Will grinned. “Well, you probably don’t get many channel markers in Iowa.”
“I wouldn’t know. I saw Jaws as a kid and vowed never to go near the ocean again. This is my first exception since.”
Will laughed—the most genuine laugh I’d ever heard from him. It was easy to see he felt more comfortable out on the water than he did on land—more comfortable and maybe more himself.
“No great whites here. The water’s only a few feet deep in most places. We could practically walk back to Little Bridge, if we wanted. How are you, Jo?”
“Oh. I’m fine.” I kept my gaze glued to the ocean through the windshield, because otherwise, it might have strayed in dangerous directions. Jerome was rocking a perfectly acceptable dad bod, but Will? Oh my God. No wonder he’d been nominated for People’s sexiest man alive: beneath all that linen resort wear, he had the lean, muscular build of an Olympic swimmer.
Not only that, but his manscaping game was on point. He had to be manscaping, because I didn’t know many guys whose body hair grew naturally from a silky-looking mat across their chest into a nice thin line down their stomach before disappearing into the waistband of their board shorts, like an arrow or the trunk of a tree … a tree whose root I was getting more and more interested in investigating.
Whoa. Cool it, Jo.
“So I was heading down to the galley for more wine and thought I’d come up to see if you guys needed anything,” I lied. But since I’d waitressed for so many years, I felt like it came out sounding very natural and convincing.
“Oh, aren’t you sweet?” Jerome’s mischievous grin told me that he, at least, saw right through my lie. “As a matter of fact, I am getting a little low.” He rattled his empty beer can. No glass was allowed on board The Moment, so we were all drinking out of cans or plastic. “I was just thinking about heading downstairs to get myself a refill. Why don’t I bring back some for all of us?”
I recognized right away that someone must have tipped off Jerome about Kellyjean’s plans for Will and me. If y’all can, try and leave them alone together, I could almost hear her telling everyone in her Texas twang. It’s time those two crazy kids fell in love!
But instead of getting mad about her interference in my personal life, I decided to take advantage of it. “Sure. Thanks, Jerome.”
Jerome, wearing an expression of mild amusement, slid from the swiveling co-captain’s chair on which he’d been sitting and walked away. I was fairly certain he wouldn’t be back. I couldn’t blame him, really.
But it didn’t matter. Will and I were finally alone. This was my chance to do the research I needed for Kitty Katz #27. And Will made it all too easy.
“Is Garrett playing that damned ukulele again?” he asked, peering out the windscreen and down at the sundeck. His sunglasses were perched on top of his head. Maybe he’d forgotten where he’d left them.
“Oh. Um.” My gaze was on his legs. This was the first time I was getting to see them bare, since he was wearing shorts. They were as fine as the rest of him, tanned and muscular and ready to be wrapped around me. “Yes.”
“I thought I told him to leave it on the bus.”
“You did.” His feet looked amazing as ever. “But he brought it anyway.”
Will shook his head, bringing my attention back to his face. “Is it just me, or is there something a bit peculiar about him?”
I slid into the chair that Jerome had recently vacated, keeping myself from saying, Funny. He says the same thing about you. I had to handle this just right. “Well, he certainly does seem to like serenading members of the opposite sex. Maybe in his past life he was a lovelorn troubadour.”
Will frowned, still squinting through the windscreen down at the little group on the sundeck. “He doesn’t seem very good at it. And aren’t Kellyjean and Bernadette both married?”
“Um.” I nibbled on a hangnail. This was going to be harder than I’d thought. “Yes. But I think it might be your sister and Sharmaine he’s singing to.”
His dark-haired head twisted toward me fast. “My sister? She’s in high school.”
“I think Garrett’s aware of that. It doesn’t appear to bother him.”
Instead of storming off the deck and down the stairs to throw Garrett overboard, however, Will only leaned back in his swivel chair with a chuckle. “Well, good luck to him. If he actually tries anything, Chloe’ll kill him.”
This was an unusual take. “Chloe will?”
“Oh, yes. She and her friends on the dance team have started learning capoeira.”
“I’m sorry. Capo-what-a?”
“Capoeira. It’s an Afro-Brazilian style of dance, combined with martial arts. The girls have gone mad for it. Could cause significant cranial damage with a single kick, from what I’m told.”
“Wow,” I said. “So I guess your sister can take care of herself.”
“Certainly well enough to handle the Garretts of the world.”
I recalled what the sheriff’s daughter had mentioned the night before about Will’s fears that his sister might be kidnapped … probably something I should have remembered before I’d come rushing up to tell him about Garrett.
But he still didn’t seem to be experiencing any anxiety on Chloe’s behalf. Probably because the only possible threat in the area was Garrett, and he wasn’t actually all that threatening. We were in the middle of the Florida Keys backcountry. There wasn’t another soul around for miles, or at least it seemed so to me.
Which reminded me …
“Where are your parents?” I asked, definitely not eyeing his naked chest over the rim of my plastic wineglass. “Why does Chloe live with you and not them? Or are they here and I haven’t met them yet?”
What I did not say was, None of the interviews I’ve ever read about you have mentioned your parents. Not that I’ve read many, of course. Okay, I’ve read them all.
“Our mother passed away,” Will said shortly, then busied himself with doing something to the console that made the boat engines quieter. He must have noticed my suddenly stricken expression, however, since he added quickly, “A long time ago. Chloe was just a toddler.”
Whoa. There was nothing in any of Will Price’s bios about his mother dying tragically young.
Then again, most publications limited bios to one hundred words or less. It’s why mine read merely, Jo Wright was born in New York City. She is the author of over twenty books, including the #1 New York Times bestselling Kitty Katz, Kitten Sitter series. She lives in Manhattan with her cat.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Will, meaning it. “That must have been terrible. How did she die?”
Of course you’re not supposed to ask “How did she die?” when someone mentions that a loved one has passed away. That’s rude and none of your business and also probably painful for them to talk about. At least that’s how it had been for me, until time and therapy had softened the blow of my mother’s passing.
But if you’re a nosy writer trying to put a story together that’s more than a year late and you’re talking to the person responsible for making it late (more or less), then it’s okay to be rude.