That’s it,” I whipped around to say to Will. “Garrett scuba dives. He told me.”
Will stared. “I beg your pardon?”
“Friday night on the author bus, when we were talking about going out on your boat, Garrett was bragging about how he’s certified to scuba in open water. He offered to teach me, but I said I wasn’t interested.” My mind was racing. “Can you rent scuba equipment around here?”
“Absolutely,” Will said. “It’s Florida. You could rent a tiger if you wanted to. But you don’t think—”
“I do.” I turned and stabbed my index finger into Will’s chest to emphasize my words. “I know where Garrett is.”
“Jo, are you coming or not?” Frannie’s voice shouted shrilly from the darkness of the parking lot where the author bus was waiting. “I’m going to miss the third quarter if you don’t hurry up!”
I flattened my hand against Will’s chest. I liked the warmth I could feel radiating from beneath the light material of his shirt, and the steady ba-dum, ba-dum of his heart. I didn’t care what kind of videos Jasmine, behind us, might be recording. “Do you have a car here?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he said. “But why?”
“Because it will be faster.” I took his hand—the hand I’d been longing all night to hold. It felt solid and right in mine, like it had been made to fit in my fingers. “Come on, let’s go.”
“But where are we going?” Will looked more amused than upset—especially when I began tugging him toward the parking lot, ducking past the author bus where Frannie was frantically yelling at Kellyjean to hurry up, since she’d had to run back into the restaurant to get her wrap. Kellyjean had never, in all the time I’d known her, remembered to bring all her belongings when we’d left a place.
“Frannie, I’m going with Will,” I called to her. “Let Bernadette know, will you?”
Frannie waved at me impatiently. She was too concerned about missing any more of her game to be curious about what I might be doing sneaking off in Will Price’s car.
And what a car it was.
“This is what you drive?” I was so shocked I dropped Will’s hand.
“Yes.” In the glow of the parking lamps, I could see Will reaching into his pocket for his keys, a bewildered expression on his face. “Why, what’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” I said. “It’s just not what I’d expected a guy like you to drive.”
“What do you mean, a guy like me?” Will opened the passenger door of the bright red Tesla. “What did you expect?”
“Something more—well, gas-guzzling, to tell you the truth. A Range Rover, maybe. Or a Porsche. Possibly a Ferrari.”
“Ouch.” He winced. “You really do have a low opinion of me, don’t you? Do you think I’m actually that insecure that I’d need an expensive, gas-guzzling sports car to prove my masculinity?”
“Yes,” I said cheerfully as I climbed inside the Tesla, noticing that, unlike his house, it was filthy. The floor pads were covered in sand. Something rolled under one of my feet. I reached down to lift it and found a grimy tennis ball. “Do you have a dog?”
“Chloe does.” He’d swung into the driver’s seat. “I promised her one after we moved. I felt like it was the least I could do.”
“Of course you did.” I dropped the slimy ball over my shoulder, into the back seat. “Let me guess: a Rottweiler.”
He shook his head. “You really do hate me, don’t you? Susie is a springer spaniel, and she’s lovely.”
“Susie?” I burst into incredulous laughter. “Your sister named her dog Susie?”
“Yes, my sister named her dog after your character, Susie Spaniel.” His dark eyes twinkled at me. “You see? I really have read your books. I know all the characters. Kitty, her parents, her best friend Felicity, Susie Spaniel, Rex, Raul—”
I stopped laughing abruptly. Raul? He knew about Raul? This was getting uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. I just . . . that really is very sweet.” Our gazes met, and I suddenly became aware of how very quiet it was in the parking lot—and how very alone we were. He was sitting so close that I could feel the heat coming off his body . . . that hard, lean body I’d already seen half naked earlier in the day. All I had to do was lean forward a little and put my hands on that—
These were completely unsuitable thoughts to be having while a man was missing.
“I should probably tell you where we’re going, shouldn’t I?” I said, in a voice that sounded much too high-pitched.
“That would be helpful,” he said. “Yes.”
“The Lazy Parrot Inn, please.”
He’d started to turn on the ignition, but now he switched it off and twisted in his seat to stare at me in disbelief. “Your hotel? You think Garrett is back at your hotel?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why on earth would he go back there?”
“Because where else is he going to go? It’s high season here. Every other hotel room is booked. Unless he planned this thing months in advance—which I highly doubt—he doesn’t have anywhere else to hide.”
“But the man would have to be an idiot to think that no one would look there.”
“Well, no one has,” I pointed out. “Until now.”
Will frowned. “It’s not possible. Only a fool—”
“May I point out that Garrett was serenading your teenage sister on the ukulele this afternoon, right in front of you? He is a fool.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “But to prove you wrong, I’m willing to look.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said in my most sarcastic tone. “Is spending time alone with me such a burden?”
He grinned. “No. I enjoy your company—however repugnant you seem to find mine.”
“You’ve been growing on me slightly,” I admitted grudgingly. If only he knew the truth—like the fact that I was sitting there thinking about him naked.
He looked delighted. “Have I? What did it? It was my immense knowledge of feminist characters in children’s fiction, wasn’t it?”
I choked. “God, no.”
“What, then? It was the boat, wasn’t it? Most women find a man with a really big . . . boat irresistible.”
“Don’t be disgusting.” Please, be disgusting. Be disgusting all over my body.
What was going on, anyway? Will Price wasn’t the flirting type.
Although, to be honest, neither was I. Or at least I hadn’t been for a really long time. Was this happening simply because I was alone in a car with an attractive man (whom I’d admittedly hated until a little while ago), or because the evening had been so stressful, it was nice to release a little tension? Or was there something else going on? If it turned out to be the stupid green flash—or worse, Kellyjean’s essential oil—I was not going to be happy.
“What kind of car do you drive, anyway?” Will asked.
“What? Me? None. I’m a New Yorker. I don’t own a car. I don’t even have a license.”
“What about your father?”
“My father? What about my father?”
“What does he drive?”
“Nothing.”
Will raised his eyebrows. “So how is your father going to get around when he moves here?”
“My dad’s not moving here. I’m looking at places for him farther north, in the Orlando area.” I risked a glance at him, though it meant picturing him naked again. “Where’s all this concern for my dad coming from?”
“Because you don’t seem to have really thought through how to take care of yours, who seems like a good one. At least if he moved here, he could walk nearly everywhere he wanted to go. This is a small island. Your dad wouldn’t have to drive anywhere.”
While a lot of unexpected things had happened since my arrival in Little Bridge—having a heart-to-heart with (and then kissing) Will Price on his yacht; watching Garrett Newcombe disappear himself into the Gulf of Mexico—discussing my dad’s future living plans with Will had to be one of the weirdest.
“Um,” I said, as we pulled up in front of the hotel, “I appreciate your concern. But I suspect the real estate prices here in Little Bridge might be a little out of my dad’s”—meaning my—“price range anyway.”
“You don’t have to buy,” Will said. “Renting first is always a good way to tell if you like an area. Then you can buy later, once you know your way around the local real estate.”
If someone had told me a week ago I’d be spending any amount of time with Will Price discussing Florida real estate, I think my head would have exploded. Now it simply seemed . . . normal.
Will had slid the car into the space in front of the hotel marked Lazy Parrot Inn Guest Drop-Off/Pickup Only. Now he got out, walked over to open my door, and said, “After you.”
“Uh, thanks. And thanks for the real estate tip. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Maybe people with no parents really liked discussing other people’s parental problems, I thought, as I watched Will go up to the young guy who was managing the hotel desk, lean an elbow against it, and say, “Hello. We were wondering if we could have the room number of one of your—”
Whoa. I darted forward and snatched Will by the arm.
“Nope,” I said to the guy behind the desk. “Nope, no, we weren’t. We’re fine. Have a good night.”
Both Will and the front desk guy looked startled.
“Very well, miss,” the front desk guy said. “Have a nice night, yourself.”
As I hustled Will out of the lobby and through the living and dining rooms, out into the courtyard, he whispered, “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing? You can’t just go up and ask the guy at the front desk for Garrett’s room number. He might tip him off that we’re on our way! We’ve got to be subtle about this.”
Will looked taken aback. “But then how else are we going to get his room number?”
“I already know his room number,” I said. I had my arm wrapped around his as I hustled him around the edge of the pool. “I checked into this place at the same time he did. Don’t you remember? I was standing there in the airport yesterday morning holding a sign with both of your names on it. I know you saw me. You looked right at me and dropped your bag in fright.”
Will froze, nearly catapulting me into the pool, because while he’d stopped walking, I’d kept on going, and my arm was still hooked through his.
Not anymore, however. Now we stood in the middle of the courtyard, which was empty of guests as well as hotel employees, and totally silent except for the gurgle of the hot tub and the musical chirps of crickets and frogs.
“I wasn’t frightened to see you,” Will insisted. “I was simply a little surprised.”
“Well, I don’t know why. You’re on the festival board. You knew I was coming.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what time your flight got in. And I didn’t know you’d done that to your hair.”
My hand went reflexively to my head. “I thought you said you liked my hair this way.”
“I did. I do.” The only light in the courtyard was from the lamps outside the doors to everyone’s rooms, and of course the pool lights, which gave everything a blue, out-of-this-world glow. Still, I could see that Will looked upset—upset enough that he’d stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, as if he were trying to stuff down something else . . . his emotions, maybe. “It was just a shock. You looked so different from when I’d last seen you . . . not in a bad way, just different. I’d heard from a few people that you’d been upset about what I said in the Times”—people? What people? It could only have been Rosie, who’d probably run into his agent in Aruba or wherever it was all agents hung out when they weren’t in New York, making deals. I was going to kill her—“and I was worried—”
“About what? That I’d dyed my hair black because of you?”
Actually, I had, although not directly. Midnight Black matched the way I’d been feeling for months about my career, my love life, and most of all, Will Price.
“No! No, not at all.” At my derisive eye roll, he said, “Well, all right, maybe. I knew I had to apologize, and I wanted to do it right. I’d been rehearsing what I was going to say when I saw you. I didn’t expect our first meeting to be in the Little Bridge Island Airport, though, so I’ll admit, I ran. It was cowardly, but you looked”—he swallowed—“angry.”
I tried to suppress a grin, remembering how I’d been about to spit on the whiteboard and erase his name from it. Then something he’d said hit me. “Wait a minute. You rehearsed what to say when you saw me? On the beach the night of the meet-and-greet—you practiced that?”
He winced. “I had a speech written out, exactly what I was going to say when I saw you. Only then you brought up Chloe—”
Now I could no longer suppress a grin. “And the fact that she said I’m her favorite writer?”
“That wasn’t what I thought you were going to say she told you. I thought you were going to say she’d told you—”
“—how you hadn’t noticed she had dyslexia her whole life. I know.”
He winced. “Oh.”
“I didn’t put it together until today, when you told me on the boat. But I get it now.”
“I told you. I’ve just never been very good with words. Not spoken words. I’ve always been better at writing. The things I want to say—somehow, they just never seem to come out right unless I’m typing them. Then it feels like I get everything right.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion.” When he only stared at me in confusion, I added, “You can’t possibly consider having two people fall in love only to have one of them get shot at their own wedding ‘getting everything right.’”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “You really are reading my book, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m reading it. But I can’t say I’m finding it very cathartic, or whatever I’m supposed to be feeling. What kind of twist is that supposed to be? How can Melanie’s husband not be dead? Johnny saw his body. He was very, very dead. But now somehow he’s risen from the dead and shot Johnny at his own wedding?”
Out from those pockets came his hands, big and stretched wide open, as entreating as his dark eyes. “I can’t believe you’re actually reading it.”
“I still have about thirty pages to go. But I don’t understand what’s going to happen in the next thirty pages of a book where the first-person narrator has been shot dead.”
“You do know what, Jo.” One of those large hands reached out to clasp me by the wrist. “The emotional journey all protagonists take in every book: from being someone flawed, who’s made mistakes—maybe serious mistakes—to being someone slightly less flawed.” His other hand reached out to clasp me by my other wrist. “Someone who’s learned from their mistakes and only wants forgiveness, and has maybe done one or two things to earn it . . . not only from the reader, but from their potential love interest, as well. Does that make sense to you?”
I blinked at him. I had to blink, because my eyes had suddenly filled with tears. I couldn’t believe it, but Will Price—whose soppy books I’d been making fun of for years—had finally managed to make me cry.
“You’re not talking about Johnny, are you?”
“Actually, I am,” he said, as he pulled me toward him. “But also . . . maybe not. Because maybe I’m Johnny.”
And then—don’t ask me how—Will was kissing me again. Not just kissing me, but saying my name over and over—“Jo, Jo, Jo”—like one of Kellyjean’s incantations.
But I didn’t mind, because the sound of my name on his lips was an elixir, as intoxicating as the smell of the night-blooming jasmine hanging heavily in the air. I was kissing him back, my whole body feeling as if it were on fire. I was standing on tiptoe, my hands around his neck now that he’d released them to wrap his arms around my waist, pulling me so close that I could feel enough of him through the thin material of the suit he was wearing to be pretty sure—but not one hundred percent yet—that he was wearing boxers and not briefs. This was something I knew I was going to have to get to the bottom of, and quickly, when something occurred to me, and I tore my mouth from his.
“Wait a minute,” I said, looking up into his dark eyes, the lids half lowered with desire. “If you’re Johnny, does that mean I’m Melanie?”
“Yes,” he murmured, his lips traveling down my throat.
“But Melanie is a total idiot.”
“She isn’t.” Now his mouth was burning hotly against the bare skin of my chest. “To quote Kirkus, she’s the ‘epitome of femininity, at once beautiful and strong’ . . . like you.”
It was hard to think properly with so much hard muscle pressing against me, but I managed to say, “I’m pretty sure the epitome of femininity isn’t—”
But I never got to finish, because his lips returned to mine, effectively wiping all rational thought from my brain.
At least until the sound of a door being opened somewhere nearby caused me to pull my mouth from his and look past his shoulder. Then I saw someone I never expected in a million years come strolling into the courtyard.
“Lauren!”
