“Mom, there’s no reception here!”
“We’re in the wilds,” she said, taking off her sunglasses to reveal deep brown eyes fringed with dark lashes. “I need to know where you want me to put you, Hillary, Peter, and Vanessa tonight. Please come down for a moment, won’t you?”
Erik’s mother turned back toward the lawn, the shiny gold bracelets on her wrist clinking as she walked away.
Looking down at her dull black boots, which had a sheen of dried salt on them from the trip over, Laire realized how incredibly out of place she was, and her cheeks flushed. She had no business mooning over Prince Erik. Keeping her head down, she started walking toward the side of the house, but his voice stopped her once again.
“Hey!”
She leaned her head back, shielding her eyes, her feet unwilling to keep walking away if there was the slightest chance he was speaking to her.
And the miracle of it all?
He was.
“Hey,” he said again, resting his elbows on the deck railing and grinning down at her.
“M-me?”
“Yeah. You,” he said, nodding at her. “Hey.”
“H-hey,” she squeaked, shocked she was able to respond at all.
“You workin’ the party?”
“Um . . .” He’s talking to me. He’s talking to me. “N-no. I’ve got crabs.”
I’ve got crabs.
Oh my God.
I did not just say that.
His eyebrows shot up, and his grin widened into a full-blown smile, accompanied by a soft chuckle. “You do, huh? Well, that’s too bad.”
Please, earth, open up and swallow me whole.
Sadly, it didn’t.
“N-no! I mean . . . I mean, I’m delivering crabs. I don’t have them! I don’t have crabs!”
He laughed again, this time a rich, warm belly laugh that made her insides turn to goo.
“Glad to hear it, Freckles,” he said, picking up his glass and taking a sip.
Said freckles burned so hot, she was certain her cheeks were maroon. “I have to go.”
“Where to?” he asked.
She pointed to the corner of the house. “Kitchen.”
“Wait, where?” He cocked his head to the side as though he was having trouble hearing her.
. . . or understanding her.
Her accent. It was strong because she was so nervous.
“The kitchen,” she articulated carefully.
“Ahhhhh. Right. To give them crabs?” He was barely able to finish his question because he started laughing again.
She took a deep breath and shook her head, willing this entire situation to be somehow banished from the fabric of time. Except . . .
Except no.
She wouldn’t trade it. Not a second of it, crabs and all.
Glancing back up at him, she allowed herself—just for a moment—to trace the perfect lines of his face, to memorize it, to keep it safe inside her heart so she could pull out the memory and gaze at it like a picture whenever she wanted to: beautiful Erik, the black-haired prince of Utopia Manor, smiling down at her.
“Bye,” she murmured, forcing her feet to start moving again.
Flustered by a combination of humiliation, bewilderment, and lust, once she rounded the corner of the house, she stopped and leaned her head against the clapboard, closing her eyes and pressing her hands to her cheeks. She sighed, immediately conjuring the memory of Erik’s smile again and savoring it before tucking it safely away.
And then, a proud realist, she opened her eyes and reminded herself who she was: Laire Cornish from Corey Island, delivering crabs to a mansion for a posh party. A delivery girl. A fisherman’s daughter. Nothing less. But certainly nothing more to someone as rich and beautiful as the young man on the balcony.
They had shared a moment, sure. But that’s all it was: a moment that was already gone.
Thus grounded, she stepped away from the house and walked purposefully through the open door of the kitchen to find the catering manager and make her father’s delivery.
***
Erik Rexford chuckled as he watched the cute redhead disappear from sight, headed to the “keet-chin.” He’d noticed her when his mother had called up to him—her trim little body angled away from him and strawberry blonde ponytail long and straight against her black shirt. She didn’t fit in, wearing a long-sleeved, dark-colored shirt, jeans, and high, rubber boots on a hot and sunny day. But it made him feel curious about her. Very curious. In fact, he’d felt a fierce and sudden compulsion to see her face.
And when she’d turned around? It had almost knocked the wind out of him.
She was pretty.