“Mr. Moffatt!” the boy said with a wide smile. “How’s Ms. Moffatt doing?”
It took a second, but then the bleached hair and eyebrow piercing clicked. It was Kenny, the kid who worked for Flynn. That threw Nate off his expected conversation track for a second.
“I didn’t know you worked here,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. I pick up a few evening shifts.”
“Umm… well, Mum’s fine. She’s been to the doctor and got patched up and told off for pushing herself too hard. Look, put the tea on a tab and send over some cake?”
Kenny nodded and made a note on a pad. “Will do. Tell your mum I hope she feels better soon.”
Most of the time Nate didn’t mind living on an island. He could have stayed in London, found another roommate to take over from Max, and lobbied for the promotion at the charity he’d been working for. Instead he came back, full of praise for tight-knit communities. But sometimes it felt more claustrophobic than anything else. You couldn’t do anything without the entire neighborhood commenting on it a few hours later.
“I will.”
“YOU’RE LUCKYI found this,” Max said as he dragged the roll of heavy silver-gray voile out of the back of his car. In the moonlight the fabric looked nearly black. “I thought we chucked it in the last clear out.”
“No. Those were tablecloths,” Nate said. He brushed a hand over the fabric and felt the rough coat of dust that had settled on it. That could be dealt with. “Thanks, Max.”
Max shrugged easily. “Not doing anything else tonight.” He hefted the roll onto his shoulder as though it didn’t weigh anything and balanced it there. “You want this in the estate car?”
Nate nodded. He patted down his pockets until he found his key ring so he could beep the car open. When he pressed the button, the lights flashed three cars down the street. The parking spaces outside his house had been occupied when he got in. He’d had to park outside Mrs. Saunders’ house. So he could probably expect an “anonymous” note under his wiper in the morning.
“You sure you don’t mind staying with my mum tonight?” Nate asked.
They reached the car, and he pulled the trunk open. He’d already dropped the seats in the back to make room for boxes of cushions and a crate of cardboard-padded glasses. Max shrugged the voile off his shoulder, shoved it in at the side, and angled it so the end stuck between the driver’s and passenger’s seats.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Max said. “You know I think the world of Ally. I’d swap any two of my stepmothers for her in a heartbeat. What was she doing down there anyhow?”
“Shopping, apparently.” Nate slammed the trunk shut and turned. The curtains over Mrs. Saunders’s windows twitched open, and she peeked through the gap. Nate caught her eye and nodded politely. She glared at him as though it were his fault she’d been caught peeping, and scrubbed at an imaginary smear on the window with the cuff of her cardigan.
“Or maybe checking out your new boyfriend?” Max asked. His voice was aggressively neutral, and he raised his eyebrows innocently when Nate frowned at him. “He works down there, doesn’t he?”
“I don’t think even Mum would take a fall just to get a chance to interrogate my boyfriend,” Nate said. “Though I’m sure she made the most of the opportunity once she had it.”
A grin creased Max’s face, and he slung an arm up over Nate’s shoulder. The weight of him made Nate stumble. “Good to know,” Max said. He dug his fingers into Nate’s hair and pushed his head to the side. “We can trade theories on what you see in the useless bastard.”
“I think she likes him.” Nate squirmed out of what had turned into a headlock. He absently smoothed his jacket down, the fastidious tug of his hands a muscle memory that went all the way back to the days when he’d had a blazer and a school tie.
Max pulled a sour face. “That’s only because he was there in her hour of need.”
“It’s a fairly good reason to like someone.”
“I’m sure I can show her the error of her ways,” Max said. “I heard that he was a loan shark, and he did time inside for breaking some kid’s legs.”
“He was a soldier,” Nate said. “And a mechanic.”
Max gave him a dubious look out of the corner of his eye. “Who told you that?”
“Flynn.”
“So he was a loan shark, and now he’s a liar.” Max shook his head ruefully. “Can you believe that?”
Not really. Nate didn’t think it would work on Ally either, for the same reason she’d always liked Max. Ally enjoyed a good gossip as much as anyone else on Ceremony, but once she saw something good in someone, she wouldn’t let go of it.
Not even her son’s bad-news boyfriend.
“You know, it was a lifetime ago,” Nate said. “Don’t you think it’s time to get over it?”
