“How about tomorrow morning? Luca should be done training Eva by then. Of course, Macon could train you just as well, but he’s been busy building up our Internet delivery service.”
“Yeah, that sounds fine.” I smile at her, searching for signs that she knows Eva spent a good two hours at the top of the lighthouse last night, like that’s information she’d just wear on her face or something. I roll my eyes at myself.
“How’s the new place, Maggie?” Emmy asks.
Mom nods. “Wonderful. You know Pete, right?”
“Yep. His family moved here when he was around fourteen, so I’ve known him since high school. He’s a character, that one.”
“He swept me off my feet, I’ll say that.” Mom grins, like her fortieth romance of the year is the cutest damn thing either of us has ever seen.
“Well, good,” Emmy says. “Let me know if you girls need anything as you settle in, yes?”
Mom’s gaze narrows a bit, and she rolls her shoulders back. “Thanks, but I’m sure you have your hands full. I think all we really need right now is some breakfast.”
I don’t look at Emmy, but Mom’s Piss off and get me some foodtone makes my cheeks fill with heat.
“Of course,” Emmy says through a tight smile. “Let me get Eva. She needs some practice, and I know she’s safe with you girls.” She squeezes my arm before disappearing into the kitchen.
Mom releases a huge breath, which I don’t address. A few seconds later, Eva emerges from the back, Luca at her heels. Her hair is tied back into a ponytail, curls escaping around her face, and she’s in all black again. Or still. Who knows with this girl.
They approach our table, Luca talking a mile a minute and pointing here and there, Eva nodding and uh-huhing. When she sees me, she breaks into a grin.
I offer back a close-mouthed smile that says I’m cool as a damn cucumber, but my stomach does a weird little flip that I ignore by burying my head in LuMac’s massive menu.
“Since when do you need to peruse our fine establishment’s even finer choices?” Luca asks when he gets close enough.
I glare at him over the top of the tome. “Since today, I guess.”
“So you don’t want cinnamon pancakes and scrambled eggs and that nasty wheat-berry toast only you and Macon will eat?”
I shrug casually and continue my investigation of the menu I’ve had memorized for about two years.
“Hey, by the way,” Luca says, “this is Eva.”
I look up, meeting Eva’s softly narrowed eyes and tiny smile. A smile that’s tossing the ball into my court. It’d be so easy to tell Luca we’ve already met. Twice. I mean, why the hell not? I tell Luca everything and what I don’t tell him, he figures out in a ridiculously short amount of time.
When we were fourteen, Luca listened while I talked on and on about Natalie Fitzgerald, the new lifeguard at our community pool. And when he caught me staring at her, transfixed by the way the sun glinted off her smooth thighs, he simply asked me what was going on in my head. He didn’t smirk or frown or freak out or crack a threesome joke. And then, this past winter, Luca enlarged a copy of Jay’s yearbook picture, and we hurled darts at it for hours in the shed behind LuMac’s. He knew I needed to blow off steam, and darts were an infinitely smarter choice than setting fire to Jay’s football gear. Slightly less satisfying, but smarter. Luca knows all, sees all, is perpetually levelheaded about all.
Still. I like that big world Eva and I created at the lighthouse last night. So big there was only enough room for the two of us, hemming us in from all the bullshit. Plus, Emmy’s a force when she’s angry, and Eva and I on top of the off-limits lighthouse is definitely angry-making material.
“Nice to meet you,” I finally say, and she grins wider.
“You too.”
“Oh, honey,” Mom says, nearly talking over us. She reaches out her hand to grab Eva’s. “We’re so glad you’re here. You and I are going to chat sometime soon, okay?”
I expect Eva to frown, sort of pull back or squirm under Mom’s sad puppy-dog eyes and emotional intrusion, but she doesn’t. Instead she locks gazes with my mother for what feels like hours. That little mischievous smile vanishes, replaced with something so raw and naked, I almost feel like I’m the one intruding.
“Okay. Thank you,” Eva finally says softly. Then she squeezes Mom’s hand. Squeezes it.
Mom nods and sort of wiggles Eva’s fingers before releasing her. She orders coffee and the omelet she’ll eat a fourth of, claiming she wants to save some for Pete, no doubt. I don’t know what the hell that moony look Eva and my mom just shared was all about, but I’d rather not think on it too long.
“How do you like living on the cape so far, Eva?” I ask while Luca watches her scribble down Mom’s order.
“Oh, it’s fabulous,” she says drily. “Everyone is super friendly and helpful, showing me the sights and all that.”
“Have you tried any of our local ocean-side delicacies?” I ask, and Luca looks at me like I’ve grown a second nose.
“Yes, I have,” Eva says. “Lovely textures, if a little gritty. Bit salty for my taste, though.”
“Are you talking about the lobster?” Luca asks. Eva and I crack up. I feel sort of bad, deceiving Luca like this, but it’s not like I won’t eventually tell him.
“Gray,” he says, his gaze narrowed on mine.
“What?”
“Order. Food. Breakfast.”
“Fine, fine.” I close the menu and fix my eyes on Eva, who’s waiting with a pen poised dramatically, her glasses slipping down her nose a little. I fold my hands demurely. “I’ll have cinnamon pancakes and scrambled eggs with two slices of that nasty wheat-berry toast only Macon and I will eat.”
Eva laughs, and Mom kicks me under the table but smiles at me nonetheless. She can’t resist a smartass, that’s for sure. Luca just smirks and snatches my menu from the table before smacking me on top of the head with it.
“You realize I don’t even feel that, right?” I pat my chaotic bun.
“You’re going to feel this.” He reaches across the table and digs a finger into the hollow of my collarbone. Predictably, I yelp and let out a swear or two. Eva watches our exchange, that tiny smile on her face.
“Luca, stop harassing the customers!” Emmy calls from the kitchen.
“She’s not a customer—?she’s Gray-Gray.”
“Get back here,” she says.
He snaps his body into perfect posture and salutes his mother. She laughs and disappears into the back.
“Remember, Gray,” Luca says. “Bonfire, tonight.”
“Aw, shit.”
“Grace, enough with the foul mouth,” Mom warns, looking around like she’s scared Pastor Alan is hiding in the next booth to bust me. I ignore her.
“You promised,” Luca says. “Plus, it’s Eva’s first bonfire. I told her we’d show her the way it’s done.”
“It’s a pile of logs aflame on the beach surrounded by our drunken peers—?I’m sure she can figure it out.”
“I don’t know,” Eva says. “That sounds pretty complicated.”
A laugh slips out of my mouth.
“Come on, Grace, it’s tradition,” Luca says.