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“You don’t know anything about me.” He ignored the memory of their first meeting when he’d thought for just a second that she could see into his soul.
“You like me and you don’t know why because you’re basically suspicious and really don’t like anybody at first. I don’t blame you for that. I get it. And you want to think I’m a whack job, but you’re half-convinced I’m not.”
He dug his keys from his pocket, and using the remote, unlocked the car from a distance. But she didn’t stop.
“You won’t admit it, but you want me to help you. You weren’t as pissed off at me as you feel you should have been after I went into the Ivy and got information you didn’t. You’ve been looking for a partner and here I am.”
Rex’s mouth dropped open, more at her attitude than her accuracy. “How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-one?”
“Nineteen,” she admitted after a moment.
“For the love of God.”
“This was the best day you’ve had in a long time,” she insisted.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he repeated, not quite believing it himself.
Her chin inched up a notch and those intense eyes stared at him. “I know you were bored with your job and now you’re not.”
“I gotta go,” Rex said, the hairs on his arms lif
ting. “You’re damn eerie, you know that.”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a family trait.”
He held up his hands to ward her off and give himself some space as he reached the car. “I’ll look into your cousin’s whereabouts, I promise. See what I can find out.”
“Elizabeth Gaines.”
“Got it.”
“You have my cell number?” she called as he turned away.
“Yep.” He climbed into the rental and started the engine. As he backed around, then shoved the gears into drive and hit the gas, he saw her in the side-view mirror.
She hadn’t moved, her arms crossed over her chest as she watched him leave.
Chapter 12
Twenty minutes later, Ravinia stepped out of the shower and dried herself with one of the Sea Breeze’s thin towels. The room was foggy as the fan didn’t work, but she felt refreshed, her skin and hair clean, her mind already racing ahead to her next move.
As she swiped at the condensation on the mirror, she heard her cell phone ringing.
Naked, she ran to where she’d plugged it in and left it on the faux-wood desktop. Snatching it up, she looked at the screen. Rex already? Her eagerness was blunted when she saw it was a number she didn’t recognize. “Hello?” she answered cautiously.
“Ravinia?”
Aunt Catherine.
Ravinia felt more anxiety than elation. Though she really, really wanted to talk to her aunt, Ravinia also needed some time to process her day with Rex Kingston and everything she’d learned. Something was happening. She could feel herself being pulled in the right direction for the first time in a long while, as if some unseen presence was holding her hand and making sure she found the right path. Maybe I have a guardian angel.
“Did you get a cell phone?” Ravinia asked. She couldn’t hear the background noise she always associated with the Drift In Market, the store where Catherine usually used the phone, so it sounded as if her aunt was somewhere else.
“I’m using your sister’s,” she said primly.
“Ophelia? She’s got a cell phone?” That kind of pissed Ravinia off for reasons she couldn’t quite name. Maybe it was because Ophelia was the only one of her sisters at the lodge who was living in the twenty-first century. Or, more likely, it was Ophelia’s superior tone, the one she used as if she were somehow in charge—which, of course, she wasn’t. Ophelia had told Ravinia she’d gotten her driver’s license and she was all about modernizing the lodge, and that was all for the good, but she’d blithely gone and done all sorts of things—privileges—with nary a word to any of the rest of them, except, of course, Aunt Catherine. Ophelia had known how much Ravinia had wanted her own driver’s license and it was almost as if her older sister had been lording it over her.
“Yes.” Aunt Catherine was short. She hated being interrupted. “How are you doing? Are you all right?”
