“Um, hi,” I said. “Do you realize this is my room?”
He sat down in the small upholstered armchair across from my bed and sighed. “She’s really going to do it, isn’t she?” he asked, which was when I realized that Kyle, whom I had never seen with a cocktail, was a little drunk.
“Kyle, how did you get my room key?”
“Tim and Mary Lou were asleep, so I made myself one.”
“Ah,” I said, disturbed that pretty much anyone could figure out how to do that.
I got up, resigning myself to the fact that I was not going to sleep tonight. Wouldn’t be the first time, wouldn’t be the last.
As I sat down in the other upholstered club chair, I heard, “Mom, for heaven’s sake. Anyone could walk right into your room,” as Caroline pushed through the doorway, Sloane behind her.
Caroline stopped so quickly when she saw Kyle that Sloane ran right into her. She looked from Kyle to me and said, “What is going on here?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Kyle and I are having a torrid love affair. Didn’t you know?”
“I sure as hell didn’t know,” I heard Jack’s voice call from the hardwood-floored vestibule that served as an entrance hall for the suite.
He sauntered in, in his white undershirt and Johnnie-O pajama pants. He pointed at Kyle. “You’d better keep your hands off my girl.”
Kyle put his hands up in defense. Sloane and Caroline were already perched in my bed, under the covers. Sloane was crunching on some sort of cracker. Those crumbs were going to feel great—if I ever got to get back in the bed, that is.
Jack was rustling around the minibar and came back with coffee mugs full of wine for everyone.
He sat in one of two small chairs that accompanied the tiny dining table on the other side of the bed. Then he said, “So what’s going on?”
“I think Kyle and I were having a private talk.”
Kyle shook his head. “There’s no such thing as a private talk with a Murphy. If I tell one, you all know anyway.”
That was true.
He took a sip of wine and hiccupped. Oh, God. Now we really were in trouble.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Too many Starlite Starlets.”
“I’m sorry. What?” Caroline inquired.
“I guess Emerson never told you I named a cocktail after her in LA.”
Sloane sat straight up. “Back the hell up. You knew Emerson in LA?”
“Sloane, language,” I said half-heartedly.
Kyle nodded sadly. “Yeah. She walked into my coffee shop in LA one morning, and I saw her, and I was like,There she is.”
I think we were all speechless.
“NotThere she is, Emerson Murphy, because no one knew who she was then anyway. I was like,There she is, the girl I’ve been waiting to spend my life with.”
“And now she’s marrying someone else,” Jack said, nodding. “Yup. Been there, man.”
I smiled sadly at Jack but immediately turned my gaze back to Kyle. This news had me reeling.
“So how did you name a drink after her?” Sloane asked.
“We had drinks, I thought of it, and the bartender put it on the menu. I was so sad, because I had just met her, and I knew that I was moving the next day, but when she mentioned Starlite Island, I knew that fate would somehow bring us back together. When I walked out of Ansley’s guesthouse at the beginning of the summer, and there she was, I knew this was the universe giving me a second chance. Finally.”
