AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Panda glanced down at her. “Miss Viper misunderstood.”
Big Mike knew how to roll with the punches, and his smile grew broader. “She seemed pretty sure, but hey— You have my card. When you’re ready, you give me a ring. That boat’s a real bargain. Now you two enjoy that pizza. Come on, Toby.” He steered the boy along the path in the opposite direction from the house.
As they disappeared, Panda looked down at her. “You told him I wanted to buy a boat?”
“You might want to buy a boat. How was I supposed to know?”
He shook his head and turned toward the house only to stop and lift the box closer to his nose. “Why does this pizza smell like perfume?”
“Big Mike believes in marking his territory.” She quickened her steps and left Panda to walk back to the house alone.
BREE HEARD TOBY COMING THROUGH the woods before she saw him. It was almost seven, and once again she’d forgotten to fix him dinner. Usually when that happened, she’d go inside and find him sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal from one of the many boxes Myra had picked up on her last trip to Sam’s Club before she’d gotten too ill to travel to the mainland.
Bree told herself to get up off the step and do something—anything—other than smoke, stare at Myra’s beehives, and think about those long-ago summers when she and Star ran back and forth like wild things from this cottage to the house. But she didn’t have a lot of bright thoughts to choose from. Her shattered marriage? Nope. Her empty bank account? Definitely not. As for her self-esteem … How could she think about something that didn’t exist?
This cottage, along with Myra’s honey house, had once been her second home, but in the last three weeks, the place had become her prison. If only she could run to the summer house, curl up on the screen porch with her Walkman again, and listen to the Backstreet Boys while she watched her brothers and their friends race up and down the steps to the dock. David had been one of those beautiful boys that last summer, although during the day he’d worked a fishing charter while the rest of them played.
Bree stared at the bees and lit another cigarette just as Toby came out of the woods. Someone was with him. She shielded her eyes and saw a good-looking man walking at his side. He was big all over, tall, with wide shoulders and a broad chest. One of those attractive men who stood out in a crowd. The kind of man—
She sprang off the step.
“Hey there, Bree,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”
Thirteen years fell away. His physical transformation meant nothing. She hated him now as fiercely as she had the last time she’d seen him. “Toby, get in the house,” she said stiffly. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Hold on.” He ruffled Toby’s hair as if he had that right. “You remember what I said, Toby. Summer people are naturally paranoid. You can’t keep going over there.”
“I wasn’t doin’ nothing bad.”
The hair tousle turned into a knuckle rub. “Sooner or later, he’ll find out about your grandmother. And just so you know … You can’t cash a check he’s made out to her. Now you go inside while I talk to Bree.”
Bree clenched her hand into a fist. Mike Moody ranked along with her ex-husband, Scott, as someone she’d never wanted to see again. She’d known Mike still lived here, since his face stared out from half a dozen billboards along the island’s main road, but she’d intended to make sure she never ran into him. Yet here he was.
Toby stomped into the cottage. Mike came forward with his big suck-up smile and his hand extended to shake. “You’re looking great, Bree. Beautiful as always.”
She pressed her arms to her sides. “What do you want?”
He let his arm fall but didn’t lose his phony smile. “Not even a ‘hello’?”
“Not even.”
He’d been a smelly, weaselly-eyed fat kid with bad skin and crooked teeth who’d tried unsuccessfully to worm his way into their group of summer kids each year. But the only islander they’d let in was Star. Mike was too loud, too uncool. Everything about him was wrong—his clothes, his snorty laugh, his unfunny jokes. The only one who’d tolerated him had been David.
“I feel sorry for the kid,” David had said after one of her brothers had insulted Mike. “His parents are both drunks. He’s got a lot of problems.”
“We all have problems,” Star had said. “You’re only sticking up for him because you’re kind of an outcast, too.”
Had he been? Bree didn’t remember it that way. From the beginning, David had fascinated them. He was charming, charismatic, good-looking. Raised in poverty in Gary, Indiana, he was attending the University of Michigan on a full scholarship. At twenty, he was the same age as her oldest brother, but David was more worldly. Although she couldn’t remember any of them saying it out loud, they all thought it was cool to hang out with a black kid. Beyond that, there wasn’t one of them who didn’t believe David was destined for great things.
Mike gestured toward her cigarette. “Those coffin nails’ll kill you. You should give that up.”
He was still uncool, but in a different way. The crooked teeth, acne, and extra pounds might be long gone, but he still tried too hard. The scraggly, dirty blond hair of his teenage years had been tamed by an expensive cut, then overtreated with grooming products. His cheap summer wardrobe of ill-fitting shorts and T-shirts had given way to white slacks, a high-end polo shirt, and a belt with a Prada logo, all of it too ostentatious for casual island living, although not as objectionable as his heavy gold-link bracelet and college class ring.
Her cigarette burned close to her fingers. “What’s this about?”
“Toby’s run into some trouble with the new folks next door.”
She tapped the bottom of the filter with her thumb and said nothing.
