so worried about spilling it. I hope it’s still hot.”
“Thank you. That’s…” I take a deep breath and try to force my voice above a whisper. “That’s very kind of you, Luke.”
He gingerly finds a spot on the bench beside me, careful to avoid sitting on my notebook and the Polaroids strewn everywhere. “I could see you frowning from the other side of the beach,” he says. “What’s up?”
“The festival starts tomorrow.”
“It does.”
“Which means the black-tie dinner is only two nights away.”
“It certainly is.”
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“I’ve overseen more than a few black-tie dinners in my career.”
“How many charity auctions have you hosted?”
“Ah.” His smile is soft with recognition. “You’re worried about presenting.”
“Of course I’m worried. One of the reasons I never finished my PhD was that I was terrified of having to defend my dissertation. That presentation was only going to be in front of five or six people. Your restaurant seats over two hundred!”
“Els.” He shifts closer. “Let me help you.”
My spine sags back into a limp noodle. “No one can help me,” I grumble.
He slaps his hands on his knees. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” He leaps up and disappears in a jog.
I glance at the teacup balanced precariously on the bench.
That is a kind gesture. Luke surprises me sometimes.
I pick up the cup, blow on the edge just in case it’s still hot, and take a sip.
My gaze drifts out over the ocean. It’s calm.
Not like what’s happening inside me. My stomach tumbles like the waves the day Sawyer and I spent at the dunes.
I miss hearing his voice.
Luke is breathless when he jogs back. He clutches a plastic bag of junk, which he holds out to me with one hand before bending over to catch his breath. “I’m not as fit as I thought.” He collapses onto the bench beside me. “I should add a few laps to my workout routine. Join me one afternoon?”
I snort a laugh.
“Not into running?” he asks.
“It’s not something I choose to do willingly. Being chased by an axe murderer seems the only suitable reason for running.”
“Was dancing more your thing?”
“I survived most of the two tap dancing lessons my mother forced me to go to by waxing lyrical about Fred Astaire. No one found my stories amusing, nor did they appreciate when I fell on my backside.”
Luke stifles a laugh. “How do you take care of your health then?”
“My health is perfectly cared for by walking at a leisurely pace along the beach and then sitting very gracefully on my sofa reading a book.”
Luke’s smile softens again. He is handsome like this, with a dark curl falling over his forehead and a relaxed arm stretched along the bench behind me.
My stomach knots with unease. We slept together at least twenty times.
I should feel comfortable being so close to him, but the way he arches into my space is…
intimate. I shift, suddenly wary, and cross my legs to create more distance between us.
“W-what’s all this?” I clear my throat. “In the bag?”
“What?” He blinks rapidly. “Oh… This. I had an idea about how to help you prepare for the auction.”
“I hope there’s a one-way ticket to Paris in that bag. I haven’t explored the Catacombs yet.”
“Not quite.” He pulls out a packet of blank cards. “Palm cards.”
I groan. “Luke, this isn’t helping.”
“It will. I promise.”
“How? Are you going to make me write tips like imagining everyone naked?”
“Absolutely not. That’s a terrible idea. You’ll be so distracted trying to conjure up images of all their lumpy bits, you’ll forget what you’re doing.”
“Not if I’ve seen them naked before.”
“What?”
“Like Dare Watson.” I bite a chunk out of my sandwich. “That’s an image I wish I could wipe from my memory.”
“You’ve seen Dare naked?”
“Sort of. Half. Just…” I circle my lower region. “His…you know.”
“What?” The sharp pitch of Luke’s tone forces my head to swivel. Narrowed blue eyes fix on me. “Explain, Elsie. When did you and Dare start sleeping—”
“Gross. No. Never.” I gulp down another bite of my sandwich. “I only saw half a hairy thigh and maybe a hint of his—”
“Don’t you dare say the word penis.”
I flutter my eyelashes. I was, indeed, about to say exactly that.
Luke puffs out a slow breath. “Now, tell me why.”
I raise an eyebrow. Why does he think I would see this?
“Why, Elsie?”
“Because I walked behind Cain’s garage looking for a hiding spot, and instead I found Dare receiving some rather enthusiastic fellatio from a woman who shall go unnamed.” Mostly because I don’t know her name… and possibly neither did he, if the stories are true.
Luke slaps both his hands over his face and drags them down. “God damn, your prim little mouth saying those very proper words.” When he turns, he’s grinning. “I should have learned my lesson by now.”
“Yes, you should have. Stop being distracted. Tell me how on earth your palm cards are going to help me.”
“We’re going to write down some details to help your confidence. Not everything. That doesn’t help. But we’ll jot down a couple of things you might not remember as easily when you’re stressed.” Luke grabs one of the Polaroids. “What’s this piece?”
“It’s a ring from the Georgian period.”
“Made out of…”
“Gold.”
He waves at me to keep going. He wants more details.
“I–I—” I fumble through my notes. “It’s, um… fifteen karat gold.”
Luke uncaps the marker and writes “15K” on the card. “What stones are these?”
“Well, these here”—I point at the Polaroid—“are natural split pearls, but there are also three rubies. It’s actually a beautifully intricate piece.
If you look closely, you can see how the ring’s set to look like a flower…
and here…” I run my fingertip along the band in the photo. “It resembles leaves.”
“And how much is it worth?”
“O-oh, um…” I scramble to find the spot where I scrawled the appraisal down in my notes. “It’s, um… Two… No… No… Three and a half thousand dollars.”
Luke’s smile drops. “Seriously?”
“The jeweler offered me two thousand in cash if he could have it then and there.”
“Holy shit.”
As Sawyer would say, “Damn straight.”
Luke’s eyebrows shoot up. “Did you just say…?”
“Oh, uh… yeah…” I lift a shoulder. “I’m cool sometimes.”
He laughs. “You’re cool all the time.” He neatly prints the valuation on the card. “Okay… Next one…”
We quickly make it through three more Polaroids. As it turns out, I can blabber on and on about the history of the piece and even the stones, but I get caught up with the numbers. The dollar figures I remember are way off. It’s lucky I never followed my father’s footsteps to become an accountant.
“You’re getting the hang of it,” Luke says. “Keep working on these at home. Write down what’s going to stump you when you’re put on the spot.”
“But what about the nerves?”
“Els—”
“It’s fine here with you, but on that stupid stage, I’ll be a deer in the headlights. I’m going to forget how to talk. I’ll probably faint!”
“Have you ever fainted before?”
“Yes!”
“Okay.” He braces his hand on my shoulder. “You won’t faint if you breathe. Take one now. A big breath. Go on.” He watches me suck down a gulp of air. “Better?”
“No.”
“You want another secret tip?”
“I hope you’ve got one better than your palm cards.”
Amusement warms his smile, but I don’t derail his overoptimism. “You can win half the battle by distracting everyone with how good you look,” he says.
“Easy for you to say,” I grumble.
“Pick out a nice dress and do your hair, and everyone will be too busy gawking at how gorgeous you are to notice if you stumble over a few words.”
“What about if I stumble over all of them?”
“I’ll be right there with you. If you need to find a friendly face, just turn and I’ll be next to you. And if all else fails, I’ll crack an inappropriate joke, and everyone will be too scandalized to remember that you forgot what the fat red stone is in that ring.” He points to a Polaroid.
“It’s a spinel.”
“See? You’re going to be fine.”