“I probably won’t be there very long. As soon as Tiny asks Gloria to dance, I’ll be scooting on out,” Emily added.
Chloe pulled her phone from her pocket and looked at the screen for a second. “Speaking of scooting on out, can I go meet Susie and Carrie and those guys? They just texted to say they’re swimming over at Leo’s house. He has a pool.”
“We’re on an island surrounded by water and the kid has a pool?” Ryan said.
“The lake water is cold most of the time. You’ve been in it. You should know. Anyway, Mom, can I go?”
Emily wanted to say no because, quite frankly, being alone with Ryan made her nervous. At the cottage, there were always other people around, but if Chloe left, it would be just Emily and Ryan, and there was no telling what might happen. She didn’t exactly trust herself, but she couldn’t very well explain that to her daughter.
“We were supposed to take a walk, though. I was going to show you the old lighthouse and the place where Brooke and Lilly and I had a tree fort.”
The level of disinterest in those things was apparent in Chloe’s expression. She’d been excited about the prospect earlier, but it seemed Emily’s plan had been trumped by a kid with a pool. “But, okay. We can do that another time. Be home by eight o’clock, though.”
“Nine o’clock?”
“Seven fifty-five. Want to keep going?”
Chloe giggled and turned to sprint away. “Okay, got it. See you at eight o’clock.” She got about ten feet away, then sprinted back for a hug, and Emily knew she hadn’t really been trumped by the kid with the pool. Not permanently anyhow.
“See ya, Ryan. Go for a walk with my mom, will ya? She doesn’t have anything to do.”
Damn that kid.
Ryan sure liked that kid. She knew how to make him laugh, and then she knew just when to scram. The perfect combination of charm and intelligence. She must take after her mother. He smiled over at Emily, looking at her expectantly.
A smile played around the corners of her mouth. “Um, well, this is a little embarrassing because it appears my date for the evening just stood me up.”
“Kids these days. So . . . want to show me the lighthouse?”
“Would you like to see the lighthouse?”
“I believe I would.” He definitely would.
They left the park and headed away from the bay and all the shops and restaurants of Main Street. They passed the bright blue library and the riding stable and the kite store. The conversation was easy and not about anything in particular.
“Did you know my father played geezer night poker with your father last Thursday?” Ryan asked.
“Heaven help us. Did anything interesting happen?”
“Not that I heard of, so I guess that means everyone is still keeping a lid on it. Maybe the old dudes are the last demographic on the island to not hear about Tag’s May/December romance.”
She gave a rather unladylike snort, which he somehow found endearing. “More like February/December. How are things at the Clairmont?”
He hadn’t really done much for the Clairmont project. He’d been too busy researching Bridget O’Malley’s place. Of course, he couldn’t tell her that. “Not bad.”
Talk turned to more personal things, like good movies they’d seen, least favorite subjects in school, and beloved pets.
“I had a dog when I was fifteen,” he found himself telling her as they discussed childhood pets. “The thing was ninety-five pounds of pure, drooling moron. He ate everything he could get in his mouth, including the certificate from his obedience training.”
Emily laughed, and every time she did that, he found himself feeling more uncertain about the future in general, but very certain about at least one thing. He was not leaving this island without kissing her at least once. Where that might lead was anybody’s guess, but Ryan was tired of fighting against it. The pull was inevitable, and he was an opportunities kind of guy. He just couldn’t let this night pass by without creating one.
“Your dog ate his obedience certificate?” Emily laughed as he told her that story. “That’s a bad dog. Of course, our dog ate that library book I told you about, remember?”
Now it was his turn to laugh. “Oh, that’s right, and the scary librarian banned you from the library.”
Emily shook her head. “No, not me. It was Brooke. I wasn’t in the library often enough to get banned. I was too busy getting into trouble doing other stuff. Want to see the scene of some of those crimes?” Her smile was playful, and the chance of him saying no was zero point zero percent.
“Absolutely. Lead the way.”
They walked another few yards and then turned, taking a well-established path into the woods. This looked promising if he was hoping for that kiss. She led him to the mouth of a small cave.
“Hello?” she called into it. No response. “Do you have a flashlight on your cell phone?”
He pulled it from his pocket and lit it up before handing it over.
She looked mischievous, and it was damn near killing him.
“We are way above the age limit for going in here, but I’m alumni so I think it’s okay.” She walked into the cave, and he followed close behind. The interior wasn’t very big, maybe twenty feet long and about ten feet wide, but the entire thing was littered with tool chests and duffel bags and boxes of various sorts, each with a padlock, and each with a word or two scrawled across the surface.
She looked back over her shoulder, smiling. “Good to know some things never change. Welcome to the booze bank.”
“The booze bank?”
Emily was chuckling. “I can’t believe they still keep stuff here, but it looks like they do. I guess you could say this is like the vault, and these are safety deposit boxes. See the labels? Everybody has a code name, and these bins are full of illicit contraband. Liquor, weed, whatever. The cardinal rule is that you never, ever mess with someone else’s stash, and you never, ever reveal anyone’s code name, especially to an adult.”
Ryan laughed and fully appreciated the moral flexibility of these law-breaking teens, since he’d been one himself back in the day. “Honor among thieves, huh? I love it.”
“Every once in a while, when I was a teenager, a couple of deputies would come thrashing around in the woods near here, making a shitload of noise so we all had plenty of time to run, and then they’d pretend like they couldn’t find the cave.” Emily’s laughter made her breathless, which somehow seemed to leave him a little short on the breath factor, too. She had a great laugh. That’s not something he’d ever noticed in a woman before, and he wondered if he liked her because he liked her laugh, or if he liked her laugh because he liked her. Either way . . . he liked her and he liked her laugh.
“Of course, I realize now my dad totally knew where this place was. It’s probably the same place he and Judge Murphy and Father O’Reilly hid their booze back when they were hell-raisers.”