AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Nothing’s private with you, son. Every thought you think and emotion you feel gets plastered all over your face almost before it occurs to you.” He smirked. “Besides, you’re never too old to answer to the father of a woman you love.”
Beau faced him, his mouth parting. “What . . . ? Where are you getting this from? And why do you think—”
“Oh, I know,” Royal said quietly. He examined Beau’s expression, then turned his attention to Kit, who smiled and stepped back as Nate lifted a big strainer pot filled with Frogmore stew from the larger one and hauled it carefully across the yard to the wooden table. “One look at your face the day you kissed Kit. I seen it for myself.” He turned back to Beau, gave a small smile tinged with sadness. “Way you looked at Kit, I used to look at her mother.” He grew quiet, then said, tone sobering, “I know more than people give me credit for. You tell me if I got it wrong.”
Was he? Was Royal wrong? Of course he wanted Kit . . . in every way possible. He wanted to know her mind, her thoughts, her wishes and dreams. Wanted her hands on him, his hands on her, sharing whispers and making love. Maybe even sharing more than that. Maybe . . . sharing his days and nights with her, and hers with him, for whatever time he had left in this life. Every precious second . . .
Heart thumping against his rib cage, Beau looked back at Kit.
“No,” he said softly. “You don’t have it wrong.”
Royal hesitated; then, his voice low, he sought confirmation. “It is Kit you’re in love with?”
Beau pulled in a shaky breath, his whole body trembling, and met Royal’s eyes. “Yes. I’m in love with Kit.”
“And Viv?” he asked. “Where do you stand with her?”
“We’re business partners,” Beau said. “And friends. That’s all we’ve ever been.”
Royal tilted his head and peered past the fire, to where Viv stood helping Nate tilt the pot and dump its aromatic contents on the table. “Does Viv know that?”
“How I feel about her? Yes.” Beau curled his fist tighter around the bottle in his hand. “Does she know how I feel about Kit? No.”
Nate finished spreading the Frogmore stew over the table. Fragrant, piping hot shrimp, potatoes, corn, and sausage rolled and settled in small piles, bathed in the flickering orange light of the fire and the cool white glow of the moon above.
“Come on, y’all,” Viv shouted, smiling at Beau and Royal. “I didn’t spend the past two hours breaking my back over a hot pot just for you two to skip the best part.” She waved an arm in the air. “Get over here.”
Cal and Mackey, seated at the table between Nate and Kit, banged their hands on the table and howled playfully, ready to dig in.
“Let’s eat!” Cal yelled. “I’m starving.”
Kit, laughing, ruffled his blond hair and pointed out several plump shrimp near his end of the table. He grabbed one, popped it in his mouth, and chewed, a look of bliss spreading across his face. Kit did the same, then hummed her approval as she smiled at Viv, thanking her for cooking.
“That right there,” Royal said in a low voice, “is the first time my girls have shared a table in over a decade. It’s what Kit’s always wanted. It’s why she came back, no matter what Viv thinks.” He looked at Beau, an unsettling sympathy mixing with the warning in his eyes. “For Kit, family always comes first.”
CHAPTER11
Some things you just couldn’t see coming until the last minute.
“Can we paint it, Beau?”
Beau, standing halfway up a ladder that leaned against the front of Teague Cottage, braced himself against a swift gust of wind and glanced down at Mackey, who stood several feet below him in the front yard of Teague Cottage. “I don’t think that’ll be possible, Mackey,” he called down. “The storm’s coming in pretty fast now, and it’ll be dark in a couple hours.”
Mackey frowned. He waved the paintbrush he held in the air and squinted as the wind picked up even more, blowing his hair across his forehead and into his eyes. “But what if we don’t paint but write? We could write,Go away, Winny! Ain’t that what kind of thing they write, Beau? I saw a lady on TV write that on one of her boards. She had a lot of them.”
Beau leaned against the ladder with one hand and withdrew a nail from his pocket with the other. “Yeah, some people do, and if we had more time, we might, but we’re stretched as it is.”
And that was an understatement.
Two days ago, after enjoying a late evening Frogmore stew with Kit at Teague Cottage, Beau had walked home beneath the bright light of a full moon with Cal, Nate, and Viv. They’d arrived home with tired eyes and full bellies, and after turning in for the night, Beau had tossed and turned, his mind restlessly picking apart his conversations with Kit and Royal. Finally giving up on sleep, he left his bed before dawn, dressed, and paused in the kitchen long enough to pour a cup of coffee, then carried it with him to the boat, sipping the hot brew along the way.
As he set out on the water at sunrise, there was a slight change on the horizon. Rather than the clear skies of the night before, a few wispy clouds could be seen lingering high in the sky, and the normally peaceful saltwater breeze blew harder than usual. Throughout the day, as he hauled cages out of the water and lifted them onto the boat, the clouds increased in size and number.
The weather report and alerts scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen that night were just as he suspected. Hurricane Winnifred, having first appeared as a weak early season tropical storm in the central Atlantic had meandered its way north, strengthened near the Bahamas, then begun traveling northwest, evolving into a Category 3 hurricane with a trajectory that would propel it toward the southeastern coast of the United States.
The good news—if any surrounding a hurricane were possible—was that Winnifred had lost steam and weakened, and thus had been reclassified as a Category 1 hurricane. They hoped that it would weaken again before skimming along the eastern coast and avoiding a direct hit to South Carolina’s barrier islands. Hope Creek should not—if all reports proved accurate—be damaged by the storm.
But Winnifred was still headed Hope Creek’s way, and Beau wasn’t willing to gamble against the storm.
