“How’s that going?”
“It’s up and down. Like the market. I do all right.”
He really was infuriatingly smug.
“Got any good stock tips for me?” she asked.
“Buy low. Sell high.”
“Gee, thanks,” Ellis said sarcastically. “Let me write that one down.”
“Sorry,” Ty said. “I’m kinda in a mood myself. But that was unnecessary. No, I don’t have any stock tips. You wouldn’t want one of mine anyway.” He tapped the cigar ash into the sand, and decided to change the subject.
“This your first time on the Outer Banks?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I grew up in Savannah. Which is kinda on the beach. But it’s totally different here. The dunes and all. It’s beautiful, in a wild kind of way.”
“You should have seen it when I was a kid,” Ty said. “Most of these houses weren’t here. It was mostly dunes and beach. You know, there are still wild ponies on the beach up in Corolla. It was an awesome place to grow up. Never put on a pair of shoes from the time school let out in June ’til the time we went back in September.”
“You grew up here?”
He’d said too much. “Around here,” Ty said vaguely. “I went to high school in Manteo. I practically lived on the beach. Got my first surfboard when I was ten.”
“So,” Ellis said, giving him a winning smile, “so, what’s the deal with you? Are you hiding a wife and children in this little garage apartment?”
“Nothing like that,” Ty said. “No kids, not married. Currently.”
Ellis tucked away the word “currently” for further thought.
“And have you always been a day trader?”
“No, that’s kind of a recent thing,” he said. “I was in law school, but I dropped out. I’ve always been interested in real estate and investing, so I decided to give it a shot. Of course, I would pick the worst time since the Depression to dabble in the stock market.”
“Tell me about it,” Ellis said. “Banking’s not so hot either. But you must do okay with the market, right?”
He flipped the lid on his cigar lighter and stared out at the water. “I’ve picked some winners, but seems like I’ve picked more dogs lately. To tell you the truth, I’ve been picking up some bartending shifts at a place down in Kitty Hawk to pay the bills. Cadillac Jack’s. You ever hear of it?”
“No,” she said. “We haven’t really been going out at night much.”
“You guys should come in and check it out. I’m actually working tomorrow night.”
“Maybe we will,” Ellis said, sounding uncertain.
“Been up to Jockey’s Ridge yet?” Ty asked.
“Not yet,” Ellis admitted. “We’ve been lazy bums, just kinda hanging around on the beach. But we’ve got the whole month, right?”
“Lucky you.” Ty gave her a questioning glance. “So, seems like the three of you have been friends for a while, right?”
She grinned. “Only our whole lives. We met in grade school, in Savannah. I was the new kid, since I went to public school until third grade. Dorie and Julia have been friends since kindergarten. And we’ve just stayed close, even after all these years. Of course, we don’t get to see each other that often. Dorie still lives in Savannah, but Julia lives in London. She’s a model. And of course, I’m in Philly. Or I was.” She frowned then. “Dorie’s older sister, Willa, was supposed to come with us, but she blew us off at the last minute. Willa can be a real pain in the butt, so we didn’t really mind that much.”
“What about the new girl?” Ty asked. He’d seen her riding her bike up and down the beach road, but never with the other girls.
“Oh. Madison?” She gave Ty a furtive look. “Do me a favor, okay, don’t mention her to Mr. Culpepper. We don’t want him to jack up the rent any more.”
“My lips are sealed,” Ty said, clamping them together to keep them from twitching in amusement. “So, she’s not one of your regular posse?”
“Not hardly,” Ellis said. “Dorie met her in a restaurant, and they got talking, and Madison mentioned that she was looking for a motel room. Dorie’s been pretty worried about money, and one thing led to another, and she offered to rent her a room at Ebbtide.”
“Just like that?” Ty raised an eyebrow. “Seems kinda risky to me, inviting a stranger to live with you. What do y’all know about her?”
“She’s been living in New Jersey, but she just broke up with her boyfriend. Or so we gathered. Madison says she’s ‘in transition.’ She’s sort of odd. She keeps strictly to herself, usually won’t even eat with us. But she pays her share of the bills—with cash, so I guess it’s working out okay.”
“Yeah,” Ty said cautiously. “It must be pretty expensive, taking that big house for a whole month. How much is old man Culpepper getting for the place, anyhow?”
“Too much,” Ellis said. “The place could be nice, you know? It’s a gorgeous old house, but the furniture’s really ratty, and the house itself could use a lot of maintenance. I’ve had to really keep after Mr. Culpepper to take care of stuff like the stove and a leaking faucet. And don’t even ask about the flea situation.” She shuddered and held out an ankle. “Look—it looks like I’ve had the measles.”
Ty considered her ankle. It was a pretty ankle. Ellis had nice ankles, and good legs, and the outfit she was wearing—a tight-fitting tank top and some kinda girly boxer shorts with ridiculous cupcakes printed all over them—was an excellent look for her. It didn’t hurt that she was obviously braless, another look Ty was highly in favor of.
She caught him taking in more than her ankles, and quickly tucked her feet primly under her chair, all the while blushing furiously.
“Mind if I ask you something?” Ty said quickly, hoping she’d forgive his ogling.
“Depends on what it is.”
“What is it about women? I mean, the three of you are scattered all over the place—but you still take the trouble to rent a house and spend a whole month together. What’s up with that? I mean, I have buddies, old friends, but I can’t imagine any of us spending a weekend away together, let alone a month.”
Ellis shrugged. “Why wouldn’t we want to spend time together? These are my best friends in the whole world. We’ve been through a lot together. You know, all that teenage drama, and then college, and family stuff. Dorie’s parents had a nasty divorce when we were in middle school, and then I lost my dad a few years ago, and both Julia’s parents are dead now. And don’t get me started on the men stuff.”
She hesitated, and then plunged ahead. “I don’t know if I could have gotten through my divorce if it weren’t for Dorie and Julia. It was an awful time for me, but they were totally there for me. Julia took the train down from a magazine shoot she’d been doing in New York and actually moved in with me for two weeks. I was a pathetic mess. I eventually took a leave of absence from work, but Julia refused to let me wallow in my misery. She made me eat, get my hair cut and colored, and go back to work. And Dorie—she’s a schoolteacher, so she couldn’t just drop everything, but she called me every night and every morning, for months, just to see how I was doing.”
Ty raised an eyebrow. “You’re divorced?”
She blushed again. She really was good at it, too.
“It was a long time ago. I got married right out of college. I was young and dumb. It lasted all of three months. Crazy, huh?”
“What happened?”
Ellis gave it some thought. “We worked at the same bank. He was different from the guys I’d dated back home. He was the same age as me, but he seemed older, you know, very sure of himself, and he gave me this big rush. I didn’t really know him. He didn’t really know me. I guess I was in love with the idea of being in love with him. And then, after the big wedding, when we were actually living together, away from our families and friends and everybody, it turned out he wasn’t such a nice guy. In fact, it turned out he was a total shit.”
Ty frowned. “What, he hit you or something?�
�
“Nothing as dramatic as that,” Ellis said. “One night at dinner, he just announced the ‘marriage thing’ wasn’t working, and that he’d discovered he didn’t actually love me.”
“That must have sucked.”
She turned and leveled a gaze at him. “Why am I telling you all of this? I never, ever talk about my divorce, except to the girls. And here I am, spilling my guts to you.”
“And you don’t even like me,” Ty said helpfully.
“You didn’t make a very good first impression,” she reminded him.
“Hey!” he protested. “I didn’t know you were spying on me. You could have let me know you were standing there or something, you know.”
“Do you always parade around in your drawers and pee in public?” Ellis asked. “What if somebody else had seen you? Like a child? You could get arrested for public indecency.”
“It was early. Nobody ever gets to that part of the beach that time of day. And anyway, somebody would really have to work at seeing me from the beach, what with the dunes and the sea oats and everything.”
“We see you from that part of the beach,” she said pointedly.
“And I haven’t hardly walked out on the deck in my boxers at all lately, either,” Ty said. “Anyway, can I help it if you and your gorgeous friends choose to run around in your skimpy bathing suits right outside my deck? I mean, it would be un-American if I didn’t appreciate the natural beauty right there on the beach.”
“Humph,” she humphed. But the corners of her lips twitched slightly. She concluded that up close like this, Ty Bazemore wasn’t nearly as repulsive. In fact, he was alarmingly attractive, with his rumpled hair and cleft chin. She’d always been a sucker for a cleft chin.
“I’ll just bet you do enjoy looking at Dorie and Julia,” she said lightly. “I mean, Julia’s a model, and as for Dorie, well, no matter what she does to try to hide it, she’s always had the kind of looks that draws men like flies.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, they’re okay,” he said. “Especially the curvy little redhead. But actually, since you mention it, you’re pretty killer in a bathing suit yourself, Ellis Sullivan. Especially that black one-piece.”
She gaped at him, blushing furiously.
He grinned innocently. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. It’s a simple observation. A compliment. No need to call the vice squad.”
This conversation was taking a decidedly personal turn, Ellis decided. She fought the urge to cut and run. Ty Bazemore had just told her he liked her black bathing suit. She should stay and flirt. She remembered how to flirt, didn’t she?
In the meantime, he was still looking at her, lazily taking in those stupid cupcake boxers and her flimsy tanktop. Panic set in again. She yawned widely and stood to go.
“Bedtime,” she said. “Well, good night.”
“So soon?” he said, standing up lazily. “What’s your hurry?”
“No hurry,” she said lightly, starting back up the boardwalk towards the house. “It’s been a long day and I’m tired, that’s all.”
“I scared you with that compliment, didn’t I?” he called. “Funny, you didn’t strike me as a wussy.”
That stopped her in her tracks. Wussy? Who was he calling a wussy?
She marched right back to the deck, stopping when she was inches away from him. “You take that back,” she said, her fists clenched. “I killed a rattlesnake in my backyard with a shovel when I was ten. My daddy was standing right there but he was terrified of snakes. He barfed when he saw what I’d done. I was the only girl at our neighborhood pool who would backward dive off the high dive. I was the quarterback on my college coed flag-football team, and I broke my nose and played the next day anyway. I am not a wussy.”
It was all true—all except for the high-dive part. But he didn’t know that.
“You’re scared of me though,” Ty said, looking her right in the eyes.
“Am not.”
“Prove it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How?”
“Like this,” he said, pulling her towards him and sliding his arms around her waist. His mouth was an inch from hers, her eyes half closed. “You’re afraid to kiss me,” he taunted, his lips barely grazing hers.
“Am not,” she said, her breath catching as she said it.
“Prove it.”
She sighed impatiently, wrapped her arms around his neck, tilted her face to his and kissed him softly. Her lips were full and warm with promise. Gently, he pulled her closer, gathering the soft fabric of her shorts into his hands. With his tongue, he teased her lips apart. She melted into his chest. For a moment. And then, without warning, she wriggled out of his arms.
“Told ya I wasn’t a wussy,” she said, and then Ellis Sullivan, flying cupcake boxers and all, was scampering up the walkway in the bright moonlight. He slowly followed, pausing to take a last look at the water, and when he got to the deck of his own place, he looked over at Ebbtide, just in time to see the next-to-last light in the house blink off.
18
Julia was nearly asleep when she heard her cell phone vibrating on the rickety wooden nightstand. She fumbled for it in the dark, and sighed when she saw the screen.
“Hey,” she said, sitting up in bed.
“Hey, baby,” Booker said softly. “You missing me?”
“Yeahhh,” she said slowly, smiling as she pictured him. He’d be sitting there in his favorite ratty gray high school gym shorts and a bleached-out T-shirt. His wiry gray-streaked hair would be standing on end, because he ran his fingers through it when he was bored, and the horn-rimmed glasses would have slid down on his nose. Most likely he’d be drinking his favorite late-night treat—Dr Pepper. “Come to think of it, I am.”
Julia Capelli had been a nineteen-year-old college dropout, bumming around Europe for a year, picking up modeling assignments wherever she could, when she met Booker Calloway in a grotty pub in Brighton.
He was a fashion photographer, and she’d been hired for a low-budget teenybopper catalog shoot. She’d been drinking with a couple of the other girls, and he’d stopped at their table to buy them all drinks and hit on Geenie, the busty redhead in their bunch. He was already thirty then, sexy as hell with his long, dark hair, gold-flecked hazel eyes, and ever-present Nikons slung bandolier-style across his chest. He was a confirmed expatriate who’d grown up in California and who swore he’d never go back.
Booker completely ignored Julia that night, but the next day, after the shoot, he’d pulled her aside to offer her some advice—“get yourself to a tanning bed, for Chrissake”—and to offer to take some better head shots for her book. They’d done a couple more shoots together, and after that, Booker was acting as her de facto agent, and then one day, she’d realized that they were essentially working—and living—together, full time.
It seemed to Julia that their couplehood had just gradually evolved. And why not? He was smart, successful, a thoughtful and kind lover, a levelheaded presence in the crazy world they both inhabited. Everybody loved Booker, even her mother, who’d been fully prepared to hate the totally inappropriate older man who’d seduced her daughter into staying in England instead of coming home to the States, college, her family, a normal life. Within five minutes of meeting him, Catherine Capelli was totally won over. The only thing her mother didn’t like about Booker was that her headstrong daughter steadfastly refused to marry him.
Booker never let her forget that one of the last things her mother told her before her death was that she should “marry that nice man, Sugar, before he gets away.”
“I could come down there Saturday morning,” he was saying now. “My meetings in DC are over Friday night. It’s not that long a drive, I could head back here Monday morning. What do you say?”
She sighed again. “Book, we’ve already been over this. This is a chick trip. No boys allowed. Anyway, it’s barely been a week. I need some time to sort things out. We have an agreement, remember?”
“You
have an agreement,” he grumbled. “I didn’t have much choice in the matter, did I?”
She chuckled ruefully. “Not much. Now, can we talk about something else? How’s it going up there? Do you like the people you’re working with?”
“They’re all right, a pretty tight-knit bunch. I’d forgotten how bureaucratic a magazine can be. They’ve got policies and procedures for everything. And it’s gonna take a while to get up to speed with their software.”
“You can do it,” she reassured him. “And anyway, they’re making it worth your while, remember?”
“Damned straight they are. Hey, guess what? I think I found us a house today.”
She flopped back down onto her back. “Oh, Book. I don’t know. I told you…”
“Julia, just hear me out,” he said, his voice pleading. “You’ll love it. It’s in Alexandria. Right on the metro line. Built in 1918, what’s that style house you always talk about, the ones with all the built-in china cabinets and bookcases and stuff?”
“Craftsman?”
“Yeah, that’s it. The real estate agent said it’s the best example of Craftsman architecture in the whole neighborhood. It’s got a big, wide porch across the front, and these great windows that give the most amazing light. And hardwood floors. Three fireplaces. Living room, den, and master bedroom. Four bedrooms. Only two baths, but there’s this funny little trunk room just off the master that would make a great master bath. The kitchen needs a total redo, but the agent thinks we can get the house for way less than asking price, because the owner’s already taken a job in LA, and he’s desperate to unload the place. Hey, I took a bunch of shots with my cell phone. I’ll send ’em right now. Wait until you see this place, Julia.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. He was like a kid describing a new bike. And he hadn’t heard a damned thing she’d been telling him for the past six weeks.
“Oh, Book,” she said finally. “It sounds wonderful. Really. But I don’t need a house. I don’t need to live in DC. I don’t need to get married. I love you. I do. But I can’t do this.”
Summer Rental Page 14
