Must calm down.
Maybe he doesn’t notice, because his gaze swings from me to the windows above the Nook. “So … is that your mom watching us from your apartment?”
“Yes, indeed-y,” I say, moving around him to get a better angle of the boatyard’s sign.
“Wow. Okay. I didn’t think she meant itthatliterally. About watching us.”
“She did.”
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
Tiny bat wings. So nervous.
“Nothing. Can you move? You’re blocking …”
“Oh, sorry. Is that better?”
“Yep. Thanks.”
“Josie?”
“Are these real photos that your parents want, or is this just a ruse?”
“No,” he says as early evening traffic speeds past us, bumping along the setts. “I mean, yes. I told my mom about this. She said it would be nice to have better photos on the website. They need to print new catalogs, so she’ll use them there, too. It’s legit.”
“I just didn’t want to waste my time if this is fake.”
“You mean, fake like when you hired me to pilot you around the harbor?”
“That was a completely real scam to pay you back for the department store window. And just when I’d scrimped and saved up enough dough to hire Captain Lucky again—”
“Puke buckets will cost you extra, by the way.”
“—you went and pulled this stunt, and now I’m back where I was before. So thanks?”
“You’re most welcome.”
“Thanking you most unkindly.”
He chuckles and leans against an iron hitching post with a molded horse head—one of a hundred that dot the old streets around town. “So, hey … How have you been?”
I adjust a setting on my camera. “Fine, fine. Working at the Nook, makin’ thatcash,” I say in a ridiculous voice, immediately regretting it. I sound nervous. But Lucky looks completely calm and cool, as usual, so now I’m wondering if this is a one-sided nervousness, and that only makes the bats in my chest flutter faster.
“And you … You’ve been busy, I take it,” I say. It comes out sounding more agitated than I intend, but I’m just so. Unbelievably. Palm-sweatingly. Anxious.
It’s jUsT LuCky.
It wAs jUsT a kIsS.
He frowns and scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah. It’s been weird around here lately.”
“The boatyard window, you mean?”
“That’s definitely been a big point of stress. You heard about what happened at the neighborhood meeting right? Nobody believes Adrian did it.”
“I heard.”
“Wow,” he mumbles, turning his head. “She’s really watching us like a hawk.”
