by Deeanne Gist
Logan narrowed his eyes. Nate might not be a saint, but Logan still counted him as a friend.
“Not me, exactly,” she said, smoothing the hair at the nape of her neck. “But George.”
“Pendergrass?”
“Yes. And you’re not going to believe this, but his real name is George Reid and he’s a convicted felon and has just been arrested as the Robin Hood burglar, but I know he didn’t do it, Karl. I just know it!”
A hum of silence.
“Karl?” She looked at Logan with a frown, as if he was somehow responsible for Karl’s lack of response.
“Sorry,” Karl said. “You kind of took me by surprise there.”
“I know. Me too.” She yanked on her hem. Her orange halter dress had a band just below the bust and a bunch of long-limbed yellow cranes toeing the hem. “Anyway, you told me to call if the police bothered me again, and since George has worked for your family much longer than I have, it just made sense that you’d—”
“Slow down, Rylee. Slow down. Where are you now?”
“I’m with Logan Woods.” She turned those big brown eyes on him and smiled.
“The reporter?” His voice was sharp.
Her smile faltered. “Yes, we’ve been trying to see if we could—”
Logan shook his head and cut a finger across his throat.
“ . . . could, er, find some time to go to lunch.”
A beat of silence.
“Do you think that’s wise?” Karl asked, his tone strained.
She fumbled with her phone, pressing the lower-volume button on its side, avoiding Logan’s gaze the whole time.
Too late, princess.
He could still hear a faint mumble, but he could no longer make out Karl’s words. Logan tapped the steering wheel with his thumb.
What was wrong with going to lunch with him?
“No, we’re just friends.” She picked at a snag on her dress, red creeping up her neck. “He’s not interviewing me. We’re just . . .
visiting.” She cringed.
Leaning back against his door, Logan crossed his arms.
“Listen.” She flicked the bangs away from her eyes. “I’m in a parking garage and I can barely hear you. But you will help George, right?”
She shot Logan a quick look. “Yes . . . I will . . . See you then.”
Hanging up, she tossed the phone in her bag. “Well, he’s going to see what he can do for George.” She gave him an overly bright smile. “So? You ready?”
He didn’t budge. “Karl Sebastian is a rich, spoiled playboy who eats girls like you for breakfast.”
She hugged her bag close. “He’s not like that.”
“Really?” He leaned closer. “You must not read the gossip columns, then. My buddy who works in the society section says Karl has a new woman on his arm every week, every day sometimes.”
Stiffening, she put her hand on the door.
He reached across and grabbed the handle. “Has he been hitting on you, Rylee?”
She placed her hand on his wrist, removed it from the door, and pushed it back to his side of the car. “You’re moving into territory where you don’t belong, Logan.”
He wanted to argue, but what was the point? If she couldn’t see through a guy like Sebastian, nothing he could say would make a difference. He shrugged in surrender. “You’re right. I am. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She pushed open her door.
“Rylee?”
She looked at him over her shoulder.
“If you really want to help George, it’s not Karl you want. It’s his father. Grant Sebastian could get the devil to dance in a courtroom.”
“Well, he’s in Europe somewhere, so I guess Karl will have to do.” Stepping out of the car, she closed the door with a little more force than required.
He sighed. If Reid really was the Robin Hood burglar, lunch didn’t make much sense anymore. He wished there was some way out of it. Let her run to Karl Sebastian. Let her go to bat for Reid.
What difference did it make to him what she did?
He sat there gripping the wheel, telling himself to make up some kind of excuse and get out of there.
She tapped on his window. “Is something wrong?”
He looked into her eyes. Necessary or not, he’d asked her to lunch. So lunch it would be. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m coming.”
Chapter Twelve
Sitting across from Logan in the nineteenth-century warehouse turned restaurant, Rylee’s irritation melted away. Everything he’d said about Karl was true. He was a playboy. And he was out of her league. Maybe Logan thought he was being a Good Samaritan by warning her.
Whatever his reasons, she decided to shake it off and enjoy the meal. “I guess you’re a regular here.”
“I suppose,” he said, with a grin and a shrug. The hostess had greeted him fondly—and given Rylee a speculative look. Several of the waiters stopped by to say hello. Even the chef waved to him from the open kitchen overlooking the restaurant.
For Rylee, though, it was the first time in years that she’d had a meal at a real, sit-down restaurant—particularly with a guy.
Maybe Liz was right. Maybe she did need to get out more.
The waiter served her a sautéed chicken salad and Logan a giant Palmetto Burger, complete with pimiento cheese, before retreating to the kitchen area.
Logan placed his hand next to hers on the table. “Do you mind if I say a blessing?”
Her eyebrows raised. She didn’t even know people did that in public anymore. Slowly, she turned her hand over.
He slid his into hers. They bowed their heads.
Warmth immediately spread up her arm and throughout her body, as if she were an electric cord and he was an outlet. The sensation was so new, so foreign, she inadvertently opened her eyes.
His big tan hand swallowed hers. It had prominent veins and a dusting of light brown hair on its knuckles. She could feel calluses at the base of his fingers, most likely from lifting weights.
His rolled-up sleeves showed off well-proportioned forearms and a simple watch with a leather band. His head was bowed, revealing his unruly swirl of brown hair.
After his amen, he squeezed her hand, then released it.
The gesture left her body humming and she was at a complete loss. She hadn’t even listened to the blessing.
A pang of disappointment whisked through her. She’d have liked to have heard it. Liked to have heard what this man said in thanks to the great Jehovah.
Bless the food, Lord. Sorry I wasn’t paying attention.
Logan took a huge bite of his burger, leaning over his plate in case anything leaked out the other end of his sandwich. He swiped his mouth with his napkin, then nodded toward her salad. “Something wrong?”
She jumped. “No! No. Everything’s fine.”
Picking up her fork, she quickly jabbed some lettuce, apples, and pecans and took a bite. Incredible. She looked at her bowl in wonder.
“Good?” he asked.
She nodded.
Smiling, he scooped up some coleslaw. “Yeah. The chef here is really great.”
She took another bite.
“So where are you from?” he asked.
“Here, actually.”
“Yeah? Me too. I grew up on James Island.”
She nodded. “Me too.”
His eyes widened. “No way. Did you graduate from jihs?”
“Class of 2002.”
A huge grin split his face, making deep indentions on each side of his mouth and lighting up his eyes. “I’m class of ’99.”
“Ah. That’s the year our baseball team almost won State.”
He jerked upright. “I was on that team! Played with Brett Spivey. From the Colorado Rockies?”
“I know.” God bless Mr. Lusky.
Their talk drifted from baseball to teachers they’d both had to some of the old high school haunts.
“What part
of the island were you on?” he asked.
“Folly Beach.”
“Get out. Are your folks still there?”
She shook her head. “They don’t live here anymore. What about you?”
“I grew up in Fort Johnson Estates, just up the road from the high school. My parents are still there.”
Lucky you, she thought, unable to fathom what it must be like to have had both parents all this time and to be able to see them whenever he wanted.
“Do you visit them very often?” she asked.
“Not as much as I should, according to my dad. I got called on the carpet a few days ago because I’ve missed a lot of church due to all this Robin Hood stuff.”
She tilted her head. “You gonna do something about that?”
“Yep. This Sunday.”
She’d not seen this side of him before. This new, candid animation. He continued talking about his past, how he’d found his calling halfway through college. He’d gone to Clemson, started in Forestry, then switched to Journalism.
“What about you?” He took a swallow of iced tea. “What did you do after high school?”
“I went to college for about a year, then decided it wasn’t really for me.” She wasn’t about to tell him she’d quit in order to be the sole breadwinner for the family. That invited way too many questions.
“Nobody offered degrees in dogwalking, huh?”
She smiled. “I was taking Library Science.”
He cocked a mischievous eyebrow. “You should have stuck with it, Rylee. If more librarians looked like you, there’d be a lot more male readers out there.”
She knew she should stick up for librarians everywhere, but the backhanded compliment caught her off guard. It must have surprised him, too, because he took a sudden interest in his lunch.
Steering the conversation away from the past, she asked him about his current baseball team. He shared his disappointment over losing in the playoffs.
They compared favorite movies and pastimes, discovering they both loved sand volleyball and Indiana Jones. She asked about his book, and he entertained her with stories of Charleston’s most notorious shady characters.
They were still talking when she noticed they’d long since finished their meals, the lunch crowd had emptied out, and their waiter was slouched at another table, head propped in his hand.
She glanced at her watch and gasped. “Ohmygosh! I was supposed to be at the Petries’ fifteen minutes ago.”
Logan blinked and looked around, then quickly paid the bill.
“All this time,” she said, “and we hardly talked about the Robin Hood burglar.”
“What’s to talk about?” His shoulders sank. “I’m afraid Nate beat us to the punch.”
“Don’t be so sure. You may know all about George Reid, but you don’t know George Pendergrass.”
“Nate wouldn’t have arrested him without a good reason.”
She rolled her eyes. “You might be giving your friend too much credit.”
They cut through heavy midday traffic on their way to the Petrie house, her words still echoing in his mind. Maybe he was giving Nate more credit than he deserved. Maybe they had gotten the wrong man. This wouldn’t be the first time the police had just rounded up the usual suspects.
“So you really think George is innocent?” he asked.
“I really do.” Her eyes glowed with conviction, and he felt himself suddenly captivated.
Finally he glanced away, cleared his throat, and did something he hadn’t planned. “Are you busy tomorrow night? Would you like to go to dinner, catch a movie, something like that?”
He pronounced the words as neutrally as possible, underplaying the audacity of the suggestion. And it looked at first like the boldness would pay off.
She brightened, teetering on the brink of acceptance, then froze. “I can’t. I have to go check on Nonie.”
Exposed. Flayed on a spit. But there were no rocks to crawl under, so he stifled his disappointment. “Is that . . . a dog?”
She laughed. “Nonie is my grandmother.”
“Ah. Where does she live?”
“On the island. At Bishop Gadsden.”
He nodded. “I’ve seen it, but haven’t ever been inside.”
“Oh. Well, she moved there a little over three years ago.”
He dragged a hand across his mouth. “I . . . um . . . I could go with you.”
She turned in her seat, eyes wide with surprise. “You want to go with me? To my grandmother’s?”
“Sure. And afterward, you can set the dogs on me and I’ll run away for old times’ sake. Or we could get something to eat. Your choice.”
She smiled, spinning her thumb ring round and round. “Logan, are you asking me on a date or is this to talk about Robin Hood again?”
He stared into her big brown eyes, melting under the scrutiny.
“I guess I’m asking you on a date.”
She was on the brink again, close to accepting.
Finally she took a deep breath, exhaled, and took another. “All right, then.”
“All right?”
“All right.” Her smile was Sphinx-like, entirely unreadable.
But it was a smile. She’d said yes. They had crossed out of clearly defined territory into the shadowland of . . . something else.
His inner wordsmith failed him. They sat quietly, less than a foot of distance between them, not touching but each very conscious of the other’s proximity.
The easy camaraderie of their lunch conversation was gone, replaced by acute awkwardness. Giddy constraint. Happy with the new development but afraid to stay too long in each other’s presence. They both needed to retreat so they could ponder what had just happened.
He dropped her off at the Petries’. She hopped out quickly, still looking at him in wonder.
He powered down the window. “See you Friday.”
She opened the Petries’ gate, jerked to a halt, then spun around and rushed back to the car. “I almost forgot!”
She fished in her bag and produced a few folded sheets of paper that had been torn out of a spiral notebook. “I wrote this down for you. It’s the stuff we were supposed to talk about at lunch. See ya!”
She waved, then hurried through the gate.
He opened the papers. In neat, looping script was a list of her clients’ names, addresses, and pets, along with the hours she worked for each. Beneath that, each break-in had been delineated, with her whereabouts carefully recorded alongside.
He looked at the gate where she’d disappeared. Friday night couldn’t come soon enough.
As soon as Rylee entered the Bosticks’ home that evening, their chocolate Lab, Cocoa, leapt up to greet her.
“You slobbery thing.” She rubbed him behind the ears.
“Hello there, honey.” Mrs. Bostick rounded the corner wearing a sleek black evening gown and one earring, the twin dangling from her hand. “Guess what?”
Rylee eased the dog down onto the wooden floor. “What?”
“Doug surprised me with tickets to Paris. This whole burglary thing has been so stressful.” She rolled her eyes heavenward. “It’ll be nice to get away. I’ll need you to keep an eye on this boy. We leave next week.”
“No problem.”
Mrs. Bostick disappeared into the kitchen, and Doug Bostick came down the stairs, struggling with his cuff links. His black tux was livened up by a tartan cummerbund and matching tie. He nodded to Rylee, then gave her a helpless look.
“Do you mind?” he asked, holding his cuff toward her.
“Not at all.” She pushed the post through the series of overlapping holes in his cuff, securing the onyx link in place. “So you’re off to Paris?”
He showed her a mouthful of nicely capped teeth. “C’est la vie!”
Mrs. Bostick’s heels clacked across the parquet floor. When she reappeared, both earrings were in place.
“Where’s the party tonight?” Rylee asked.
“We’ve got
two this time.” Mrs. Bostick glanced at her watch.
“And if we don’t get going, Douglas, we’ll be late.”
On cue, he opened the back door for his wife, then offered a friendly wink to Rylee. “Night.”
“Good night. Y’all have fun.” She locked the back door behind them and led Cocoa out the front, pausing on the porch to slip her shoes into her messenger bag and clamp her rollerblades on. The Bosticks pulled out in a black Mercedes coupe, lowering the driver’s window as they passed.
“Now, you be careful out there,” Mr. Bostick said, but the tone of excitement in his voice undercut the warning.
She waved. “Y’all, too.”
Then they were gone.
As she moved through the balmy, blossom-scented air, she sensed that the mood of the city was in perfect harmony with her own. She savored the pleasant jolt of her rollerblades on the uneven pavement, all cracks and cobbles, and the warm glow of old-fashioned gaslight. The swoosh of crepe myrtles in the healing westerly breeze. Even the darkening alleys radiated with crystal moonlight. Everyone she met on the streets seemed content and carefree.
Cocoa pulled her along, gasping merrily. He knew their nighttime route by heart.
On King Street, they encountered a line of people in evening wear—black tuxes, pink and red silk. Ladies holding their hems high as they crossed from a black limo up a flight of marble stairs, their escorts ushering them into the regal and brightly lit house.
It was just one of the many parties the city always seemed to be hosting.
Cocoa trotted along South Battery toward the Confederate Memorial. She smiled, remembering Logan’s superhuman leap onto its pedestal.
She stood under the monument and, for the first time in her life, really looked at the thing. A muscled man in nothing but a fig leaf clutched sword and shield like an ancient gladiator, while a tall Valkyrie in a winged helmet and flowing robe loomed behind him, her hand raised in greeting, or possibly protection, or even to administer a blessing.
She heard footsteps over her shoulder and turned.
A thick, bald man, his round cheek distorted by an upward twist of the lips—his best attempt at a smile. He stood close. Too close. And made no secret of scrutinizing her.
He wore a rumpled, dark linen suit, and a stubby cigar smoldered between his equally stubby fingers. The smell made her stomach churn.
