And then he walked out and a week later hired Broussard’s daughter as his nanny because there was no one else and she was magic with the baby and he genuinely needed help.
“Here’s the rule,” he told the windshield. “She is the nanny. She is brilliant with my son. She is making my life functional. That is the entire transaction. I am going to be polite. I am going to be friendly. I am going to be appropriate. I am going to keep my eyes on the Driftwood cook line and Marcel’s syllabus and Atlas’s pediatrician’s instructions, and I am not going to be the guy who lets a beautiful woman in khaki shorts and sneakers blow up the only good shot at a career he’s ever had.”
Pep talk complete, he rolled out onto Gulf Shore Drive to start the new life he so desperately needed.
Maggie stood in front of the bathroom mirror and considered the woman looking back at her. Sharp navy slacks. Cream silk blouse with the small gold buttons. The pearl studs Roger had given her for their tenth anniversary. Sensible black flats. Her short, silver hair swept back in the style she’d been wearing since someone told her it accentuated her cheekbones.
She looked, she thought, like a seventy-eight-year-old woman about to attend a luncheon at the country club. Not, she thought with a narrow-eyed assessment, like a biker girl about to go out with a guy named Brick to a place called…Crabby’s.
Which was why she’d broken her own rule and put a little eyeshadow and rouge on.
“You’re overdressed,” she told the woman in the mirror. “And we are not going to apologize for that.”
“Mags!” Jo Ellen called from the living room. “He just pulled up. On…the bike.”
Maggie closed her eyes and hissed out a very bad word. “Then we’ll go in my car,” she said, walking out of the bathroom. “But it will be very tight in the back for you…”
As she stepped into the living room, she stared at Jo Ellen, who was at the window in her pajamas, holding a glass of white wine.
“Why aren’t you dressed?”
“You told me Brick texted and said Randy couldn’t come. The sick grandson and the upset granddaughter. Remember?”
“So? This wasn’t really a double date! But itwillbe a single one if you don’t come. Jo, please. Get dressed.”
She shook her head. “I told you, my hip is barking.”
“Your hip barks more than my dog.”
“Well, today it howled.” Jo Ellen took a serene sip. “You go on without me.”
“Jo.” Maggie bristled. Goodness, she hated to lose an argument.
Jo Ellen tilted her head, and the affection in her face shined bright enough that for one terrible second Maggie thought she might cry.
“Mags, you have not had a first date since the Beatles came to America. You’renotbringing a chaperone. You should go meet him, unless you want him to come up and sit here while I interrogate him on his intentions.”
Maggie pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “I hate you.”
“Go, before he rings the bell at the main house and Eli figures out you have a date.”
That could not happen. With one more glare at her friend, she grabbed her black handbag from the table by the door and pulled it open to make sure she had her keys, wallet, and lipstick.
“Have fun, Mags.”
“Thanks, traitor.”
Jo Ellen’s giggle faded as Maggie pulled the door closed, navigating the stairs and stepping out the side door just in time to keep Brick from going to the main house.
“Over here,” she called, making him turn. “Remember? Jo and I live up there,” she said lightly, her voice a little breathless.
Brick blinked in surprise and not, she assumed, because she came out of the side entrance.
“Mags.” He sort of sighed the nickname, which he’d picked up from Jo Ellen and would not let go.
He stood still in the late afternoon sun, giving her a minute to take in his pressed black button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up his tattooed forearms, dark jeans, and boots that had clearly been polished for the occasion. His silver beard—at least four inches long—had been neatly trimmed. But it was still absurd.
He slid off his sunglasses to reveal that his blue eyes were exactly the color she remembered, exactly the color she had been trying to forget about all afternoon.
