After she hung up, she gave Lola an accusing look. “See what you made me go and do? I called a boy and asked him out on a date. At least, I think it’s a date.”
CHAPTER 57
It was barely ten o’clock, but already the beach parking lot was rapidly filling and the raked-smooth sand was dotted with dozens of the Saint’s pink-and-white-striped umbrellas and bright pink beach loungers.
“What happens if someone dares to bring an umbrella that’s, say, yellow, or red, or God forbid, blue?” Whelan asked, surveying the scene from his seat beside her on the golf cart.
“Security would be alerted and the offenders would be dragged off in chains,” Traci said. “But, as a practical matter, if you’re a guest here, we provide you with an umbrella and lounge chairs, so why would you spoil the ambience by going rogue and bringing something else?”
The golf cart bumped along on a narrow, paved path that skirted the main beach, until the path ended abruptly in front of a large sign warningNO TRESPASSERS. DANGEROUS CURRENTS. NO LIFEGUARDS.
Traci steered around the sign and drove onto the hard-packed sand.
“Mind telling me where we’re going?” Whelan asked.
“We call it Secret Beach,” Traci said, skirting a bleached-out driftwood tree trunk. “Sometimes there’s a wicked riptide. Which is why there’s never anyone here.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Should I be alarmed?”
“Not at all. Remember, I’m a certified lifeguard, or at least I was twenty years ago.”
She slowed the cart again and skirted a long rock jetty that reached a couple hundred yards out into the surf. Two hundred yards from that, she stopped the cart and parked.
In a short time, Whelan had set up yet another pink-and-white umbrella and a pair of lounge chairs, while Traci unloaded the cooler and her beach bag.
Whelan produced the canvas tote bag he’d brought along. “Seems like a rosé kind of day,” he said, handing her a chilled bottle.
“Perfect.” She stashed it in the cooler, and after a moment of feeling weirdly shy and self-conscious, she pulled off her gauzy white cover-up to reveal a modest black tankini. She adjusted her sunglasses and pulled her hair off her shoulders into a plastic clip, then spritzed herself with sunscreen and handed the bottle to Whelan, who’d already peeled off his T-shirt.
He sniffed the bottle with exaggerated disdain, before applying it to himself. “So girly. Coconut and papaya.”
“Sorry,” Traci told him. “They were all out of the manly beer and butt-sweat scent.”
He stretched out on the lounger with his arms over his head and Traci tried not to stare while appreciating his deeply tanned, slightly dad bod. His black sunglasses hid his eyes, and she hoped her own obscured hers.
“You haven’t told me yet why you called,” he said.
“Um, I called because it’s a beautiful Sunday with low humidity and I was looking for some company, but Lola hates the beach.”
He turned toward her and raised his sunglasses. “Try again.”
She reached into the cooler and pulled out a couple of water bottles, handing him one and uncapping her own.
“You’re stalling.”
“How do you know me so well when we’ve only just met?” She gulped the cold water.
“I’m a professional investigator. I made a living by being observant.”
Traci shrugged. “I told you that Ric was trying to screw me over somehow, right? Well, this morning he called to tell me exactly how he intends to do that.”
“Something to do with your father-in-law’s will?”
She gave Whelan a condensed version of her conversation with Ric Eddings.
“Of course, as soon as I got off the phone with Ric, I called Andy Plankenhorn. He was an old friend of Fred’s, and the family lawyer until Ric replaced him with his frat brother. I forwarded Andy a copy of the new will that Ric emailed me.”
“And? Is there anything your lawyer can do to stave off the big bad wolf at your door?”
