I was rewarded with a smile that made me look away. “No. That we miss a lot when we’re not paying attention. That things aren’t always as they appear to be.”
I stood to face him, the salt air breathing to life something I hadn’t felt in years. Something that felt a lot like courage, but couldn’t be. I wasn’t brave. Or strong. I just seemed to have a knack for landing on my feet.
“Like what?” I asked, meeting his eyes although I wanted to turn away.
“Gibbes Heyward? Is that you?”
We both turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. A boat filled with people and loud music was approaching the dock closest to the parking lot. The man behind the steering wheel lifted a beer can in our direction as a curvy redhead wearing what could only be described as Daisy Dukes and a bikini top easily hopped out of the boat, landing barefoot on the dock, then jogged her way toward us. I turned to watch the kids, reminding them to stay on the wall and out of the mud, unwilling to be a witness to a wardrobe malfunction that seemed a foregone conclusion.
“It is you,” she said, whipping her long hair from her shoulders in case we’d missed a view of her cleavage as she’d run. “You haven’t changed a bit, Gibbes.” She blinked heavily mascaraed lashes at him. Close up, I could tell that she was much older than I’d originally thought, more likely in her early forties than the twenty-something I’d thought her to be from her clothing. “Don’t you remember me?” She smelled like a mixture of cigarettes, coconut oil, and sweat, and I stepped back out of range.
A flash of recognition swept across Gibbes’s face, or maybe it was something else. Either way, he definitely knew who she was. “Sandy? Sandy Beach?”
“That’s your name for real?” Maris asked, looking up at the stranger through her sunglasses.
“The one and only!” She threw her arms around Gibbes’s neck, pressing her considerable chest against his while his hands did a frantic search to figure out a safe place to land.
Gently he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back. “It’s been a while.”
“It has. I just moved back to South Carolina—been living in Vero Beach the last ten years or so.” She waggled her left hand. “Got divorced and decided it was time I come home. Florida was too small a place for me and my ex, if you know what I mean.”
I tousled Owen’s hair to distract him so he’d close his mouth and stop staring at the woman’s tattoo, which looked like a dragon perched on her shoulder, its pointed tail reaching toward her cleavage like a directional arrow.
She looked at me with interest, her gaze dropping to the two children, who were busy staring back like spectators at a zoo. “Is this your wife and kids?”
“No,” we both said simultaneously.
“I’m Merritt Heyward, Gibbes’s sister-in-law. And this is my half brother, Owen, and his friend Maris.”
She smiled at the children, her teeth yellowed with nicotine, before moving her gaze back to me. “Unless there’s another brother I don’t know about, I’m guessing you’re married to Cal?”
As if sensing my unease, Gibbes stepped in. “Cal passed recently, and Merritt has inherited our grandmother’s house.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She looked at me again with renewed interest, or what I thought was interest. But there was something else in her eyes that I couldn’t identify. She took in my loafers and the modest shorts, lingering briefly on the knit top before settling on my straw hat. “You don’t seem his type.” Deep creases formed between her brows. “How long were you married?”
I wanted to tell her that it was none of her business. Instead I lifted my chin. “Seven years.”
“Seven years?”
I couldn’t imagine her sounding more surprised if I’d said we’d had seven children or that I was ninety years old.
She leaned forward, studying me. “You must be a lot stronger than you look, then. I dated him for almost a year and it almost killed me.” She stepped back, throwing a glance at Gibbes. “I should have gone for this one instead, but he was just a kid and I didn’t want to be one of those women, if you know what I mean.” She nodded her head in the direction of the children just in case we weren’t sure why she was censoring herself. “Not that it mattered, really. Us girls like the bad boys, don’t we?”
“No, not all of us.”
She tightened her mouth, accentuating the brackets formed by wrinkles on each side of her face. “Yeah, well, I just figured you did, because you married Cal.” She coughed a smoker’s cough, taking a moment to catch her breath. “It took everything I had to break up with him—even moved to Florida just to make sure there was enough distance between us. But I figured I was lucky to get away with just a broken heart instead of something else.”