LITMIR.BIZ

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a boat.”

      “Or that. Then you wander toward wherever the ruckus is coming from. But I know it’ll be there tonight, since it’s Monday. Always something happening at their place on a Monday.”

      A girl ran past them, followed by a smaller one, both shrieking with laughter.

      “That little one was theirs,” Will said.

      “Cute.” Leigh craned her neck to watch the kids disappear between the trees. “How often do us guests turn up at your get-togethers?”

      “Rarely. Especially ones like you,” Will said with a tight, self-satisfied smile.

      “Ones like me? Go on, tell me what that means, since I know you’re dying to.”

      “Just that you’re a girl. Most of the guests who party-crash are older men, looking to escape their wives’ idea of a vacation. But they’re rare, as well. You’re just extra rare. Like how I like my steak.”

      She laughed. “How old are you, anyway?”

      “Thirty-three.”

      She nodded, not sure what she’d been expecting. He lived a life she’d normally have ascribed to either a younger man, not yet compelled to shape up and find a “real” job, or an older one sick of the rat race. “What’s it like, living in a postcard?”

      Will stared over the water for a moment, and Leigh studied his eyes in the dying sun, bright as a blue glass pendant she’d admired in the shopping district the previous morning. She wondered who had raised this man and given him those eyes, and what they thought of the life he’d made for himself, so far from New York City.

      “It’s lovely,” he finally said.

      “What’s the least lovely thing about it?”

      “Hurricanes.”

      “I mean, like, from day to day.”

      “Honestly, there’s not much. Bit of a pain getting hold of certain things. Costs an arm and a leg to have stuff shipped from the States. Hence all the bribes you’ll see going down around here.”

      “What sorts of things? What do you miss?”

      “Aren’t you just brimming with questions?”

      She smiled at him. “I’m desperate for human contact.”

      “You must be, if you came to me. So much for your dreams of seclusion.”

      “So what do you miss?”

      He pondered it. “I miss watching the Knicks play. Can’t buy that off a guy in Bridgetown.”

      “Well, I’m sure I get that channel at my place. Feel free to come watch a game, in exchange for tonight’s party.”

      He met her gaze squarely for a breath. “I may just take you up on that.”

      “You’ll have to make it worth my while, of course.” She rubbed her fingers together and bobbed her eyebrows at him, as silly as she’d been with anyone in weeks.

      “You’ll fit in just fine here, Miss Bailey.”

      Their gazes lingered longer than was casual before they turned back to the road. Leigh felt that heat again, the one she wished was as simple as sunburn. This time it had nothing to do with revenge, a shift that felt at once joyous and dangerous.

      “That’s it.” Will nodded to the farthest house in the settlement, bigger than his own but also on stilts, with rounded lavender shingles like fish scales. Tiki torches were lit along the beach, a grill smoking and a dozen people milling around it, cups and beer bottles waving as arms gestured. The breeze carried their laughter, and the aromas of sizzling meat and ocean breeze and that distinctive Caribbean scent, of flowers and sand and the vastness of the sky here. Leigh breathed it in, drank in the color of the clouds as dusk approached. She filled herself with this place, so full there’d be no room for a single bad thought.

      Will kicked off his sandals at the roadside as they headed for the beach. He glanced at her. “Ready?”

      She looked at the people. “Sure. Seems calm enough to me.”

      He grinned. “Wait till the sun goes down.”

      “You guys can’t be crazier than the nutjobs back in L.A.”

      They rounded the house to the beach, and a few partygoers cheered as they spotted Will.

      “Everyone!” he bellowed. “There is royalty among us peasants this evening.”

      More cheers and a few whistles sounded, and a couple of bottles raised in Leigh’s direction.

      “Her highness wants a taste of how the real islanders live,” Will went on with an indulgent grin. “So do be on your worst behavior.”

      He led Leigh across the warm sand and set his cooler near the grill. A tall, big-bellied man greeted him with a hand clasp and a slap on the back before turning his smile on the party’s newcomer.

      “Oscar, this is Leigh, staying at Shearwater. Leigh, this is Oscar, your host for this evening.”

      She shook Oscar’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

      “And you.” His attention shifted as Will pulled two shining blue fish from the cooler. “Ah, beauties! Bethany will be pleased.”

      Will handed off the gift and rinsed his hands in the ice. Oscar left them to deliver the fish to the immensely pregnant woman manning the grill.

      “You caught those?” Leigh asked Will.

      He nodded. “I go out most mornings. Motorboat, not canoe.”

      “Wow.” She caught it this time, mocking herself before Will got the chance. “Wow….”

      He smiled. “Get you a drink? Cocktail? Beer?”

      Not sure she was ready for whatever filled people’s plastic tumblers, she opted for a beer. Following Will inside to a bustling kitchen, she smiled nervously at the other guests as he found her a bottle. She was introduced in warmly teasing tones, a flurry of names and faces. Leigh’s nerves returned, seeing how intimately they all knew one another, how laughter seemed to quiet when her guest status was announced.

      She leaned close to Will. “Is it making people uncomfortable, my being here?”

      “Uncomfortable is too strong. Not like the boss is in the room. But you do change the atmosphere. You’ve got the power to complain.”

      “I don’t want to spoil anyone’s good time.” And she certainly didn’t want to be anyplace where’d she feel once again like an outsider.

      Will nudged her with his elbow. “Give them a few more drinks, an hour or so to get used to you. Just be yourself.”

      “Be myself.” Whoever that was. Leigh straightened, sipping her beer and deciding to do just what he’d said. She did know who she was. It was her family and Dan and all those strangers in Hollywood who’d tricked her into believing she was someone else, someone different, some face off a screen or magazine spread.

      Outside, a drum sounded. Will nodded to the exit and she preceded him into the cooler air, the darkening evening. She met a few more people, all polite but unmistakably distant once they learned she was a paying guest. She and Will wandered to the water’s edge, until they were wading in the sea, sipping their drinks, watching the torchlight bouncing off the dark waves that lapped at their shins. They’d both gone quiet, and Leigh wondered how much of a damper she was putting on his evening.

      Will cleared his throat before asking, “So, do you regret it? Leaving him?”

      She met his gaze, shocked. Shocked he’d been wondering something so personal, so sentimental, and equally surprised to realize the question hadn’t yet crossed her mind. But the answer needed no speculation. It would be ages before she could

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