As her heels clicked up the sidewalk toward the restaurant, she caught a glimpse of her long teal gown in the window. This was not Louisa.
She stopped and surveyed herself for a long moment, then heard a whistle behind her. She turned toward the offender, ready with a pointed comment about catcalling, when she saw Alyssa grinning at her from the parking lot.
Louisa laughed. “Don’t draw any more attention to me than necessary. I feel ridiculous.”
“You look amazing.” Ally moved toward her. She was wearing an equally formal gown, though hers was black and a little less flashy. Somehow Ally still looked like an accountant. The glasses maybe? Louisa should’ve gone with black. Would it be easier to blend in if she had?
“You look amazing.” Better to turn the attention back on Alyssa, who was much more classically beautiful and always more put-together than Louisa. Louisa could maybe pull off “girl next-door,” but “beautiful” and “elegant” were out of her reach. She’d accepted this a long time ago, but every once in a while—when McKenzie Palmer was around, for instance—she wished it weren’t the case.
They walked toward the entrance of the restaurant, certain they were the first ones to arrive. Louisa needed to make sure everything was as she left it. Next, she would check in with the chef and the serving staff. She had a whole list in her purse because everything had to be perfect.
As they approached, the door swung open and two men in uniform appeared on the other side.
“Don’t you both look beautiful?” Master Chief Duncan McGreery greeted them warmly, looking perfectly handsome in his uniform. Handsome but not in a spine-tingling, knee-buckling way. Not handsome like Cody Boggs, who stood beside the master chief, back straight as a stick, no expression on his face.
She caught and held Cody’s gaze, unmoving for several long seconds.
“I bet you’re glad you saved her life now,” Ally said. “Otherwise you never would’ve gotten to see her in that dress.”
Louisa elbowed Ally as heat rushed up the back of her neck. How pink were her cheeks? Embarrassment had never looked good on her.
“Everything looks wonderful out back,” Duncan said. “Louisa, you’ve outdone yourself. And I hear the Wirth family came around thanks to you.”
“Not only me.” She tossed one quick look at Cody.
“Come on in. Let’s run through the evening’s program.” Duncan ushered her past Cody (who smelled like an evergreen forest in heaven) and outside to the beach, where the tables had been set up next to a small stage.
“Couldn’t have asked for better weather,” Duncan said.
“No, we sure couldn’t.”
The man took a quick look around. Tall circular tables had been covered with cloths the same dusty lavender as the many hydrangeas that were starting to blossom around the island. They’d been arranged for optimal viewing of the small stage and decorated with centerpieces of white and blue hydrangeas in low glass vases.
White lights had been strung around the outdoor space, and a buffet table featuring large galvanized-metal containers and three tiers of appetizers would later be perfectly arranged to encourage grazing.
There was also a bar neatly positioned inside an old wooden boat Louisa had brought in from her shed of “treasures waiting to be discovered.” Sometimes it was good to be a collector—not quite to the same degree as Maggie, but enough to have cool focal-point pieces like this one.
They would set up several glasses and self-serve drinks in the boat, which had a beautiful, colorful floral centerpiece in the middle of it. Louisa’s vision had come to life. The men of the Coast Guard might never fully appreciate all the detail that had gone into it, but hopefully the potential bidders would.
And even Eric wouldn’t be able to deny she’d created something truly special.
“Run me through the evening,” Duncan said.
Right. She was working. Focus. She found it terribly hard to concentrate with Cody standing just over there and looking like that, but she stuttered her way through an explanation of the plan as she glanced around the space. Appetizers and cocktails, straight into a quick run-down of the regatta, the fundraiser, and what they were actually bidding on.
“Then, of course, the auction itself.”
When she finished, she looked at Duncan, who appeared wholly unimpressed with her explanation. “I promise I won’t stutter so much tonight.”
“You do seem distracted,” he said.
Her eyes were inadvertently drawn to Cody, who was not looking back, then quickly back to Duncan.
His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Your own real-life hero, eh?”
Louisa shook her head, pretending not to understand what the man was talking about, but she had little energy for pretending, and frankly, Duncan didn’t seem all that interested. In fact, he’d already walked away and here she was, alone.
Typically Louisa was perfectly comfortable being alone. She wasn’t the type of person who wouldn’t go to a movie or sit in a restaurant by herself. But somehow, right now, she felt out of place, like she needed something familiar to cling to.
A teddy bear or hard-bodied Coast Guardsman would suffice.
She forced her feet to move toward Ally, who was running through the menu again with the servers. She also forced herself not to pay attention to the pair of eyes that followed her from the stage to the deck.
Eyes the color of chocolate pudding that made her heart do a backflip.
“What is wrong with you?” Ally took Louisa by the shoulders and turned her away from the rest of them. They walked a few steps toward the water.
“I’m afraid everyone will find out I have no idea what I’m doing. And when they find out, I’ll be wearing the equivalent of a grown-up prom dress.”
“You have every idea what you’re doing,” Ally said.
Why did Louisa sometimes need this reminder?
“People are starting to show up,” Ally said. “So pull yourself together.”
And that’s exactly what she did. She pulled herself together. She greeted guests, made snide yet funny remarks about getting their checkbooks ready, kept the staff on task, and managed to avoid running into Cody even once.
It wasn’t hard, after all. He seemed intent on taking up the same square of space off to the side, away from everyone else, and yet she (hardly) noticed that he was rarely alone back there. Between the other guardsmen and a steady stream of bubbly, beautiful women, Cody had plenty of company.
She was still angry, but at the moment she couldn’t remember why. She couldn’t deny there was a part of her that wanted to walk right up to him and act like nothing was wrong. How would it feel to joke with him about the fact that Mrs. Drummond had brought a tiny dog in her purse or that Martine Gullenbacher’s false eyelashes were flicking up at the edges like spiders at a hoedown?
But the part of her that wanted that laid-back, easygoing friendship with him was quickly put in its place by the part that finally did recall Cody’s harsh words toward her. If he thought she was trying to ease her guilty conscience, then he didn’t know her at all.
Or maybe he knew her too well, and that was really what had upset her.
A ball of angst wound itself up and curled into a comfy position inside her stomach like a kitten in front of a fireplace. If he was never going to forgive her, she wished he’d just leave. It would be easier to move on if she didn’t have to see him every day.