Hell, when I’d suggested she wear more than a bikini, I’d done so because I didn’t like every guy gawking at her all day. And I knew they’d gawk, because I did. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine every curve, the barely there line between her ass and her thigh, the gentle slope of her breasts, the curve of her waistline, and her flat, smooth stomach and the deep, circular bellybutton. Yeah, that made me a dirty old perv. No matter what age Gabe preferred his women, twenty-two was too young for me. I had no business looking at her the way I did, or thinking about pulling on those strings and seeing that scrap of material fall to the ground. No business at all.
Of course, if she happened to be making extra money from selling nude photos…I’d be supporting a friend if I paid for those photos. Right?
Wrong. I knew the answer. It’d been too long since I’d been near a woman. Too many years at sea. Gabe needed to get the fuck back to New York, so I’d stop thinking these inappropriate thoughts.
Chapter 10
Luna
Sunday morning, I treated myself with avocado toast from Sand Piper, the little coffee and ice cream shop near the marina. After the storm passed, I’d headed out and watched the nests on the beach by myself. Alice must have known the weather would cancel the session with the tourists, so she found me on the beach, alone, sitting between a few cages on south beach.
“I had a premonition,” she told me.
“Yeah?” I’d asked. I loved Alice. She once told me she was a Santeria, and I’d looked it up, halfway hoping to discover it was another word for witch.
“This is what I want you to do.” She tapped my knee and didn’t proceed until I gave her my undivided attention. “You fill a bucket with water. Any kind of water. Understand? From the spigot, from the sea, doesn’t matter the source. Then take that bucket full of water and leave it hidden in his home.”
“And what will this do?” I’d asked.
“Evil spirits are lurking. It’ll send them on their way.”
Yeah, if a foul mood equated to lurking spirits, I could see where Alice was coming from. But somehow I didn’t expect an open bucket of water would transform Tate. Poppy told me that all he’d seen on her phone was one of her boudoir shoots. Now, why she was showing those shots to Gabe, a guy she’d just met, I had no idea. That was as odd to me as the bucket of water.
To each his own. It was a phrase my mom repeated all the time in her diner. She said it got her through the day when a customer would spout off about something she completely disagreed with. Or when someone came in and spent an hour getting regular refills and left a twenty-five-cent tip. I always took it as her way of accepting the things she couldn’t change.
Thinking about home had me pulling out my phone. The diner would be packed, and Dad would either be there helping Mom or out surfing or fishing. So, I pressed Nova Fisher.
“Good morning,” Nova chirped.
“Morning. Catching you at a good time?”
“Sure. I stepped outside to thaw. I don’t know why they crank the AC so high in hospitals. This time I remembered, and even in my hoodie, my nose is like an ice cube.”
“Why are you in the hospital?”
“Oh, I thought that’s why you were calling. Dad fell off a roof yesterday. He had to stay overnight. He’s supposed to be released this morning, but they don’t want to release him until the doctor comes by and sees him.”
“What? Did he break something? A concussion?” I ran through the injuries roofers sometimes incurred. Death, of course, being the worst, but he was getting released, so we bypassed that one.
“Concussion. And a broken arm. We thought he might have broken his back. He fractured his pelvis. Could have been worse.”
My sister’s statement qualified as an understatement.
“Why didn’t Mom call me?”
“I thought she did. But everything’s okay. She probably just didn’t want to worry you.”
“Is she there now?”
“No, she’s at the diner. He’s okay, Luna. I wouldn’t have even mentioned it if I thought it would get you worked up. He really is okay.”
“I wish I was there.”
“Why? He’s going to be a total grouch.”
“Any chance he’s considering a different line of work?”
“We haven’t broached that subject. Not yet, anyway.” There was a smile to her tone, and I understood. Dad wasn’t exactly amenable to the idea of growing too old for roofing. Amenable or not, it was the truth. Stubborn man. “How’s school going?”
“Fine. The nice thing about online classes is I go at my own pace. I have one class that’s live, but the rest post each week, and we have assignments. I like it.” As a graduate student, I had no issues being virtual.
“Don’t tell Mom and Dad that. Next thing you know, they’ll be pushing for me to go virtual, only they’ll make me stay here to help them.”
“Did you come home because of Dad’s accident?” I winced. She lived close enough to come home easily. I did not.
“Yeah. Mom called when she was driving to the hospital. She wasn’t sure how bad it was.”
“And no one thought to call me?”
“What could you have done? Worry. That’s all. There’s no point.”
“But I still want to know,” I whined.
The person behind the counter called out, “Luna.”
I tucked my phone between my ear and shoulder to free both hands, and before I could pick my food order up, two large hands reached around me and slipped the food onto a tray. My phone clattered to the floor as I stepped back, surprised.
Tate bent down and blew
