“Your mother is a free spirit.So I can understand why she hightailed it out of town as soon as the dirt was thrown on your father’s casket.”Bea took a swig from her flask and swatted at a mosquito.“She was a young woman when he passed, and she wasn’t getting any younger.Though I can’t for the life of me understand why she moved to Tampa to get some action.Men in Florida always end up on the news with some weird headline.”
I snorted and she grinned at me.
“Happy Fourth of July, Bea,” I said.
“Happy Fourth of July, sugar.”
I let myself feel all of it, the heat and the crowd and the lingering ghost of Dash’s touch on my back.I was happy.The thought came with the strange self-consciousness that had followed me for weeks.Happy was a word I hadn’t used about myself in a long time.
“This can’t be love because I feel so well,”I sang without thinking.“No sobs, no sorrows, no sighs…”
The finale began with a rapid-fire barrage of color and thunder that shook the ground beneath my feet and set off every car alarm in the vicinity.Chowder barked once, a small sound of protest against the overwhelming display, and I scooped him up and held him against my chest, his warm body vibrating with more indignation than fear.
As the last echoes faded and the smoke drifted across the harbor like a ghost reluctant to leave, the crowd began its slow migration toward the parking lots and side streets, the collective energy shifting from spectacle to the pleasant exhaustion that follows a good party.
“You coming?”Dottie called out.“Walt’s offered to drive us home, which means we’ll get there sometime tomorrow.”
“The speed limit exists for a reason,” Walt shouted back.
“I’ll walk,” I said.“I need the air.”
Dash caught up to me on Lighthouse Street.
His shirt collar was loosened another notch since I’d last seen him, his hair damp at the temples, and there was a thin scratch along the back of his hand that hadn’t been there an hour ago.I didn’t ask.He took my hand without saying anything, and we walked the last two blocks through the warm dark, our fingers laced.We had stopped pretending this was casual.
Chowder trotted ahead of us on his leash, leading the way like he was the one doing the escorting.The jasmine along Mrs.Pembroke’s fence filled the air with sweetness so thick you could taste it, and the streetlamp on the corner cast an amber circle on the sidewalk that made everything look like a scene from one of the old movies, the good ones, where the man always walks the woman to her door.
“I had a good time tonight,” I said, leaning against the porch railing because my feet were aching and I wasn’t ready to let him leave yet.
“Even though I abandoned you for crowd control?”
“You came back.That’s what matters.”I smiled up at him.“Besides, Chowder kept me company.He only tried to steal food from two people.Three if you count the snow cone, but I’m not sure that counts since the kid dropped it first.”
Chowder snorted from the porch steps like he understood the conversation and was choosing to rise above it.
Dash leaned against the railing beside me, close enough that his shoulder pressed against mine.The piazza felt like its own small world, separate from the island and the duty and the radio that would pull him away again too soon.
“Breakfast tomorrow?”he asked.“I’m off until noon.”
“I’ll make biscuits.”
The tea shop was still two days from reopening.My mornings were wide open, a luxury I wasn’t accustomed to and didn’t entirely enjoy.My hands needed work and my mind needed routine, and without both I had too much time to think about things I’d rather not think about.
“I’ll bring the coffee,” he said.
“Oh, no you won’t.”I bit my lip to keep from laughing.“I’ve tasted what you consider coffee, Dash Beckett, and I will not have that liquid sin in my kitchen.I’ve got a French press and single-origin beans from a roaster in Charleston.You’ll drink proper coffee in my house.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, his mouth curving slow around the words, and my stomach did something acrobatic and entirely undignified.
He reached over and tucked a curl behind my ear that had staged its final escape from the pins.His fingers lingered against my temple, tracing down to my jaw, and the gentleness of it almost undid me more than a bolder touch would have.I caught his hand and held it against my cheek, and for a moment neither of us moved.
Then he kissed me.
His mouth was warm, and the hand at the back of my neck slid into my hair and held.I rose up onto my toes without meaning to.He pulled me closer until there was nothing between us but the cotton of my dress and the slow steady beat of his heart against my own, and somewhere down the block a bottle rocket whistled.
His other hand found my waist.The fingers spread wide there, possessive, certain— the touch of a man who’d stopped pretending he didn’t want me.
I made a small sound I couldn’t take back.
