She's Up to No Good(65)

“Climb?”

“There’s a path.”

“When do you just let me lie on the beach?”

“Whenever you want. But you don’t need me for that.”

Maybe I want you for that, I thought. But it was too flirtatious to say. “Maybe after the island. I apparently have to be back at the cottage and dressed by four.”

“As long as we don’t miss the tide, you’ll have plenty of time.” My eyes widened. “I’m kidding. We’ll be back. What’s at four?”

“I have no idea. That crazy woman won’t tell me anything. I still don’t know why we’re here. I’m half convinced she’s dying and tying up loose ends, but she swears she’s never going to die and is going to haunt me when she does.”

“So it’s her funeral, while she’s still alive to see it, at four?”

“That or we’re robbing a bank. Or performing open heart surgery. Or summoning those dead witches in a séance. Who knows with her?”

“Let me know if you need a getaway driver. I’m not much help as a medium.”

“Thanks.” We reached the rock he had pointed to and brushed off our feet before putting our shoes and socks back on. Joe rinsed the coffee cups and flattened them to put in the backpack. Watching him do that, I realized the coffee had been a mistake. I had to pee. And I wasn’t going to make it three hours. And there were no full trees, just low, scrubby bushes. I looked toward the shore, where people gathered on the beach. I could ask Joe to turn around, but I was still in the sight line of the shore. Ugh.

“What’s wrong?” I hadn’t realized he was looking at me as I studied my choices. “I promise, I know the timing. I was just teasing before. I’ve never gotten stuck out here.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Then what?”

I scrunched up my face. This was the exact opposite of the sensual goddess I looked like in the pictures he had taken of me. “I have to pee.”

He looked toward the shore. “I don’t think anyone could tell what you were doing if you did.” I remained unconvinced, so he placed the backpack on the ground and pulled a thin towel from the bottom of the bag and held it out in front of him, turning to face the shore. “Better?”

I went a few yards away behind a bush, making sure I was still blocked by the towel, and squatted. When I was done, I walked back to the water’s edge and rinsed my hands, thoroughly embarrassed. “Thank you.”

“I don’t need the towel, but uh . . . I’ll take a turn, too, if you want to stay over here.” My shoulders relaxed. I didn’t know if he actually had to go, but either way I felt better. He returned a minute later. “Ready to climb?”

I craned my neck up to see how steep it really was—the answer was steeper than I would have liked. But something about Joe gave me confidence. “Let’s do this.”

Even Joe was breathing heavily on parts of the climb, and he was in better shape than I was. But he stopped frequently to check on me.

“What’s up there, anyway?” I panted.

“You’ll see in a minute.”

I expected a stunning view. Or maybe a colony of wild goats.

I was not expecting what I saw.

As we crested the top, the ruins of a small castle sat below us, nestled into the hillside. One turret remained largely intact, along with several walls, the rest caved into piles of rocks. “What on earth—?”

“Come on.” Joe led the way down the hill to a stone staircase that delivered us onto the parapet, where an oxidized cannon sat, green from the sea air.

“What is this?”

“Do you want the real story or the one the kids all told each other?”

“Both.”

“The first governor of Massachusetts, before the Revolutionary War, decided he was going to be the king of America and built his castle here. When the British heard what he was doing, they shelled him out, and this is all that’s left.”

“That’s not real. Is it?”

The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Not in the slightest. They filmed a movie here in 1920 and built the castle for it. They just left it because it was going to cost money to take it apart, and no one really cared. Then the hurricane hit in 1938 and ruined a good chunk of it.”

I stepped gingerly back toward the edge built into the island. “Is it safe?”

“What’s here has been pretty much the same since I’ve been coming. And the old folks say not much has changed since the hurricane. So probably.”

“It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? What was the movie?”

“It was called The Kingdom by the Sea. No surviving copies that anyone knows of. And it was apparently terrible.” He looked over at me. “Do you want to go up into the tower? The view is spectacular.”

I grinned, and he led the way, ducking to get through the doorway as I followed. There was a corroded set of scaffolding stairs leading the way up past graffiti-covered walls, which spoiled the illusion. But a stone bench, just wide enough for the two of us to sit with our hips touching, provided a place to look out the tower’s window. The ocean sparkled below us, a perfect deep blue all the way to the horizon.

“Wow,” I breathed.

“Worth it?” Joe asked quietly.