Why is he home? Why is he home? Why is he already home?
Her heart was beating so fast, she could barely breathe, but she pulled in alongside the dock as her father stepped onto the planking, demanding, “Throw me the line.”
Scrambling to the bow, she threw him the rope, watching, with increasing horror, as he cleated the boat to the dock without a word, his face drawn, his eyes furious.
Flicking her eyes to Kyrstin’s, she found them wide and severe.
Shit. She was in trouble. Big, huge, mammoth trouble.
“Get on in the house now,” growled her father, his blue eyes flinty.
Looking over her father’s shoulder she found Issy, who held baby Kyle against her chest and looked at Laire like she’d like to spit and roast her.
“Get. In. The. House,” she whispered angrily, snarling at her youngest sister.
Laire scurried off the boat, past her father and sisters, head down, beelining for the porch door. She slipped inside, turning into the living room and perching on the edge of the couch as her mind tried to figure out what was going on and how the hell to explain her absence.
Her father, preceded by her sisters, entered the living room, his huge presence taking up most of the room, his eyes angry and tired.
“Where you been?” he asked, looming over her, cracking his knuckles against his palms.
She darted a glance to Kyrstin, the only one in the room who knew that Laire had been working in Buxton. Kyrstin shook her head almost imperceptibly to signal Laire that she hadn’t said anything.
“I . . . I, um . . .”
She didn’t know what to say. Should she admit to working at the Pamlico House? What about Erik? No. No! She couldn’t mention Erik, or her father would forbid her to ever see him again.
Her father took a step toward her, hands on his hips. “Issy come by last night to check on ya. The li’l’n keeps her up so she comes by regular.”
“You weren’t here, Laire. Not at nine, not at ten, not at two in the mornin’!” cried Issy. Laire blinked at the panic in her sister’s voice, understanding, for the first time, that she wasn’t just angry, but scared. “I waited for you, but as the hours went by, I got worried, so I called Kyrstin. She hadn’t seen you all night. Said you never came into work. We called Brodie to see if you was with him, but he said he hadn’t seen you in weeks. I was scared. So I radioed Daddy.”
. . . at three o’clock in the morning.
Fuck.
Laire put a hand to her chest, which felt tight with her racing heartbeat and the horrible adrenaline rush of being found out. She needed a story. And fast.
“So where you been at, gal?” asked her father again. “And who you been with all night because he’s goin’ ta need to make it right w’ you.”
Make it right.
No.
No. No. No.
Marriage.
Her father was talking about a shotgun marriage.
She had to say something fast, to distance herself from the island men her father would suspect.
“I . . .,” she started again, glancing at Kyrstin before continuing. “I haven’t been workin’ on Ocracoke. I’ve been workin’ over in Buxton.”
“You what?!”Her father recoiled, stepping back as if she’d slapped him. He looked over at Kyrstin.
“You knew ’bout this?”
Kyrstin nodded, giving Laire dagger eyes before dropping her head in shame.
“Since when?” her father demanded.
“I n-never worked on Ocracoke. I just . . . Kyrs wanted a bar job, and so I let her—”
Kyrstin’s head snapped up. “Don’t you dare blame this on me, Laire!”
“I’m not blamin’ you!” she cried. “But—”
“So two of my girls been lyin’ to me all summer.” Her father took a deep breath and exhaled long and hard, reaching up to press his palm to his chest. “Lyin’ like snakes.”
“No, Daddy,” said Laire, even though it was true. She had been lying all summer. She’d been living in a fantasy world with Erik Rexford, and it was all crashing down around her.
“Yes, Laire! YOU BE A LIAR!” he boomed.
“Daddy, please, calm—”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down! Where you been all night?”
Kyle started crying. and Laire looked up at her sister, whose pinched expression was traded for a mother’s tenderness, jostling her baby in her arms. “Don’t cry, li’l’un.”
At some point, tears had started falling from Laire’s eyes too. “I’m sorry. I’m so s-s-sorry.”
“So you been in Buxton. All summer,” her father said, his voice resigned, heavy and deeply disappointed, which gutted her. “But you still come home every night by ’leven. ’Cept for last night.”
She gulped, the memory of Erik’s body sliding inside hers still so sharp, she could feel him. She could feel his beautiful fullness, and it made her want to weep for what was happening now—for the price she was going to have to pay for those cherished hours spent with him last night and this morning.