Of course, all his wonderings and what-ifings wouldn’t be necessary if only Cami had kept her mouth shut. If Cami had been just alittlebit more discreet, none of this would’ve happened.
Doc gritted his teeth when he stepped onto the beach. It wasn’t because of the bitter turn of his thoughts. It was because sometimes, when he changed positions too suddenly, his healing concussion made it feel like some sorry sonofabitch drilled a steel screw into his skull.
LT pulled off his glasses to give Doc the once-over. “Y’okay, man?”
“I’ll live,” Doc muttered grumpily.
LT snorted. Then he was quick to observe, “Fancy new duds you got there.”
Doc glanced down at the T-shirt and swim trunks he’d bought off the sale rack of a souvenir shop on Duval Street. The trunks were bright orange with lime-green palm trees and the T-shirt read:Key West. Where we salt margaritas, not sidewalks.
“I left here without a change of clothes. By the time Dixon was done with me, I was pretty ripe, so I improvised.”
“And still somehow you’re less of an eyesore than Uncle John,” LT quipped.
“Hey!” John objected. “You kids don’t have any sense of fashion. That’s all.”
“I always think you look very handsome, Uncle John,” Alex told him sweetly, fluttering her lashes.
Bran nudged Mason. “I think you need to take your woman to get her eyes checked. She obviously needs new lenses in those glasses.”
“Not a chance,” Mason muttered. Then, proving he wasn’t always the strong, silent type, he added, “What if she gets a good look at me and changes her mind?”
Alex laughed. “Oh, baby, you could be as ugly as a mud fence and I’d still love you. Especially if you keep doing that thing you did last night where you swirled—”
“Andthat’s about enough of that.” John lifted his hand. Then he used it to motion for everyone to follow him. “Come on, y’all. Dinner just came out of the oven.”
“Tuna casserole again,” Olivia warned the group.
“That’s fine as long as he didn’t use corn flakes in place of saltines this time.” Alex wrinkled her freckled nose.
Sniffing in affront, Uncle John said, “I still think y’all made too much of a fuss over that. It wasn’tthatbad.”
“It tasted like someone threw a bucket of minnows into a bowl of Post Toasties,” Alex objected. And with that, the group trudged through the sand toward the beach house.
For the first time since droppingWayfarer II’s anchor outside the reef, Doc took the opportunity to look around the island. Those who’d stayed behind had worked miracles. Then again, hurricanes had always been a way of life for Uncle John and LT. And he knew from experience that both men turned into fine-tuned machines when it came to cleanup.
“I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.” Alex pushed her tortoiseshell glasses higher on the bridge of her pert nose. “Either you guys have been busy over the past couple of days, or Julia wasn’t as big and bad as the weathermen were making her out to be.”
“Well you know that’s why they’re called weathermen, right?” Olivia said over her shoulder, her blue eyes sparkling with mischief. “Because they’re always lying about how many inches you’re going to get?”
“Ba-dum-tss.” Alex chuckled.
“But, seriously,” Olivia added as she lithely bounded up the porch steps. “These two”—she waved a hand to indicate LT and Uncle John—“have been working from sunup to sundown. With a little help from me, Cami, and Dana, of course.” She widened her eyes. “Uncle John had Cami running the chainsaw this morning.”
“Our perfectly poised lawyer going allArmy of Darkness?” Bran laughed. “I’d pay to see that. Please, someone tell me they snapped a picture.”
After following the others inside the house, Doc realized he was glancing around furtively when John sidled up next to him. “She’s gone,” he announced quietly.
“Who?” Doc was quick to come back.
“Cami, of course.” Uncle John frowned. “She and Dana took a chartered floatplane back to the mainland about an hour ago to deal with the last of the legal stuff.”
“I wasn’t looking for Cami,” Doc lied. “I was marveling at how good the house looks.” It was a valid excuse since the furniture had been unstacked and put back in its place. “It’s like Julia was never here.”
The expression John wore called bullshit. Thankfully, before he could form the words, LT asked, “So what about our uninvited guests, Doc? Did Dixon tell you what’s next for ’em?”
Doc was quick to latch on to the change of subject.
