Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(5)
Chapter 2
Laire stood at the wheel of her father’s boat with the wind in her hair and six coolers of blue crab on ice behind her. Her father had been lean on details, but she gathered that the folks up in Buxton were having a fancy party and had requested fresh catch delivered same-day.
Blue crabs.
For as long as she could remember, blue crabs had been her family’s livelihood.
Both of her grandfathers had crabbed the Pamlico Sound.
Her father and his brother, Laire’s uncle Franklin, called Fox by friends and family, had been crabbing since they were old enough to walk.
But Uncle Fox had also been blessed with business savvy, and about ten years ago, he and Laire’s father had opened King Triton Seafood, a commercial fish house on Corey Island that sold fresh catch to restaurants, caterers, hotels, and locals. Because they were commercial fishermen themselves, they were trusted by local fishermen and outside buyers, and had built up a reputable business in short order. Most of their stock came directly from fishing boats every afternoon, and they were picky about what they sold, making them a favorite purveyor for posh hotels and inns in the mid Banks and even a few folks who came out from the mainland.
The Pamlico Sound, the largest lagoon in the Eastern United States, was the name of the body of water between the Outer Banks and the mainland of North Carolina. Three inlets, at Bodie Island, Hatteras, and Ocracoke, fed the Sound salt water from the Atlantic Ocean, and two rivers from the west, the Neuse and Pamlico, fed it fresh water, which meant that the Sound was a mix of both: water from the sea and water from the land.
Dotted along the eastern shoreline of the Sound were the towns of the Outer Banks: in the south, Ocracoke and Corey, which were close-set islands; then, moving north, Hatteras, Buxton, and Avon; the cluster of Salvo, Waves, and Rodanthe; and finally, up on the northern Banks, Nags Head, a crummy name for the crowning jewel of the Outer Banks.
From Hatteras north, tourism had been prevalent since the Civil War, though Millionaire’s Row in Nags Head had seen a vacation-home-building boom between the 1920s and 1950s. That boom had never really included the southern islands of Ocracoke and Corey, where commercial fishing was still a way of life and tourism had only started in earnest about twenty years ago. It was a growing industry still dwarfed by the northern towns’, and Ocracoke, five times the size of Corey, with a regular ferry from Hatteras, saw about ten times the business as small and hard-to-reach Corey.
Laire zipped past the bustling town of Hatteras, spying a pair of dolphins playing in her wake off the portside and giggling at their antics. From Hatteras, she zoomed past Frisco, then slowed down as she neared Buxton, anxious that she not miss the house expecting her father’s delivery. Checking her watch, she was gratified to see she’d made good time. It was almost four o’clock, which meant she didn’t need to rush.
She cleared Brooks Point, hugging the Buxton shoreline at Brigand Bay, careful that her arrival so close to shore was wakeless. The first house she saw had the four-story rectangular tower she recognized from her father’s instructions. Beside it was another large house, then another. Then, sitting slightly apart from the other three mansions and bigger than them combined, she recognized her destination: Utopia Manor.
Three stories high, with five pronounced gables on the roofline, a green lawn, a pool, and a long boardwalk that led directly from the house to the Sound, she couldn’t have missed it if she tried. It was the most beautiful house she’d ever seen.
On the lawn between the house and the pool, she could see hired help setting up tables in the late-afternoon sunshine, unfolding chairs and scurrying about with linens and china. Her father hadn’t filled her in on what festivities were taking place at Utopia Manor tonight, but one look at the preparations told her that whatever it was, it must be a big deal.
Throwing the buoys over the side, she slowed to a crawl, cutting the engine to drift in alongside the pristine dock made of new lumber. Leaping from the bow with a line in her hand, she knotted it to a shiny chrome cleat, then jumped back on board to shimmy aft and do the same for the stern. Once she was securely tethered to the dock, she reached for the paperwork in her hip pocket, unfolding the invoices as she hopped back onto the dock. She ran a quick hand through her windblown hair and straightened her shirt before heading up to the house.
It wasn’t a short walk on the winding boardwalk, over the shallows and sand dunes, and included several sets of stairs up from the water’s edge to the house. Suddenly Laire wondered how smart it had been to insist she could carry the six packed coolers on her own.
Good thing she was early. She could take her time if she needed to.
She sighed with pleasure as she walked past the perfectly manicured rolling lawn and around the beautifully landscaped pool area, heading around the house as her father had instructed.
“Hey!”
She heard his voice before she saw him.
Had she known the ultimate cost of that simple glance heavenward, maybe she wouldn’t have stopped. Maybe she would have just kept on walking with her head down. But fate held no warnings for Laire Maiden Cornish.
Shielding her eyes, she looked up at a deck wrapped around the second floor of the mansion, waiting a moment for her eyes to adjust as he came into view.
There, in the glittering sunlight . . . a boy.
No, a man.
A young man, a little older than she, tall and muscular, with jet-black hair and a square jaw, dark brown eyes, and a deep tan. He wore a robin’s-egg blue bathing suit with Kelly green palm fronds in a small repeat and a pair of sunglasses buried in his thick hair. In one hand, he held a phone up to his ear, and in the other, he slowly swirled a glass filled with ice and clear liquid. He stared out at the sound, concentrating on his call.