Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(18)
“Ch-Chateau le Poisson.” Laire nodded. “It’s a fine idea, Daddy. ’Bout time we had an inn on Corey. Ocracoke’s got at least six or seven now.” She added quietly, mostly for Kyrstin’s benefit, “And I think it’d make Mama real proud.”
Kyrstin snapped her head around to look at her little sister, mouthing “thank you” as she swiped at her eyes.
Hook Cornish knew defeat when it sat green-eyed in front of him.
“Fine. You make some extra change for your Fish House,” he said to Kyrstin. Turning to Laire, he added, “Want that I have a word with Mathers before you start? Ask him to keep an eye on you?”
“No!” cried Laire.
“No,” said Kyrstin, a little more smoothly. “I’ll do that, Daddy. And besides, I’ll be there to look out for her. She’ll be just fine.”
“Well, then,” he sighed, looking up at Laire in defeat. “I guess you can use the Stingray. Keep it gassed up, Laire. And if I need it from time to time, you be sure to hitch a ride with your sister and Remy, yeah?”
Laire nodded. “Course, Daddy.”
“Now leave me be a while, girls,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning back into his chair. “I’m mommucked.”
Laire confronted her sister later, in their shared room, while she changed into an outfit for her secret date.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “About the bartending, and the Carver house, and . . . and all of it?”
“The house was a secret. And I only got the idea about bartendin’ this mornin’, after I talked to you. Bernie’s been grousin’ about Monica quittin’. I called him and offered to take over the bar. He said yes, and with the extra money, Remy and I decided we could finally place a bid on the Carver property.”
“Is that really what you want to do? Open an inn?”
Kyrstin nodded. “You know it was always Mama’s dream, right? I read it in one of her school workbooks.” Her smile was wistful as she shrugged. “You ain’t the only one with dreams, Laire.”
“Mama’s dream was to open an inn?”
Kyrstin nodded. “She outlined the whole plan: buy the Carver house, renovate it, add a restaurant. It was all there. I showed it to Remy, and he just about fell over—he was just as excited as me. We can do it, Laire. We can make Mama’s dream happen.” She grinned. “And you just helped us. A lot.”
Kyrstin kissed Laire on the cheek and ran to tell Remy the good news.
And Laire took such satisfaction in helping her sister, and, by proxy, her mother, that it assuaged all of her immediate guilt about lying to her father.
But now, as she zoomed toward Buxton, she had misgivings.
What if her father showed up at the Ocracoke Bistro to check on her? What if Bernie Mathers showed up at King Triton to place a special order and her father happened to be there? Surely he’d ask how his daughters were getting on. She sighed. This wasn’t the sort of lie that could remain out there forever. She and Kyrstin would have to find a way to wiggle out of it.
But not yet.
For now, her sister should have the right to follow her dream, Laire could take the job at the Pamlico House, and someday soon, they’d come clean.
She smiled into the wind, letting herself be excited for Kyrstin—and for herself. We’re making our dreams come true! It felt so good . . . and somehow it mitigated her nerves over seeing Erik Rexford again tonight.
With all the jockeying it had taken to make tonight happen, she hadn’t been able to keep Erik Rexford in the forefront of her mind, but now? Knowing she’d see him again so soon? Her heart started fluttering, and she wondered—for the thousandth time—what a boy like him wanted with a girl like her. She couldn’t answer that question to save her life, nor could she refuse herself the opportunity to find out.
Keeping herself off-limits to the island boys had given Laire a reputation for being cold and uptight, but that was just a persona that she employed to ensure her name was never tangled up with someone else’s. Inside, she was just as hot and curious as any other teenage girl who got quivers below her belly when she walked in on Kyrstin and Remy making out half naked, or saw a movie where a boy and girl fell madly in love and moved against each other, skin to skin, moaning and writhing with need and passion.
Like the parents of three other girls in her class, her father had pulled her out of school on the one day in sixth grade that they taught sex ed, instead asking Isolde to have a word with Laire “at some point.” But even though Isolde, a senior in high school at the time, had been dating Paul for years, she’d colored as red as an apple and never broached the subject with her little sister. There’d been no official talk. Whatever information Laire had about boys and sex had come from her sisters talking about their boyfriends and whatever she could glean from TV shows and movies. In short, she knew the facts about the facts of life, but she figured that was a hell of a lot different from firsthand experience.
For the first time in her life, she wanted that experience. Last night, she’d dreamed that she was in one of those movie sex scenes with Erik Rexford, skin to skin, with his body moving over hers, creating an ache deep inside her that had lingered all day and told her something very important: she wanted Erik Rexford to smile at her, to touch her, maybe even—in her wildest dreams only, of course—to do the things that Brodie Walsh had bragged about them doing. But most of all . . .