* * *
“You’re saying Wendell took money from your trust fund? And you didn’t know about it?”
“It turns out there was a lot he was doing that I didn’t know about,” Riley said.
He was at a temporary loss for words. Should he tell her what he was planning? To what end?
“I’m so sorry,” Nate said. “Have you talked to a lawyer? Is there anything you can do about it? That’s gotta be some kind of bank fraud, right?”
Riley held up three fingers and ticked off the answers to his questions. “I’ve talked to a lawyer, but since Wendell apparently cleaned out all my savings, I can’t actually afford to pay her a retainer. And, anyway, who do I sue? Wendell? He’s dead. Besides, my father saw fit to put Wendell’s name on my trust account, so it appears he had full legal access to my inheritance.”
“Unbelievable,” Nate said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly,” Riley said. “I really did just want to take a good look at the house. Wendell intended to tear it down, you know. I wasn’t privy to many of the details, but I did know he planned to build a second marina here, with condos and apartments and all manner of marvelously hideous ‘improvements’ to the island.”
Nate pushed at one of the worn wooden floorboards with the toe of his shoe, surprised that it didn’t give way.
“At first glance, it looks like the house is in pretty rough shape, at least from the outside, but it’s not nearly as bad as I expected in here.” He pointed upward. “High ceilings, and it doesn’t look like the roof has leaked. And the floors seem solid. How old do you think it is?”
“I know my great-uncle sold the property and the house to the Holtzclaws sometime in the early thirties, so it was probably built in the twenties, by the looks of the place. My grandmother told me this was originally built as a sort of boardinghouse for all the construction workers who were brought over to clear the land and build the first homes.”
“I never knew that,” Nate said, intrigued. “So this house is old, but not as old as your parents’ house. Not anywhere near as fancy either, from what I can remember of Shutters.”
Riley cocked her head and appraised the sly grin on his face. “What do you remember about our house?”
“I remember being totally intimidated the first time I showed up to take you out,” he said.
“By the house, or my mother?”
“Both, now that you mention it. Your mother was pretty imposing. And Shutters was easily the fanciest house I’d ever been in. Marble floors, crystal chandeliers, and a wood-paneled library.” He whistled at the extravagance.
“That’s only because my great-granddad built the house as a sales tool to sell the rest of the lots and spec houses in the early days when he and my great-uncle were trying to get Belle Isle up and running,” Riley said.
“According to Parrish Godchaux, you’re currently a multi-multimillionaire, so I bet you wouldn’t find Shutters quite so fancy now, and anyway, I seriously doubt there’s much that intimidates you these days.”
“Not true,” Nate said, looking directly at her. “You intimidate me.”
“Me?” Riley scoffed, gesturing at herself. “Look at me. I’m a forty-two-year-old widowed has-been. I don’t even intimidate our twelve-pound pug puppy.”
“I sincerely hope you don’t believe that,” Nate said. “You’re beautiful, intelligent, and talented. And don’t give me that crap about being washed up. I’ve seen your television work, and I know about the regional Emmys you’ve won. You were really good at what you did.”
“Oh! You’re telling me you saw my work while you were out in California making your first million?” Riley taunted.
“I made my living off the Internet,” he reminded her. “You should try Googling yourself. You’d be surprised by how many video clips of your work there are floating around out there.”
“That was a long time ago, back in the days when I was actually a serious journalist. A lifetime ago. Haven’t you gotten the memo? Middle-aged women are officially invisible.”
“Not to me,” Nate said.
Riley took a half step backward. “If I didn’t know better, Nate Milas, I’d think you were trying to hit on me.”
He closed the gap between them. “What if I was? What would you do?”
Riley felt something she could have sworn she’d forgotten: a warm tingling in her scalp that traveled all the way down her spine. And then she had the oddest sensation. Her give-a-shit up and left.
They were standing only inches apart, so close she could see the gray stubble on his chin and the laugh lines worn into his deeply tanned face. Her eyes met his. They were warm and kind. She took a deep breath. “I might just let you.”
Nate reached out and tilted up the bill of her baseball cap. He placed his hands on either side of her face and tilted it up so that his lips met hers.
The kiss was tentative at first. But when she didn’t protest, or back away, he pulled her closer, flattening his body against hers, kissing deeper, teasing her lips apart with his tongue.
“Okay?” he murmured.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “So far, so good.”
34
As she sank further into Nate’s embrace a tiny part of her brain—the only part of her body not preoccupied with the pleasure of being in a man’s arms again—kept insisting that one of them would have to come to their senses soon and break away.
After all, they were standing in an abandoned house, in broad daylight, making out like a couple of horny teenagers.
But then, Nate’s hands slid slowly, slowly around her waist, slipped under her T-shirt, and were definitely headed north, while his lips were unmistakably headed south, hovering now around her collarbone.
“Whoa,” she whispered.
He looked up, genuinely puzzled. “Whoa? Does that mean slow down?”
“It means,” she said, catching his right hand just as it reached her right nipple, “what’s going on here?”
Nate nuzzled her neck. His breath was warm on her skin. “Well, I was hitting on you, and I thought it was going pretty well.”
“Yeah, it was going great until you suddenly went from hitting on me to swinging for the fences,” Riley said.
Nate sighed and stepped away. “Too fast. My bad.”
“Again,” Riley said.
They both laughed, temporarily breaking the tension of the moment.
“It’s getting late, and I really want to see the rest of the house,” Riley said abruptly, heading for the stairway.
“Are you running away from me?” Nate asked.
“Absolutely,” she called over her shoulder.
He caught up with her on the wide second-floor stair landing. She was standing in front of the open door to a bedroom, with her hand clapped over her nose and mouth, pointing inside the room.
“Gross,” Nate said, peeking inside. He kicked at a mound of rotting trash, walked inside, and quickly retreated, pulling the door closed.
“It looks like a family of raccoons moved in here after the Holtzclaws moved out.” He pointed toward the ceiling, where a hole had been chewed in a section of rotting boards.