“Hey yourself.”I turned to face him.He was in uniform, which meant he was technically working, but he’d loosened his collar against the heat.His dark hair was slightly damp at the temples and his sleeves were rolled to his forearms, showing tanned skin and the muscles that moved beneath it when he braced his hands on his duty belt.The scar along his jawline caught the firelight, a thin silver line that I’d traced with my fingertip three nights ago on my piazza while the crickets sang and my common sense had almost packed its bags and left town.
“You look…” He paused, his dark eyes moving over me with attention that felt like a physical thing, warm and unhurried.“Like trouble in a sailor dress.”
“If you’re trying to make me blush in front of the entire island, it’s working.”My cheeks were doing something traitorous and warm that had nothing to do with the July heat.
His hand was still on my back.He hadn’t moved it.I hadn’t asked him to.
“Having a good time?”
“Chowder tried to steal a man’s funnel cake, and I watched Jimmy Carson eat twenty-two hot dogs and throw up on the winner’s podium all over the mayor.So it’s been entertaining.”
He laughed.It was a real laugh, one that reached his eyes and crinkled the corners and made him look younger and less guarded.Every time he did it I wanted to bottle the sound and keep it somewhere safe.I’d been collecting his laughs like other women collected jewelry, hoarding each one as proof that beneath the badge, there was a man who could let go, sometimes, with me, when nobody was looking.
“I’ve got about four minutes before Harris needs me at the south barricade,” he said, and there was an apology in it.
“Then stop talking and watch the fireworks.”
We stood there, his hand warm against my back, the crowd pressing around us, Chowder’s leash wrapped around my wrist.A massive cascade of white and gold opened across the sky, and in the light of it I could see every face along the harbor turned upward, illuminated and awed.Coach Delacroix from the high school had his twin granddaughters on his shoulders, one on each side, easy as anything after forty years of keeping teenagers in line.Clarence Beaumont stood outside his bakery handing out free sparklers.Tommy and Ruthie Sullivan were slow dancing on the pier to “God Bless the U.S.A.”
The whole island was here, gathered along the water’s edge, watching the sky crack open with color and sound.
Dash’s thumb traced a small circle against my spine.One slow revolution, then another.It was a touch that made promises his mouth hadn’t formed yet.
His radio crackled.He dropped his hand.
“I have to go.”
“I know.”
He leaned in, his lips brushing my temple so quickly it could have been an accident if you weren’t paying attention.But I was paying attention.I’d been paying attention to Dashiell Beckett since the first time he walked into my tea shop.
“Save me a sparkler?”he asked.
“They’ll all be gone by the time you’re done.”
“Then save me something better.”
His gaze held mine for a beat longer than necessary, and then he was moving through the crowd, the uniform parting people around him like water around a stone, and I watched him go with my heart doing complicated somersaults and my better judgment filing an official complaint.
“Lord have mercy,” Bea murmured beside me, sipping her bourbon.“How that man looks at you should require a permit.”
“Hush.”
“I’ve had three husbands and more lovers than Elizabeth Taylor, so I know what it means when a man looks at a woman like that.”Bea waggled her brows.“Hope you’ve freshened up your lingerie drawer.”
“Bea,” I hissed, mortified.
“Oh, don’t be such a fuddy-duddy.You must get that from your father’s side.Your mother was loose as a goose.”
I closed my eyes and wished for the ground to open and swallow me whole.“That’s good to know.I didn’t realize you and my mother were on such friendly terms.”
“I took an art class she was teaching about fifteen years ago,” Bea said.“I was doing research for a story.It was right after your father had died and she was trying to decide what to do with her life.I’m happy to say I talked her out of joining the nudist colony.”
“I’m grateful,” I said dryly.
“As you should be,” she said.“Full of weirdos.I should know.It’s how I met my third husband.”
My mouth dropped open, but I didn’t know how to respond, so I closed it again.
