“Oh, no,” Val said, backing away. “I don’t think so.”
“Don’t be such a weenie, Val,” Tate said, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be fine. She’s perfectly seaworthy. And it’s only a forty-minute crossing to Eutaw.”
“Seaworthy,” Val said, reaching into the pocket of her slacks for her cigarettes. “Isn’t that how the Titanic was described on her maiden voyage?”
One of the deckhands, a wizened old geezer wearing greasy white pants and a yellowing undershirt, blew an air horn. “Fifteen minutes,” he hollered. “Fifteen minutes till departure.”
Val lit up the cigarette and inhaled deeply, her eyes narrowed behind their dinner-plate-size sunglasses.
Tate plucked the lit cigarette from her mouth and tossed it into the water. He picked up the canvas tote Val had dropped on the dock and hefted it onto his shoulder. “Come on,” he coaxed. “Barbie and Ken and Company are already loaded aboard.”
“Good,” Val said, planting her feet firmly on the planks beneath them. “I’ll wait till the real boat gets in.”
“This is the real boat,” he told her, tugging at her arm.
She allowed herself to be helped on board by the granddad grease monkey, and she even reluctantly handed over her other suitcase to be loaded with all the rest of the party’s luggage.
Tate sat down on a rough wooden bench and motioned for her to join him. BoBo and Javier and the rest of the crew were milling around at the back of the boat, laughing and having a grand old time.
Once she’d settled herself, Val looked over her shoulder. Sitting on the row of benches behind her was Regina Foxton and her entourage. Her producer, Scott, was two rows back from her, engrossed in a paperback thriller, and, with his deep tan and casually rumpled khaki slacks and pale yellow polo shirt, he looked like something out of a Ralph Lauren catalog.
“You folks all set?” the geezer hollered, and without waiting for an answer, he gunned the boat’s engine, and it lurched away from the dock.
“You okay, Moonpie?” Tate asked, leaning down to check the dog’s crate.
The dog’s answering thump said that he had fewer misgivings about the Belle of the Seas than Val.
“Hang in there, buddy,” Tate said, scratching the dog’s nose through the crate’s metal mesh.
He hadn’t been happy at hearing the news that the launch captain required all pets to be crated on board. He’d argued and whined and even threatened to cancel, but the girl at the ferry dock had been adamant. No dogs—or cats—were to be loose on the boat.
In fact, Barry Adelman’s assistant, Zeke, had been required to get special permission from the family foundation that owned Eutaw to take Moonpie over at all.
Tate glanced over his shoulder at Gina, who quickly looked away when their eyes met. What was up with that woman? He thought they’d negotiated a truce after that fiasco at the boxing match, but she’d been distinctly edgy around him ever since.
Like this morning, when he’d run into her in the motel’s diner. He replayed their brief encounter in his head.
She’d been seated alone, at the counter, dumping packet after packet of artificial sweetener into her coffee, when he’d wandered in with the Atlanta newspaper tucked under his arm. There were only two other people in the coffee shop.
“Mind some company?” He perched on the stool next to hers, not waiting for an answer.
She’d shrugged. Not exactly a warm welcome.
The waitress poured him a cup of coffee and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Should be pretty good weather today,” Tate said, searching for some kind of an icebreaker. “Highs in the mid-eighties, lows down to the sixties tonight.”
“That’s nice,” she’d said, concentrating on the packet of nondairy artificial creamer she was trying to puncture with her fingernail.
“Here,” Tate said, taking it from her and ripping off the foil tab top before handing it back.
“I could have done it myself,” she said.
“Just trying to help,” Tate said.
She stirred the creamer into the coffee.
Something occurred to him. “Hey, Reggie. Aren’t you the one who’s always harping on natural this and seasonal that?”
“I’m an advocate of fresh, seasonal ingredients,” she said cautiously.
“And yet,” he said, picking up the discarded creamer packet and reading from the ingredients label, “you’re using hydrogenated dexo-whatever, and blahblah chemicals in your coffee this morning. So, I’m assuming you’ll be having those fresh, seasonal ingredients with the rest of your breakfast?”
Before she could answer, the waitress slid a plate onto the counter in front of her. Two runny fried eggs swam in a pool of bacon drippings, flanked by three bright red sausage links and a mound of buttered grits. Two cat’s-head-size biscuits perched on the edge of the plate.
“Your side of bacon’ll be out in a minute,” she told Gina, whose face was getting pinker by the second.
“Healthy, seasonal,” Tate agreed. “You sure walk the walk, all right.”
“My plane didn’t get in to Savannah till ten, and then there was an issue with the rental car, so we didn’t get down here to Darien till after midnight last night,” Gina said, dipping her fork into the grits. “I had no lunch or dinner. I’m famished. Anyway, we’re in a diner in Darien, Georgia. It’s not like they’re gonna have something like a fruit plate on the menu.”
The waitress came back with Gina’s bacon, then tilted her head and gave Tate a friendly smile. “Ready for breakfast, hon?”
“You got anything healthy and seasonal like a fruit plate?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “We got strawberries, cantaloupe, and peaches this morning. Anything else?”
“Maybe some low-fat yogurt?”
“Show-off,” Gina said, doing her best not to laugh at him.
The waitress brought his fruit plate and a bowl of plain unflavored yogurt. He looked at it with undisguised displeasure.
“Yum,” Gina said, reaching over and snagging one of his strawberries.
“Double yum,” Tate said, staring down at the canned peach slices.
Taking pity on him, Gina sliced one of the biscuits in half, loaded it with jelly from the bowl on the counter, and laid two slices of bacon across it before topping it off with the other half.
“Here,” she said, placing the biscuit sandwich on his plate. “You’re breaking my heart.”
“For real?” he asked. “Aw, Reggie, you really do like me.”
She snagged another of his strawberries and sliced the top off with her butter knife. “Just don’t make a move on my red-hot links, or you’ll be drawing back a bloody stump.”
They ate in companionable silence. He sipped his coffee and tried not to get caught staring at her.
“You’re staring at me,” she said, mopping up the last bit of fried egg with a bit of biscuit. “Do I have egg on my face?”
“Literally? No.”
“What?”
He propped his chin on his elbow. “I’m trying to figure out what that Zaleski character sees in you.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly.
“I mean, you’re so obviously not his type,” Tate said, struggling to explain himself. “Not showbizzy, if you know what I mean. I mean, you’re pretty, but not in an obvious, conventional way.”
“You really know how to flatter a girl,” Gina said.
“I suck at this,” he said.
“Boy, howdy,” she agreed.
“I’m usually great at pickup lines,” Tate said, frowning. “Girls love me. They fall all over me. When I go to Bargain Mart, I have to fight ’em off with a stick. I think it’s your fault. I think you throw me off my game.”
She picked up her napkin and delicately dabbed at her mouth. “Maybe you should stick to trying to pick up girls in Bargain Mart. Instead of women in diners. You ever think of that?”
“How come you bleached your hair and cut it
so short?”
She threw down the napkin, reached for her billfold, and took out a five-dollar bill. “This has been fun,” she told him, with a crooked half smile. “We should definitely never do it again.”
“Aw, Reggie,” he drawled, spinning around on his stool so that his knees were touching hers. “Don’t leave. You know I don’t mean it like that. I like your hair. I really do. I liked it when it was long and brown, and I like it now.” He reached out and touched a tendril that had fallen over her forehead, and to her surprise, she didn’t stop him.
“Scott wanted me to go blonder so I’d look more glamorous for this TCC thing,” she heard herself telling him. “D’John accidentally left the color on for too long because he was flirting with the cute Chinese takeout boy, and it burned my hair, and half of it broke off, and my little sister cut off the rest of it.” Her eyes got very wide. “I can’t believe I just told you all that.”
“And I can’t believe you let a jerk-off like Zaleski tell you what to do,” Tate said. “Let alone sleep with him.”
“I’m not,” Gina said quickly. “Anymore.”
And then she spun around on her stool and walked quickly out of the diner.
Chapter 34
As the dappled green waters of Eutaw Sound slid by, Tate slung an arm around Val’s shoulder.
“See?” he said companionably. “Isn’t this cool? Don’t you love the fresh air and the open sea? Isn’t this going to be great?”
“I fuckin’ hate fresh seas and open air,” Val said. “Always have. Makes me queasy.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Never,” Val said. “My next job, I’m thinking about game shows. Yeah. Game shows. You never leave the studio.”
“Wait till you see Eutaw again. Miles of unspoiled beaches. Windswept dunes, gnarled oaks. Remember the herds of wild ponies? And that sea grass, ruffling in the breeze? And what about the whitetail deer? And there’s what, thirty different kinds of birds? I wanna go back over to the other side of the island, see that blue heron rookery again. And you know my favorite part? Not a soul around, hardly. No condos, no suburban assault vehicles, no traffic jams. Spectacular.”
Val turned and gave him an appraising look. “You’re sure little Johnny Sunshine today. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” Tate told her. “The tides and the moon are perfect. Fishing should be great for the next couple days.”
“That’s my boy,” Val said, nodding approval. “We’re gonna win this thing.”
Gina Foxton could feel Tate watching her from two rows ahead. Her cheeks still burned from the memory of her blurted-out confession in the diner.
God! She shook her head, trying to dislodge the whole stupid scene from the place where it had embedded itself in her brain cells.
“Smile, girl!”
D’John trained a tiny, handheld camcorder inches away from her face.
“D’John, no!” she wailed. “I’m not even wearing any makeup.”
“I know,” he said, leaving the camera rolling. “This is for my Before file. Give D’John a smile so he can see where we gonna be shootin’ the Botox on you.”
Instead she showed him the back of her head.
He clucked his tongue in disapproval. “Bed-head! Didn’t I teach you anything? Did you just roll out of bed and forget to look in a mirror this morning?”
D’John put the camera down and started fluffing her hair. “You can’t be walkin’ around in public looking like this, Gina,” he fussed. “If you don’t care about yourself, think about how it reflects on me. People see you, and they’re saying, ‘Damn! D’John did that? He musta been trippin’!’”
He picked up the camera again and pointed at her. “Tell the folks at home that you will never be seen in public again without full makeup and hair.”
Gina rolled her eyes, but mugged for the camera as she was told, and, satisfied, he put the camera away and sat back to enjoy the scenery. She rested her head on D’John’s shoulder and watched the sweep of sky and sea as it flowed past. “Beautiful, huh?” she murmured. “I think I’ll go up on the bow in a little bit and get some sun.”
“Can you say squamous-cell carcinoma?” D’John said, biting out the words. “Here.” He reached into his straw beach bag and brought out a pink baseball cap and a tube of sunscreen. “I don’t wanna see you stepping foot out of the shade unless you’re covered head to toe in this stuff.”
D’John himself was dressed in a Moorish-inspired, ankle-length, pale yellow cotton tunic with black embroidery at the neck and hemline, matching drawstring pants, and rope-soled espadrilles. The brim of a huge floppy straw hat drooped over his shoulders. And he’d taken the precaution of coating his nose with a paste of white zinc oxide. His favorite white plastic Jackie O sunglasses shaded his eyes.
Lisa sat on the other side of D’John, already deep asleep, snoring with her mouth open. She’d disappeared the night before, shortly after they’d checked into the Riverside Inn, and had crept back into their shared room around dawn. Gina had no idea how her sister had managed to find nightlife in a tiny little town like Darien, but obviously she’d found somebody to party with, because when she’d finally managed to drag herself down to the boat dock minutes before their departure this morning, she was still dressed in a spangled black halter top, filmy black chiffon miniskirt, and lace-up, high-heeled black sandals.
Gina looked discreetly around, trying to figure out where Barry Adelman and the rest of the TCC people were. Zeke, Barry’s assistant, had already unzipped his laptop computer from its carrying case and was busily tapping away on the keyboard, oblivious to the spectacular scenery flowing by.
Gina got up and made her way to the bow of the boat, tugging the bill of the cap down in deference to D’John’s dire warnings about skin cancer.
The sun beat down on her shoulders, and the wind whipped at her hair and hat so that she had to hold them down with one hand. If she squinted, she could barely make out a dark shape in the distance. Seagulls cawed and dipped in and out of the water ahead of them, and suddenly, off to the right side of the boat, she saw the sleek dark gray backs of a pair of dolphins as they surfaced for air. Now, as she watched, two more smaller fins joined the other two, and then there were two more, close enough that she could hear their snorts as they surfaced. The dolphins reminded her of children at play, circling and, yes, leaping into the air, spraying droplets of water as they hit the water again.
“There’s a school of fish they’re feeding on.” She turned, and Tate Moody was standing right beside her at the bow rail.
“I love watching dolphins,” Gina said. “Before Lisa was born, my daddy used to take me with him to the coast, on fishing trips. We’d rent a little boat in Brunswick, just the two of us, and go out into the creek. Sometimes when the tide was in, dolphins would swim right up beside the boat. Daddy’d always toss ’em some of our bait. It was like they were hanging around waiting on us for a handout.”
“Do that now, and you’d get arrested,” Tate said. “Dolphins have protected status in Georgia. It’s against the law to do anything to lure them closer to boats. The experts think that’s how a lot of ’em get injured and die.”
“Oh, well,” Gina said with a sigh.
“That’s Eutaw up ahead,” Tate said, pointing. “If you look over there to the right, in a minute, you can see a little bit of the lodge and the plantation house through the treetops.”
“You’ve been here before?” Her voice was sharp.
“Yeah. Of course. I did a show here a couple years ago.”
“I should have known,” Gina said bitterly. “I thought this was supposed to be some big mystery destination. It’s not really fair. Is it?”
“I had nothing to do with picking the spot for the Food Fight,” Tate said. “I’ve been doing my show for two years. We’ve been all up and down the East Coast filming. But that doesn’t necessarily give me an advantage. I’ve got no idea of what these clowns have up their sle
eves for us.”
“Guess I’ll just have to be a better cook than you,” Gina said, keeping her gaze on the approaching island.
“You think I’d cheat?” Tate asked.
“You’re a man,” she said, as if that settled the question.
“Zaleski cheated on you, is that it?” he asked.
“Like you hadn’t already heard the whole tawdry tale?”
He tapped her on the shoulder, and reluctantly, she turned toward him.
“I’m kinda out of the loop on local gossip. Though, to tell you the truth, it doesn’t surprise me.”
“He says it was a onetime deal,” Gina said, turning so her back was to the island and the wind was out of her face.
“Moron. You mind if I ask who it was?”
She shrugged. “Danitra Bickerstaff.”
“Who’s she?”
“You really are out of touch. She’s married to Wiley Bickerstaff III, the owner of the Tastee-Town supermarket chain.”
He grimaced. “Aren’t they…”
“Yeah. My sponsor. Or, they were my sponsor. Wiley caught ’em in the act, and so now, come spring, my show’s off the air. Unless—”
“You win the Food Fight,” he finished for her. “And get a shot at the big leagues.”
She gave him a sideways look. “Make you feel guilty?”
“Nope,” he said. “This is a whole separate deal here. May the best cook win. Anyway, I’m not the one who cheated on you. See, that’s one big difference between me and Zaleski.”
“What? You’re smart enough not to get caught?”
“I’m not all that smart,” Tate said. “But if we were together, I’d never cheat on you.”
“Sweet,” she said, touched.
“Geen?”
Lisa lurched toward her, her face a grayish shade of green.
Gina moved aside just in time for her sister to hang her head over the rail and puke her guts out.
Deep Dish Page 17
