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Drew twisted in his chair to see what I was looking at. “Ah. Guess you haven’t seen her since she grew up.”
“No. No, I haven’t.” I wished desperately that I already had a glass of water to wet my suddenly parched throat. “How’s the family? I mean… after…?”
My question wiped the smirk off his face. “Not great. The police were never able to prove anything after Gwen disappeared. But the fact that Rios was the last person to see her alive means he’s persona non grata around town. Without someone else to blame, there are plenty of folks who are happy to lay everything at his feet.”
Rios. I remembered her brother. “He’s still on-island?”
“Yeah.”
“Why doesn’t he leave?”
“Doesn’t want to leave his sisters alone with Hector.”
Right. Hector Carrera had always been a bad-tempered fucker. To my mind, the fact that Rios wouldn’t leave his sisters unprotected was a weight on the side of his good character. But the public wanted a scapegoat. How had all that impacted the rest of them?
Before I could ask, a shadow fell over our table, and there she was. Damn if she wasn’t ten times prettier close up.
“Welcome to OBX Brewhouse. I’m?—”
“Caroline.”
2
Caroline
He knows my name?
For a moment, I couldn’t speak, as my inner teenage girl had heart palpitations. Lord knew she’d had hours—years, even—crushing on Hoyt McNamara.
Damn, but he’d grown up fine. And he’d been the handsomest boy I’d ever seen, even before he left. Those five years looked good on him, as did the extra width on his shoulders and thick muscles in his arms built from the labor of his job.
I’d known he was back on-island. In a community the size of ours, it was hard not to be aware of all the comings and goings, especially of one of the island’s favorite sons. But I hadn’t actually seen him since he returned to join the newly expanded fire department. Why would I? We’d never been friends. We’d never been anything. He’d just been the completely untouchable older boy who, so far as I’d known, hadn’t even been aware I existed.
And yet he knows my name.
Shaking off the shock, I pasted on what I hoped was a proper professional smile instead of the lovesick puppy look I’d seen so frequently in the mirror back in high school. “Right. What can I get y’all?”
“Just a couple of beers. Thanks, Caroline,” Drew said.
Drew. Right. Who’d been in the class below me and actually knew who I was. Mystery solved. They’d probably been talking about me, the same as everyone else in Sutter’s Ferry. The idea of it chilled all those adolescent butterflies.
“Tap or bottle?”
They each made their requests, and I wove my way toward the bar, checking in on the rest of the tables in my section. A hefty portion of them were tourists. I always preferred the tourists. They had no idea who I was or who I was connected to. Which meant I didn’t have to wonder what they thought when they looked at me, and I usually didn’t have to worry they’d stiff me on tips. Those tips were the key that would grant me freedom, so I was motivated to earn as many as I could.
Bree caught me at the taps. “Well, well. Looks like Hoyt only got better looking with age.”
I rolled my eyes, not bothering to dignify the remark with a response.
She leaned against the bar, a tray tucked under her arm as she watched the McNamara brothers across the room with sharp gray eyes. “What is it about firefighters that’s so sexy?”
“Their willingness to risk life and limb to save other people. And the uniform.” All true, though, that had never been the attraction of Hoyt for me.
“You should totally do something about that.”
I waited for the foam to settle, then topped off each glass. “About what?”
“Locking down the new firefighter.”
