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“You’re a leech.” Her expression contorted. “An opportunist. You have everything—always have—and you take my sister, too?” She looked beyond Nate, fury lighting her eyes as laughter and music filled the air around the four-story house behind them. “And here you are, having a party when—” Her voice broke. “Where is Viv?” Her eyes, red rimmed and gleaming in the starlit night, met Beau’s. “What’d you say to her? What’re you using her for? An easy distraction when your wife’s out of town?” She slammed the bat into the gate once more, heaving in broken breaths as she glared at Cal. “My sister’s worth more than that, and I’m taking her home. You tell your sorry excuse for a security guard to open this gate and let me in.”
Beau stiffened. He stepped in front of Cal, nudging him back with a hand on his shoulder. “Cal isn’t security. He’s my son. And just a teenager at that. His mother—my wife—passed away three years ago, and he was telling the truth when he said Viv isn’t here. She took off two days ago, not long after she found your mom. Said she wouldn’t be back for a while.”
Kit’s cheeks flushed deeper. Her breathing slowed, and she looked Cal over, regret suffusing her features as she eyed him from head to toe. “I . . . I’m sorry. I thought—”
She stumbled backward, and the bat clanged against the gate as it fell to the ground. She stared at the closed gate, a lost look appearing on her face, before she turned and trudged away.
Beau glanced at Cal. The nervous expression on his son’s face had morphed into one of intense curiosity as he leaned around Beau and watched Kit leave. “Go to the house, Cal.”
“But—”
“Now please.”
Beau waited until he complied, then unlocked the gate and swung it open. He followed Kit, jogging a few steps until he was within earshot. “Kit.”
She froze mid-step, her back to him. Her long hair spilled over her shoulders as she looked down, then turned and faced him. Tears streamed down her face and pooled in the corners of her mouth. “I’m sorry to hear about your wife,” she whispered. “And I didn’t realize Cal was your son. He looked so much older.”
“I know.” He was surprised to find his hand in midair, lifting toward her wet cheeks. He shoved both hands in his pockets and forced a wry smile instead. “Trust me, as nervous as you had him, if Viv had been here, he’d have opened that gate in five seconds and led you to her.”
Kit picked at a seam in her dress pants. “How is she?”
He hesitated, his chest tightening at the flash of desperation across her expression. “I don’t know. But probably not well, all things considered.”
“I need her to come home. Our mom requested in her will that—” Her chest rose on a deep breath and her lips trembled. “Viv knows what we need to do, and I want to carry this out the way my mother wanted.” A small sound escaped her. “I need to see Viv. I need to see her face.”
He stood silently as Kit wiped her flushed cheeks, regaining her composure. Her downcast gaze was focused intently on the scuffed toes of his work boots, which contrasted sharply with the polished air of her tailored business suit and silk blouse.
“If you see her,” she asked quietly, “would you please ask her to come home? Tell her the boat’s setting out at dawn tomorrow?”
He nodded. “I’ll do you one better. I’ll find her.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Beau watched her walk away into the night, her high heels leaving indentations in the dirt, the small impressions conjuring in his mind those left behind by loggerhead hatchlings groping their way across sand toward the surf beneath the moonlight.
Footfalls sounded, and Nate’s low words emerged from the darkness behind him. “Those girls are walking wounded.”
CHAPTER2
It was hard to get lost on a barrier sea island as small as Hope Creek, but Viv had done a pretty good job of it.
After Kit had rounded the bend, her shadowy figure melding with the droopy branches of oaks lining the road, Beau started out on foot. After walking two miles along dirt paths that weaved in and out of residential enclaves and live oak forests on the south side of the island, he trekked farther to a clear stretch of beach. He strolled across the cool sand beneath the starlight, lingered long enough to survey the empty beach stretching in both directions, then scoped out Viv’s favorite restaurant and bar but had no luck. On his way back home, a string of golf carts, each one emblazoned withHOPE CREEK RESORT, glided by, signaling the Pearl Tide Oyster roast had ended. He knew it’d be fruitless to follow them—the upscale resort the golf carts were bound for was located on the northern half of the island, and the gates swung open only for VIP passes, big money, or good old-fashioned nepotism.
Beau possessed all these things but detested using them, and Viv, possessing none of these things, had expressed deep disdain for the prim and proper residents of Hope Creek Resort and always kept strictly to the south side of the island.
But over the past few months, he’d noticed that Viv would from time to time roam out to the public beach on her days off, sit on a sand dune with the clearest vantage point, and stare silently at the private stretch of sand reserved for use by resort guests. Her shoulders—and very spirit—would sag as smiling parents chased laughing children into the surf and happy couples, treading water, bobbed close together, sharing soft kisses and intimate whispers.
Only Viv hadn’t been walking the beach or watching resort guests from a dune tonight. Instead, Beau found her two and a half hours after he’d first begun searching, at the southernmost point of the island.
She sat alone at a small table on the empty back deck of Lou’s Lagoon, a dive located several miles from his father’s house, nestled between a thick tangle of live oak trees and salt marsh cloaked in thin mist. Her legs sprawled out at odd angles, and one arm dangled over the back of her chair, a lit cigarette glowing between her fingers. A haze of smoke surrounded her, and a dingy outdoor light cast a dim orange glow over her relaxed form.
Hard rock thumped vigorously inside the tiny bar, each pulse of bass seeming to rattle the weathered wood walls of the structure, and the small crowd Beau glimpsed through the open windows swayed in unison with sloppy joy, bellowing a drunk chorus of familiar lyrics.
Beau made his way up the steps of the back deck, carefully stepping over planks of rotten wood, and stood by the table. “Mind if I join you?”
Viv’s eyes were closed, her head tipped back against the headrest, but one corner of her mouth lifted at the sound of his voice. “Why not?” The slight smile vanished; her words slurred. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He sat opposite her, the worn chair creaking beneath his six-foot-four frame, and watched her lift the cigarette to her mouth and take a drag. The smoke surrounding Viv thickened, drifting lazily on the cool night breeze.
