24
The lightning-quick restoration of the Daniels house and the equally fast reconciliation of Bobby Ray and Marianne were the talk of Seagull Point, topped only by the gossip about the unorthodox romance going on between laid-back Kevin Patrick Daniels and that uptight Yankee, Gracie MacDougal.
Who ever heard of kissing up on a rooftop for all the world to see? Henrietta Jenkins had seen it with her own eyes during her morning walk.
“Have you ever in all your life heard of such goings-on?” Henrietta demanded with a sniff.
“Well, that’s nothing. I heard Delia walked in on them going at it in the attic,” Laura Lee Taylor said while she sipped coffee after her regular morning walk along the riverfront with the girls, not one of whom was a day under seventy.
“Did not,” Henrietta said. “Delia couldn’t make it up all those stairs, for one thing.”
“Well, she did,” Laura Lee countered, clearly miffed at the skepticism.
“Is it true that Delia’s changed her will to leave the house to Gracie?” Florence Major wanted to know.
“Not with Kevin as her lawyer she hasn’t,” Henrietta declared. “That boy wouldn’t allow it. He’s been watching out for Delia all these years. I doubt he’s going to change now. He’s not going to let some stranger sashay into town and take her for everything she’s got.”
“Maybe he would,” Laura Lee said thoughtfully. “Long as he gets Gracie for himself in the bargain.”
Kevin heard all of this—an astonishing mix of fact and speculation—as he hesitated in the doorway of the Beachside coffee shop. He hadn’t heard so much speculating about his love life since he broke his very brief engagement to Linda Sue Grainger in the middle of the boardwalk at high noon. Linda Sue hadn’t taken kindly to the humiliation. She had stuffed a just-out-of-the-grease corn dog in his face. He still had a scar from the burn it had left on his cheek. He’d been twelve at the time and hadn’t yet realized that even women that age didn’t like being scorned.
“Mornin’, ladies,” he said, bringing an abrupt halt to the conversation. If he’d expected any one of them to look the least bit guilty, he’d have been disappointed. They seemed delighted by his timely arrival.
“You going to marry that girl?” Henrietta inquired. She always had been direct and she definitely believed in going straight to the source whenever possible.
“Hadn’t thought about it,” Kevin said, though he’d thought about little else since Gracie’s return from France the night before. Besides, he figured if he decided to plunge off an emotional cliff and marry Gracie MacDougal, she ought to be the first person he told about it.
“Then don’t you think you ought to stop this shameful behavior before she winds up with a tarnished reputation?” Laura Lee demanded. “This is a small town. Word gets around, you know.”
“And just what shameful behavior would that be?” he inquired. “And who might be spreading it besides the three of you?”
They acted as if he hadn’t just accused them of being a bunch of old gossips.
“The kissing in plain sight, for one thing,” Laura Lee said with a touch of indignation.
“And the dancing on the rooftop,” Henrietta added.
“And whatever the two of you’ve been up to in the attic,” Laura Lee offered.
“And whatever else has been going on,” Florence said to cover anything they might have missed.
Kevin grinned at them. “Ladies, if I stopped all that, what would you do with your morning?”
Henrietta shrugged off the sarcasm. “I suppose we’d just have to discuss Bobby Ray and Marianne. Maybe you can tell us when they’re planning to get married. Last I heard they hadn’t booked the church yet. I was over there talking to the preacher just yesterday.”
“Maybe they’re just going to run off to a justice of the peace someplace,” Laura Lee suggested.
“Or fly to Vegas and get married in one of those tacky chapels,” Florence countered with surprising enthusiasm. “After the service, they could go to one of those glitzy shows. It’s good enough for some of them fancy Hollywood celebrities, don’t you know.”
“I know that you’ve been reading those tabloids again,” Henrietta charged. “That’s what I know.”
Kevin concluded that the smartest thing he could do was head for a secluded booth in the back, out of their line of fire. He only prayed they’d leave before Gracie showed up. He wasn’t sure she was ready to have her privacy so thoroughly and enthusiastically invaded.
Naturally this was one of those prayers that was incidental to heavenly powers. Gracie walked in two minutes later and was subjected to an interrogation that any detective would have admired.
Looking shellshocked, she finally made her way back to his table.
“Any secrets left?” Kevin inquired as she slipped into the booth.
“Quite a few, to their obvious disappointment,” she said dryly. “I don’t think that will slow them down for long, though. They seem to have pretty active imaginations.”
“That they do,” he agreed.
Jessie whisked by, set two cups of coffee in front of them and promised to be back any minute to take their order. Gracie took her first swallow of coffee as if it held the promise of eternal youth.
“Jet-lagged?” Kevin inquired.
“That,” she agreed, giving him a long, mischievous look, “plus staying up half the night pretty much turned my brain to mush.”
“And here I just thought I was welcoming you home properly.”
“There was nothing proper about it,” she retorted, smiling at the memory. “If those three over there knew how you say hello—”
“They’d be green with jealousy,” Kevin finished.
“Or stunned into silence.”
“I don’t think a bomb going off under their noses would stun them for very long,” he observed. “They’d be too anxious to spread the news.”
Gracie took another long, deep swallow of coffee, then looked him squarely in the eye. “Okay, Kevin, let’s hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“What drove you to Richmond to hide out.”
He sighed. He’d figured they were going to get back to this sooner
