“More like I’m super curious to hear how things went with Nate last night.”
“Fine.”
“How fine?” Parrish studied her face carefully.
“I think you could say very fine.”
Parrish sighed happily. “You slept with him. Finally! Thank God.”
“I never said that,” Riley said.
“You don’t have to. I can tell by the look on your face. I’m so glad. Nate Milas is a good guy. A great guy. He’s twice the man Wendell Griggs ever hoped to be.”
“He’s sweet,” Riley admitted. “I hate to admit it, but you were right. It felt so good, letting go of all that … stuff … I was carrying around. I can’t get over how easy it is, being with him. I’d forgotten how much fun he was, back when we were in college.”
“I just love being right,” Parrish said. “It makes my whole damn week. When are you seeing him again?”
“He wanted me to have dinner with him tonight, but I told him I couldn’t.”
“And why not?”
“Because it’s Sunday. And you know how Mama is about Sunday supper.”
“Just tell her you made other plans,” Parrish said.
“I tried. And she laid that ‘I never ask much of you children’ crap on me, and of course, I caved.”
“Of course,” Parrish said. “Everybody always caves in to Evvy. And that’s her superpower. She brandishes guilt like a light saber.”
“You’re just lucky I told her she couldn’t guilt trip you and Ed into coming tonight.”
“Us? How did we get roped into this?”
“I tried to tell her that I needed to have dinner with you guys, because you’re sad about the kids not coming, but then she insisted you could just have dinner with us. Because Ed loves her tenderloin.”
“No offense, but your mother’s tenderloin is indistinguishable from shoe leather.”
“I know. But since you don’t have to suffer her cooking tonight, I thought you could do me one other teensy little favor.”
“Which is?”
“Cover for me. I told her I was going to watch the fireworks from your house.”
“But instead you and Nate are going to have your own private fireworks.”
Riley found herself smiling again. “Something like that.”
* * *
Nate had one hand on the golf cart’s steering wheel and the other draped across Riley’s shoulder. It was twilight, and the cicadas were already tuning up.
“This isn’t the way to your cabin,” she said.
“I know.” He leaned over and sniffed her hair. “You smell nice. Is that the same perfume you wore in college?”
“I can’t believe you remembered,” Riley said.
“There is nothing I don’t remember about you,” Nate said.
“If we’re not going to your place, where are we going?” she asked.
“To watch the fireworks. At the Holtzclaw place.” He handed her a can of insect repellant. “You’ll need that.”
* * *
A new padlock had been installed on the gate since Riley’s last visit. “We should have a pretty good view from the dock,” Nate said. He produced a flashlight and trained it on the newly mowed yard, pointing in the direction of the creek.
“Is that dock safe to walk on?”
“It is now. I spent the morning over here, putting down new decking and cleaning up around the place.”
There was a light shining from the end of the dock, and as they drew closer, she saw that Nate hadn’t just nailed down a few boards. He’d also set up a pair of chaise longue chairs with a low table between them. A citronella candle burned in a jar, and an ice bucket held a bottle of wine.
“This is perfect,” Riley marveled. “You managed to do all this in just one day?”
“I sort of started planning this from the minute I bought the place,” Nate admitted. “The hard part was figuring out how to get you to stop hating me long enough to see what I see.”
“You amaze me, you know that?” Riley said.
He opened the wine and poured two glasses. “First things first,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her deeply.
As if on cue, a burst of silver-and-gold rockets shot upward from a barge anchored out in the sound, lighting up the inky night sky.
“It’s starting!” Riley said.
* * *
Somehow, they ended up on the same lounge chair, and then, eventually, on the newly repaired dock. “I should have put an air mattress out here,” Nate grumbled. “We’ll be picking splinters out of our asses for a week.”
Riley stood and pulled on her shorts. “My hair is a disaster,” she said ruefully.
“Your hair is beautiful,” Nate said, running his fingers through it.
They stood watching the fireworks until the grand finale, which featured a huge, waving American flag surrounded by cascades of Roman candles.
“Time to go,” Riley said. “Maggy will be getting home from the club, and I don’t want to have to answer too many questions from Mama.”
Nate started to say something, but stopped himself.
“I’m headed out in the morning,” he said, after they started back toward the Mercantile.
“You mean to Southpoint?”
“For starters. I’ve got meetings with some of the marine-ecology faculty in Chapel Hill, then I’m going to Charlotte to meet with some architects and talk to the finance guys, and then I’ll head to Morehead City to tour the research facility there.”
“Finance guys?” she said.
“Yes. Buying the land was just the first step. There will be some development on this end of the island, you realize that now, right?”
“I guess.” She looked away.
“But it won’t be anything like what Wendell was planning. We’ll do a medium-density mixed-use project at Pirate’s Point. A much smaller boutique hotel, more like an inn, really. Some retail, and some town houses built around a sort of village green space. I’m also going to talk to some of the forestry folks at the university, to see if there’s some kind of mitigation we can do to that portion of the wildlife sanctuary that Wendell started clearing.”
“Really?”
“No promises,” Nate said. “Those were old-growth trees he knocked down, and you can’t exactly go to a nursery and buy that kind of thing.”
“When will you be back?” she asked.
“Week after next, I hope,” Nate said.
“That long?”
“Meet me in Charlotte next weekend,” he urged. “I’ll get a suite at the Ritz-Carlton, and we can have some nice dinners. It would do you good to get away from the island for a few days.”
“You don’t know how much I’d love that,” she said wistfully. “But what would I tell Maggy? And Mama? And, anyway, I’ve got stuff I need to do here.”
“Like what?”
“For starters, I need to get serious about looking for a job. Maggy starts back to her new school in a month. I’ve got to find a way to pay for her tuition.”
“A month?” Nate said, startled. “Summer’s just getting started. We’re just getting started. Labor Day isn’t until September.”