So, sure, maybe he did have ulterior motives, but he was young. She was, too . . . Was that so wrong?
This was his last summer of freedom: the summer between his junior and senior years at college, his last hurrah. Next summer, he’d be a gainful member of the Raleigh workforce, clerking for a law firm of his father’s choice while he worked his ass off in law school at Chapel Hill. But this summer? This summer, he was still free.
And that girl walking so purposefully toward a shabby old fishing boat? With her windblown hair, big green eyes, and freckles? Somehow she felt like freedom.
“Erik!” called his mother, from a cluster of tables in the center of the lawn. “Please don’t keep me waiting!”
Duty called.
And Erik Rexford, who knew his place, turned away from his sweet little redheaded mermaid, and answered it.
Chapter 3
Laire heard Erik’s mother calling and walked back to her father’s boat as a mix of relief and disappointment flooded her heart. Relief, because no matter how he made her heart thunder, smart island girls didn’t go near summer dingbatters. And disappointed, because she didn’t feel like being smart. She felt like staring into Erik Rexford’s dark brown eyes forever.
Rexford. Erik . . . Rexford.
She’d almost fallen over when she realized whose kitchen she was standing in. It belonged to Brady Rexford. Governor Brady Rexford.
She’d had to sign something called a confidentiality agreement before stepping foot into the Rexford kitchen. Judith Sebastian, the catering manager, explained the gist of it: Laire was forbidden to take pictures while she was on the Rexfords’ property or post about the premises on social media, which really wasn’t a problem since Laire didn’t have a cell phone or a Facebook account anyway.
Scrambling to recall what she knew about the new governor’s oldest child, she came up mostly dry, except for a memory of Kyrstin exclaiming that he was hot, and a dim recollection that he attended Duke University, which made him at least two or three years older than she.
Older, and even more out of her league than he was when he was just a hot guy in a big house grinning at her from a balcony.
Erik Rexford was North Carolina royalty.
Grabbing the third cooler by the handles, she hefted it out of the boat and onto the dock with a thud. Stepping up onto the wood planks, she picked up the cooler and walked slowly and carefully along the boardwalk, her back aching and hands burning from the heavy load.
Let me get one of these fellas to help you!
No.
Absolutely not.
Cornishes did not accept help (or tips, for that matter) from summer folks.
We do our work. We do it proud. We keep to ourselves.
She could hear her father’s words in her head.
This was how, her mother had explained a long time ago, islanders were able to hold on to their dignity, despite the ups and downs of a life built within the sometimes-unreliable commercial fishing industry. They welcomed the summer folks, worked for them, fished for them, and sold to them, but they didn’t pander to them. They took money for a decent product or a job well done, but islanders looked to their friends and family when they ran into trouble and needed help. And we certainly don’t take no handouts from dingbatters.
Besides the physical barrier—ten nautical miles—that kept Corey separate from the other islands, and the Corey brogue, which, especially when laid on thick, was difficult for outsiders to understand, an insulated islander mentality kept the rest of the world at arm’s length.
And though Laire longed for more than island life, she wondered if she’d ever be able to unlearn such deeply ingrained ways. Until she experienced something substantially different about the world, what she knew would likely trump what she wanted.
Still, she couldn’t help giving Erik Rexford a wistful glance as she trudged by, her cheeks growing instantly hot when he looked up at exactly the right moment to find her gawking at him, and winked.
Gyah! She snapped her neck away, facing forward. Make the delivery and get out of here!
When she reached the house, she found Ms. Sebastian waiting for her outside the kitchen door with a glass of ice-cold water.
“It’s just water,” said Ms. Sebastian, holding out the sweating glass. “Nothing special.”
Laire placed the cooler down inside the kitchen and accepted the glass gratefully, taking a huge gulp before backhanding her lips and handing the glass back.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“I’m guessing you’re sixth—no, seventh-generation Corey?”
“Tenth, ma’am.”
“Tenth! My goodness.”
Laire grinned. “You been to Corey?”
“Several times. I’m from New Bern.”
“Up the Neuse?” asked Laire, referring to the estuary that fed the Pamlico Sound, and identifying the placement of other human beings on God’s earth, as she always did, by the body of water closest to them.