Before We Were Yours(69)

The science-fair memory makes me laugh. I glance at my watch thinking I’ll call Elliot and share, but I don’t want to be tied up on the phone when the call from Trent Turner comes in. Worry creeps up as I think about the time. It’s after five, and I haven’t heard from him. Maybe he’s working late this evening?

Maybe he’s changed his mind about letting me see the rest of his grandfather’s records.

Another half hour ticks by. I’m as anxious as a hamster in a very small cage. I sit. I stand. I move around the cottage checking my cell to make sure it has reception.

I finally surrender to the urge to slip down to the beach and covertly scan for signs of life at Trent’s cottage. When the phone rings, I’ve inched at least halfway there, peeking around dunes and sea oats.

I’m so startled by the ringtone that I jump, lose my footing in the sand, and end up juggling the cell.

“I was about to give up on you,” Trent says when I finally pick up. “I knocked three times, and nobody answered. Thought maybe you’d changed your mind.”

I try to keep my eagerness from showing, but it’s hopeless. “No. I’m here. I was just out back.” Did he say knocked? He’s at my door?

“I’ll come around.”

I look toward the Myers cottage and realize how far away I am. He’ll know what I’ve been doing. “I think the gate has poison ivy growing over it.”

“Nope. Doesn’t look like it.”

I spin around and bolt for the backyard, but I’m running in sand, the long wrap dress clinging around my legs, my flip-flops slapping. I catch the flash of a blue shirt near my grandmother’s palmetto hedge just in time to put on the brakes and act casual coming up the boardwalk.

Even so, Trent reacts with a quizzical look. “You look a little fancy…for digging around in my granddad’s shed. I told you it’s a mess in there, right? And it’s hot.”

“Oh…this?” I glance down at the wrap dress. “It’s the last thing I had in my suitcase. I took a kayak out this morning and trashed a set of clothes. I’m a wreck.”

“You don’t look like a wreck.” I try to decipher whether he’s just being nice or flirting, and I can’t quite tell. I can see why he’s successful in the real estate business. He oozes charm. “Ready?” he adds.

“I am.”

I close the back gate, and we stroll down the beach together. He apologizes for getting home late. “A little excitement at Aunt Lou’s today. Somehow—none of the cousins really want to confess the details—Jonah poked a Cocoa Puff up his nose. I had to stick around and help with the extraction.”

“Did you get it out? Is he okay?”

Trent grins. “Black pepper. The obstruction was cleared via compressed air from inside the nasal passages. In other words, he sneezed. Whether Aunt Lou gets a confession out of the cousins as to who’s responsible remains to be determined. There are seven of them. All boys, and Jonah is the youngest by three years, so he learns life lessons the hard way.”

“Poor little guy. I can sympathize. Being the baby isn’t easy. Our family is all girls, though, and that was bad enough. If you need to go get him…”

“Are you kidding? I’d have a mutiny on my hands if I did. He loves it there. Two of my mother’s sisters and a cousin live on the same street, and my mom and dad are usually here part of the year, so the food and the action are constant, and there’s always someone to play with. That was the biggest reason I moved here and bought the real estate office after Jonah’s mother died. I needed to cut my working hours back to something reasonable, but I also wanted Jonah to have family around. I didn’t want him to grow up in an apartment with just me.”

Questions rush through my mind. Most of them seem far too personal. “Where did you live before?” I already know the answer. I researched him back when I was following the blackmail theory.

“New York.” Given the khakis, polo shirt, casual boat shoes, and slight Texas accent, it’s hard to picture him in the buttoned-up basic black of a New York professional. “Commercial real estate.”

I feel an unexpected sort of kinship with Trent Turner. We’re both adjusting to new surroundings, new lives. I envy his. “Big change, huh? Do you like it here?”

There’s a hint of something, a little regret. “It’s a lot slower pace…but yes. It’s good.”

“I’m sorry about your wife.” I wonder at the details, but I’m not going to ask. What I thought might be flirtation on his part is probably just the kind of loneliness that would be natural only a few months after such a loss. I don’t want to lead him on in any way. I’m wearing my engagement ring, but it’s a princess-cut emerald, so people don’t always realize it’s not just decorative jewelry.

“We weren’t married.”

I blush instantly, feeling like a ninny for making assumptions. These days, you never know. “Oh…sorry. I mean…”

His smile puts me at ease. “It’s okay. It’s complicated, that’s all. We were co-workers…and friends. She and I crossed some lines we shouldn’t have after her divorce. I suspected Jonah was mine, but Laura said he wasn’t. She was moving upstate to give it a try with her ex-husband again. I left it alone. I didn’t know the truth about Jonah until after her car wreck. Jonah had internal injuries, and he needed a liver donor. Her sister got in touch with me because they hoped I’d be a match. I was, and that was that.”