Even then, I’m constantly aware of Beau’s location—at the table helping Jane, talking with Mayor Barnes, getting called away to help recharge a dead golf cart.
I quietly excuse myself from the octogenarian dance battle. It’s my job to get footage of Beau serving and protecting the community, and I take that job seriously. It’s the only one I’ve got right now.
He’s hauling the generator he keeps in the back of his cart, but his mouth breaks into a smile at the sight of me. I shouldn’t feel like my stomach is a butterfly pavilion at the sight—the man smiles at everyone and everything—but I do.
“Reporting for duty,” I say with a salute.
“I feel like I’ve barely seen you today.”
He’s tellingme.
“Can I help?” I ask. “Aside from capturing you providing an invaluable service to Mrs. Billigan, obviously.”
“Help would be great, actually.”
Beau guides me through the process of connecting the generator and watching the charge climb until there’s enough for Mrs. Billigan to get home and plug her cart in.
Beau replaces his generator in his cart, then we walk back to where the dancing is happening.
“Do you have to get right back to Grams?” he asks when we stop at the edge of the dance floor.
I glance in her direction. She’s doing the Sprinkler, while Lu Blakely holds her walker at the ready.
“That’s a good friend right there,” Beau says, watching the same thing.
“Officer Palmer,” says a voice behind us. We turn and find Marge Wentworth smiling at him with her impossibly perfect dentures. She puts out a hand. “Can I have this dance?”
Beau’s gaze shoots to me, and I step back to show I’m a good sport about having him taken from me so soon.
“Gladly,” Beau says, putting his strong hand in her wrinkled one.
They dance to “Party in the U.S.A.” Beau’s not the best dancer I’ve ever seen, but my heart grows three sizes watching him spin Marge around and do ridiculous dance moves in a sort of challenge to her. Beau dips her as far as her eighty-year-old back will allow, and his eye catches mine. He winks.
Which is when I notice other eyes on me elsewhere in the crowd. People watching me watch Beau.
I head back to Grams’s circle and rejoin the people who I have no doubt will out-dance me tonight in both energy and skill.
“What are you doing?” Grams asks, speaking way more loudly than the volume of the music requires. “You should be dancing with a handsome young man.”
“I like you guys better.”
She snorts. “This island has a far higher ratio of attractive, available men than is statistically probable, so you’d better take advantage of it while you can.”
“I’m good,” I say, trying to compete with Deedee’s robot.
“Gigi,” Grams says, taking a break to talk sternly to me, “you listen to me here. You are forbidden to say no if you’re asked. I didn’t raise a granddaughter with bad manners.”
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly who she raised. She didn’t exactly lead by example in thegood mannersarea. “This isn’tPride &Prejudice, Grams. I’m allowed to say no if I don’t want to dance.”
“If you say no, Gigi,” she says, wagging her finger at me, “I’ll…”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll humiliate you with some hip pop.”
“It’s hip hop, Grams.”
“Not when I do it, it’s not. There’s no hopping, but there are definitely a lot of hip joints popping.”
