He pushed the door open a little and saw her hunched over the desk, head in her hands. She groaned again, low enough that he knew she didn’t think he’d hear her. Since the headphones weren’t back in place, he hoped he wouldn’t startle her this time. “Teddy?”
She whipped around, but not as wildly as last time. “You’re back.” Her eyes looked suspiciously red, but she straightened in her chair.
“Hey, I—uh—thought maybe you might want some dinner. I was going to—uh—make something on the— There’s a grill. Since we share a kitchen…” He shrugged, then waited. Either there would be an explosion, or…he wasn’t certain what.
“What time is it?” she asked, looking around. “I’m probably hungry.”
“It’s after seven thirty.”
“Seriously?” Her eyes widened, and they began to glisten with tears—and they weren’t happy ones. “I’ve wasted a whole day? And written—what—a couple hundred words?And then deleted them all?”
Oscar braced himself for a flood of something—tears, expletives, stomping—but she still had that unsettling calm that he knew, justknew, wasn’t real. Or was a portent of something far worse. “Why don’t you come out and—and get some fresh air.”
“Sure. Thanks.” She looked around with that vacant expression again, and reached for the blue sundress draped over the chair. “I’ll just put this on really quickly, and—”
“Great, see you in a few,” he said, bolting back out of the door when it appeared she was going to yank off her tank top and change right then.
By the time she joined him in the kitchen, Oscar had managed to wipe away all thoughts of the rumpled bed, lacy underwear, and what Teddy might have put on under the bright blue dress she was wearing. He was prepping some chicken breasts for the grill he’d noticed outside—gas, thank goodness, for the one thing he hadn’t brought was charcoal—when she joined him in the kitchen.
To his surprise, she looked nothing like the dull-eyed, straggly-haired desperado he’d just seen. She’d pulled her cocoa-brown hair up into a loose knot at the top of her head. He noticed hints of gold and honey shining among the dark tresses. Her eyes showed no evidence of tears. The sundress she wore had skinny straps, but was fairly loose around the rest of her body, though it dipped a little low in the front. Her legs were bare from above the knee and her toenails were painted pink, and he admitted both were more than nice to look at.
“I could use a glass of wine,” Teddy said, rummaging in one of the cupboards. “I was supposed to get some food delivery, which Harriet helped me set up so I could concentrate on writing—hah!—and I told her she’d better include some wine or I was coming back to Manhattan to wring her neck,” she added cheerfully. “Looks like she complied—and that whoever delivered the food even put it away. White or red? Unless this is all yours?” She spun and gave him a startled, questioning look.
“No, you’re right. It’s not mine. Must’ve been put away, maybe yesterday while we—I—you—were at the hot spring. I didn’t notice. Uh…white?”
“Good choice. Ah,” she said with a soft purr as she examined a bottle. “Harriet has good taste in wine. I’ll give her that. Let me chill this a bit first. I like my whites ice-cold in the summer.” She shoved the bottle into the freezer.
“So, this Harriet. She sounds like a real hard-ass,” Oscar said. He surprised himself by making conversation; he’d figured they’d slap the chicken on the grill, have a salad, and then be off to their own devices—and with as little engagement as possible. But apparently, his brain had other ideas. “A slave driver at best.”
“No, no, she’s the best.” Teddy sighed as she pulled two wine glasses from the cupboard. “Really. She’s my literary agent, if you didn’t get that. And she’s just trying to help me get over this…hump.”
“Right.” Oscar didn’t mention how white-faced terrified of the agent Teddy had seemed earlier. “Well, that’s good.” He sounded dubious to his own ears, but she didn’t seem to notice and began to dig around in the fridge for salad makings.
“I told her about this whole mess,” she said as she backed out of the open door of the appliance with an armload of colorful vegetables. “Laid into her a little, in fact, because, really—the whole point of me coming here was not to be bothered. Not to have anyone around. I mean, hell, I don’t even have acar.”
She thunked the salad makings onto the counter and began to yank open drawers in search of, he assumed, utensils and bowls. “She said she’d do what she could to find another place for me to go, and apologized for the mistake. Not that I think it was totally her fault—but someone did screw up.”
“Speaking of not having a car,” he said when she paused for breath, “what time did you get back here last night? Did someone drive you?”
“It was around midnight, I think.” She gave him a rueful look. “Yes, my cousin Declan dropped me off. I’d gone out to dinner with him and his girlfriend, and I had a few too many samples of the wares of the local craft brewer. By the time I got back, I was more than ready to hit the hay—and a little more than tipsy.”
Oscar stopped short of asking her if she’d heard anything strange in the night, but he did probe a little further. “So you went right to bed? Didn’t stub your toe or walk into the wall in the dark?”
Didn’t make any loud, horrifying screams—or hear one?
To his relief, she didn’t seem to think his question was strange. “Nope. Once I hit my mattress, I was out. Until I heard you banging around in there this morning.”
“Right.” With that, Oscar decided to escape his chatty companion before he said something he’d regret. He went outside to grill the chicken while she worked in the kitchen and chopped veggies for salad. He was surprised a short time later when, just as he was taking the meat off the grill, she brought the salad and wine outside.
“We have to eat out here on the porch,” she explained. “I’ve been cooped up all day, and it’s just so beautiful.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Though it was facing the beach, this side of the covered porch was also partly in shadow from the sprawling forest that filled most of the tiny island. Stony Cape Lighthouse loomed above them, painted white with a jaunty blue band two-thirds up and a matching cap on top, casting a long, broad shadow behind the cottage. The air was lightly humid and filled with the scent of summer flowers—maybe some honeysuckle and wild roses—plus lake. It was warm, but not hot, and the breeze from Lake Michigan was enough to keep the bugs away but not to blow napkins about.
The shoreline was pale sand, and weedy with tall clumps of prickly, hay-like grass growing beyond the farthest reaches of the lake’s waves. Larger stones, smooth from rushing water, made a natural barrier between sand and grasses. There was a wooden walkway that led from the cottage down to the lake—a distance of less than twenty yards.
They settled onto two metal chairs, balancing plates on their respective laps. The wine was crisp and light, the chicken (simply marinated in Italian dressing) was grilled till the outside was crispy but the inside still moist and then cut up over the colorful salad, and the view was beautiful. The sun was still several knuckles above the horizon, casting gold and orange rays over the surging waves.
“Thank you for this,” Teddy said with a sigh as she looked out over the water. “I might have stayed in there all day.”
