Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(98)

Shaking her head, she started to refuse again, but he reached out and placed his palm on her cheek, his touch so gentle, so surprising, so tender and familiar and unexpected, her breath hitched, and she held it, letting her eyes flutter closed for an instant as she savored the contact.

“Please, Laire,” he whispered, his breath kissing her ear as it had so many times before. “You name the time and place. But, please, darlin’, I’m beggin’ you for this one thing.”

Her eyes burned with tears when she opened them and nodded at him.

“The widow’s walk. Eight thirty.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, caressing her cheek as he dropped his hand. “I’ll be there.”





Chapter 21


Laire had considered herself in the mirror for the eighteenth time before she heard a knock on the door and answered it.

“Ready for me?” asked Kelsey with a big grin.

Ava Grace hopped down from the bed and rushed to hug Kelsey around the waist. “We’re havin’ a party tonight!”

“We are?” asked Kelsey.

“Yep! Mama said we could watch a movie and eat popcorn and drink hot cocoa past my bedtime!”

“Wow!” exclaimed Kelsey, giving Ava Grace a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek. “How about you choose the movie while I talk to your mom for two seconds before she goes?”

“Deal!” said Ava Grace, scampering over to her collection of DVDs to choose one.

“You look,” Kelsey said, raising her eyebrows at Laire, “pretty hot for workin’ downstairs in the salon.”

Shoot. Hot? She wasn’t going for hot. She was just going for not covered in pizza grease and the dried remnants of Ava Grace’s runny nose.

“What do you mean?” asked Laire, pulling her coat out of the closet.

“Skinny jeans, plum velour scoop neck, fur vest,” said Kelsey, nodding in admiration.

Laire turned to her, surprised by her fashion knowledge but playing down her observations. “Skinny jeans are Old Navy. Velour scoop neck was a final project at school. And anyone with access to Walmart.com can make a decent faux-fur vest if she knows her way around a sewing machine.”

“Still,” said Kelsey, tilting her head with a teasing grin, “looks more like date wear than work wear.”

Laire zipped up her ski jacket and sat down to pull on her boots. “I have to meet someone before I go to work.”

“Who?” asked Kelsey, eyes sparkling.

Laire flicked a glance to Ava Grace, who was playing eeny, meeny, miny, moe with the Up, Wall-E, and Wreck-It Ralph DVD boxes, and asked in a low-toned voice, “What would you say if I told you I had some unfinished business with Erik Rexford?”

Kelsey’s face registered shock before she schooled it into insouciance and shrugged. “I’d say you could do better.”

“Than the governor’s son?” asked Laire incredulously.

“He’s hot and all,” said Kelsey, “but he’s not real nice. He barks at people. He’s not warm. And you’re, I mean, you’re awesome.”

Laire’s mind flitted seamlessly to the photos she’d seen of Erik during their years apart, and her observation about his eyes: cold and dead. Kelsey was right—he didn’t come off as very warm anymore.

“He wasn’t always like that,” she said softly, feeling a measure of defensiveness on his behalf. “Once upon a time he was . . .” My prince.

“Whatevs,” said Kelsey, shrugging again. “Have fun tappin’ that because he is seriously hot, Laire. That’s for sure.”

“I am not tapping anything.”

“Whatever you say.”

But he is seriously hot. That is for sure, thought Laire, as Kelsey knelt down beside Ava Grace to break the tie between Up and Wall-E.

But why had his eyes grown so cold over the years? she wondered. She’d never seen a happy picture of him after their breakup, whereas that summer he’d been all smiles, carefree and happy and warm and—

“Well?” asked Kelsey. “We’re watchin’ Wall-E. What are you waitin’ for?”

Laire crossed the room and gave Ava Grace a kiss on the cheek. “Mama loves you.”

“I love you too,” said Ava Grace.

“Be good for Kelsey?”

“I love Kelsey!”

“I know. But be good. And no spilling cocoa on the bed. Drink it on the floor, okay?”

Ava Grace nodded, and Kelsey said, “You be good too,” before swatting Laire away with a shit-eating grin and a wave of her hot-pink manicured fingers.

***

After finishing up an outstanding legal brief this morning in the reception room of the inn and speaking on the phone with Town & Country Insurance, who said they’d have a rep out in Buxton tomorrow at noon, Erik took a drive to Hatteras, boarding the ferry to Ocracoke and spending a few hours walking around the island before reboarding the ferry and returning to the inn. He was itching to talk to Laire, his mind focused unmercifully on eight thirty, so he figured it was better to get away for a few hours than end up banging on her door, hoping for an earlier meeting.

As he walked around quiet, off-season Ocracoke Island, which was, by all accounts, similar to Corey Island, he wondered about where Laire had been these past five or six years. She’d left Corey, which must have been an incredibly daring and frightening step, but where had she gone? And aside from having Ava Grace, what had she been up to?