Laire’s father had two boats: the commercial fishing boat and a smaller, prettier leisure boat they used for the occasional cruise on a Sunday afternoon when Hook wasn’t working, or for the trip to Ocracoke for a nice supper at one of the cafés over there. And while borrowing either for a good reason had never been an issue, borrowing one to go to the Pamlico House Bed & Breakfast to meet Erik Rexford and accept a summer job wasn’t exactly going to be a walk in the park.

That said? Laire had two good reasons to figure out a way to make it work:

One, she wanted the job Ms. Sebastian was offering. If she worked every day from now until Labor Day, she’d amass a small fortune by the end of the summer. And if she was able to keep the job through the end of next summer? She should have enough money saved to start college that September.

And two, Erik’s threat was real. She could tell by the crazy glint in his eyes. If she didn’t show up at the Pamlico House at eight o’clock tonight as promised, she had no doubt he’d arrive at Corey bright and early on Monday morning, as soon as the post office opened for business. And the last thing she needed was the rumor mill—which already had a false story about her and Brodie for fodder—to explode with the news that Laire Cornish was dating a dingbatter. No, thank you.

Her father wouldn’t be home until late afternoon, which left most of the day for her to figure out the best possible argument for her cause. She emptied her father’s ashtray beside the reclining chair and put his two empty beer bottles in the recycling bin. She made a chicken and rice casserole for his dinner, then scrubbed the kitchen floor, sink, and countertops until the old Formica gleamed. With vinegar and newspaper, she shined the kitchen and oven windows, the same way her mother had done so many years before.

“You got coffee on?” asked a sleepy Kyrstin, shuffling into the small kitchen around eleven and taking a seat at the four-person table by the newly cleaned window. Their mother had made the cheerful oilcloth curtains when her daughters were little, and though they were discolored with age, none of the Cornish girls had the heart to replace them.

“Three hours ago, yes. Now, no.” Laire glanced at her watch. “It’s almost noon!”

“Make me a cup?”

“Make your own.”

“My head throbs like the devil,” said her sister. “What time did I get in last night?”

“Heard you banging around at about two.”

“Remy and his brother made a bonfire on the beach,” said Kyrstin. “You could’ve joined us, Laire.”

“Was Brodie there?”

“Course.”

“Then it’s good I wasn’t.”

“Maddie Dunlop was all over him like a cheap shirt.”

“Maddie Dunlop is more than welcome to him. He isn’t mine.”

“You say that like you don’t love him!” teased Kyrstin. Laughing to herself for a moment, she sobered when she looked up and caught the expression on her younger sister’s face. “Okay. Okay. Make me a cup of coffee and I’ll quit teasin’.”

Part of her wanted to tell Kyrstin to go to hell, but she needed her sister’s opinion, and possibly her help. It wasn’t the time to pick a fight or be petty.

Laire turned to the counter and slid the coffeemaker out from the wall. She opened the cabinet, took out the grounds, filled the once-white plastic basket, then filled the well with water and pressed the on switch, pivoting back around to face her sister.

“I need something.”

Kyrstin looked up and narrowed her eyes, pushing a rat’s nest of hair from her face. “Is that right?”

Laire nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“What is it?”

She sat down at the table, folding her hands next to a butter dish shaped like a crab shell. “What do you think Daddy would say about me getting a job?”

“You have jobs,” said Kyrstin. “You take care of the house and help out at the shop. Plus, you make pin money with your designs.”

“I mean a steady job,” clarified Laire. “A real job.”

“Like at the Hen’s Nest? I heard they’re hirin’.”

The Hen’s Nest was the local day care for island children that was especially busy in the summer, when islanders took on seasonal work.

“No. I mean . . .” She winced. There was no good way to back into it. “In Buxton. At the Pamlico House B & B.”

Kyrstin raised her eyebrows, sitting back in her chair. “Off-island?”

Laire nodded, standing up to grab a clean coffee cup from the drying rack beside the sink, keeping her back to her older sister. “Yeah. You know that delivery last night? Met a lady there who does the hiring for the restaurant at the B and B. She offered me a job.”

“Just like that?”

Laire poured the coffee into the cup real quick, listening as the coffee pitter-pattered into the ceramic bottom. “Aye-up.”

Kyrstin eyed her sister with suspicion. “You trust her?”

“She’s a woodser from Cherry Point.”

“Hmm,” she hummed, her posture relaxing. “How much she offerin’?”

“Ten an hour.”

“Damn.” Kyrstin whistled low, nodding her head in understanding. “That’s a lot.”

Laire turned to her sister, setting the mug of steaming coffee on the table before her. “Tell me about it.”

Krystin looked at her thoughtfully. “How much you remember ’bout Mama goin’ for the college courses down at Carteret?”

“Not a whole lot,” admitted Laire, who, nonetheless, desperately admired her mother for being one of the few islanders at the time with a partial college education under her belt.

“Yeah, you were real little. But I remember. She fought daddy tooth and nail over it.”

Laire nodded. She wasn’t surprised.

Carteret was a three-hour journey from Corey Island, first by ferry to Cedar Island, then via highway along the fringe of the mainland. She couldn’t imagine her daddy was a big fan of his wife being away all day, first of all, let alone traveling such a long distance back and forth all on her own with three small children at home.

“But she still went, didn’t she?” asked Laire. “For two years?”

Kyrstin nodded. “She did. And if you want my honest opinion? Uncle Fox took a lot of her advice when he and daddy set up King Triton Seafood. She knew a lot about the summer tourists, settin’ the prices, gettin’ the word out to the hotels and restaurants all along the Banks. She was a smart lady, our mama.”

“I remember she was smart,” said Laire wistfully, aching from how much she missed her mother.

“What do you need that kind of money for, Laire?”

“You can’t tell Daddy.”

Kyrstin gave her a look. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”

Laire rolled her eyes. Kyrstin talked big, but she wouldn’t tell if Laire asked her not to. “I want to go to college like Mama. I want to learn something.”

“Yeah. But I’ve seen the brochures, Laire,” said Kyrstin, crossing her arms over her chest, her eyes disapproving. “You’re not lookin’ at Carteret or Beaufort or even some fancy four-year college like UNC. You want to go up North.”

Laire sighed deeply, nodding at her sister. “Is that so wrong?”

Kyrstin shrugged, her voice hopeful. “Brodie’s real nice. You’ve both graduated now. He’d help set you up with a nice little boutique—maybe even over on Ocracoke, by the ferry, where they’ve got more and more tourists comin’ in every summer. You could sell your fashions. He and his daddy make a damn good livin’. You could have a few kids. Live nearby . . .”

Her words were crushing Laire’s soul, and Kyrstin must have known it because her voice tapered off.

“No,” she said, sipping her coffee thoughtfully. “I guess not. You were always more like Mama than the rest of us.”

“Kyrstin,” she said, reaching out to lay her palm across her sister’s arm. “I love Corey Island. I love you and Issy and Daddy. But I . . . I can’t stay here forever. I want to see more. I want to know more. There’s a huge world out there, and I want to be a part of it.” She looked down at her freckled hand on Kyrstin’s freckled arm. So alike, it was hard to tell where her sister’s skin ended and hers began. “I’ll always be your sister. But . . . I feel like this is my chance. The first stepping-stone toward my dream. And since you work at a café on Ocracoke, I thought maybe . . .”

“I might put in a good word?”

Laire nodded, trying for a hopeful smile. “If we talked to him together. Maybe we could explain that my working in Buxton isn’t so very different than you working in Ocracoke. Just a summer job for extra money.”

“Buxton ain’t Ocracoke, Laire, and you know it,” Kyrstin reminded her dryly.

“Please,” said Laire softly.

As she watched her sister’s face soften, she thought of Erik Rexford, and her heart pinched with guilt. When Kyrstin helped her sway their father this afternoon, she’d also be unknowingly complicit in helping Laire make her date with the governor’s son—a fact that would have affected Kyrstin’s willingness to help. A job was one thing. Dating a dingbatter was another, and there’s no way on God’s green earth that Kyrstin, who was happy on Corey, would approve.

“I’ll do it,” said Kyrstin, surprising Laire with her quick and sudden alliance, “on one condition.”

Laire held her breath. Here it comes . . .

“You make me somethin’ supersexy for my weddin’ night.”

Throwing her arms around her older sister, Laire promised to make something so dirty, it would bring Remiel Poisson to his knees.

***

Too bright.

The sun was way too bright.

Erik groaned and flipped onto his stomach, staring down at the concrete pool deck though the plastic slats of the lounger and wishing his head would stop pounding.

“Anyone have an Advil?” he muttered.

Hillary laughed from two chairs down. “Poor Erik.”

“Don’t joke,” said Vanessa from beside him. A soft, warm hand landed on his back, rubbing soothingly, and he knew it was hers. It was the type of thing she was always doing—rubbing his back or holding on to his arm. Van was super touchy-feely and always had been. It didn’t mean anything. Besides, it felt nice. “Birthday boy here drank his weight in Champagne! I’m not surprised if his poor head is achin’ a little.”

Pete, who lounged on Erik’s other side, asked, “Where’s my sympathy, Van? My head’s achin’ too!”

“Are you the birthday boy, Peter Donaldson? No, I didn’t think so. You’ll just have to fend.”

“Damn!” exclaimed Pete, chuckling ruefully. “Cold woman!”

“You need someone to rub your back?” Hillary asked Pete, her tone trying for kidding but sounding too hopeful to stick the landing.

“Why? You offerin’? Ha-ha. No, thanks, Hills,” said Pete, still laughing. “I think I’ll go sit in the hot tub a spell and warm up from the chill over here.”

“By all means,” said Vanessa, her fingers still sliding up and down Erik’s back. “Go sit in your own warm filth.”

“Ha! Like Fancy Rexford would allow any filth at Utopia Manor.”

“She allows you,” said Vanessa under her breath.

“I heard that, Van,” said Pete. “But, honey, we both know the Donaldsons have been in North Carolina longer than the Osborns, so you can stuff it.”

“Stuff it,” muttered Vanessa in a cultured Southern accent. “Such a gentleman. You are crude, Peter Donaldson.”

“Aw, Van, you can kiss my crude . . .”

The word ass was swallowed by the splash of a body entering the hot tub.

“He’s so antagonistic,” said Van with a humph, her fingers massaging the kinks in Erik’s lower back.

Erik, Pete, and Vanessa had met in preschool at Saint Paul’s Lutheran in Raleigh, attended the Branchbrook Academy for lower school, and completed middle and upper school together at the Asheville Christian School, a boarding school that had educated at least one of the parents of each. They’d essentially known one another from the cradle: Three Musketeers who’d historically had each other’s backs while bickering like siblings.

But over the past three years, since they’d headed off to college, their relationships with one another had changed a little, becoming more nuanced and complicated. First of all, for the first time in their lives, they lived apart. Erik attended undergrad at Duke, while Vanessa was at Wake Forest, and Pete was at UNC–Chapel Hill. They still saw each other during holiday breaks and spent time together on the Outer Banks every summer, but something indefinable had changed between them.

Vanessa, who’d always been a pretty, blue-eyed brunette, had blossomed into a beauty. She had phenomenal tits and a rounded ass, but was also slim and tall, willowy and elegant.

Pete, who was blond, blue-eyed, and as burly as a linebacker, still argued with Vanessa every chance he got, but the way he looked at her had changed, and even Erik had noticed. Pete had always had a soft spot for Van growing up, but that soft spot had changed into something bigger and more possessive in the past year or two.

Erik had noticed that Van had filled out, of course, but his feelings for her had never deepened from friendship. He still saw her as a pseudo-sister. A really pretty sister, yeah, but still . . . a sister. He had zero sexual attraction to her. She was just . . . Van, his lifelong friend.

“You need an Advil, honey?” asked Van, close to his ear. “I can go grab you one.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not a bit,” she said, caressing his back a final time. “I’ll be back in a jiff.”

He sighed, wondering what time it was and assuming it was around twelve. Fuck, but today was crawling by when all he wanted was for eight o’clock to get here sooner so he could clap eyes on the little mermaid again and confirm that she was as cute in person as she’d been in his dreams last night.

The sound of rustling interrupted his pleasant thoughts, and suddenly Hillary’s voice was close to his ear. “You’re leadin’ her on, Erik.”

“Who?” The little mermaid?

“Van. That’s who.”

He leaned up on one elbow, squinting to look up at his little sister’s face. Hillary was sitting on the edge of Pete’s abandoned lounger, a black floppy hat shielding her pale skin from the sun as she stared down at him with pursed lips.

“Never in a million,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Van and me aren’t like that.”

“My butt. Even if you’re not, she is.” She put her sunglasses back on and swung her feet, up, leaning back with a sigh. “You’re in hot water, and you don’t even feel the burn.”

Erik shook his head, which made it ache all the more, souring his precarious mood. “We’ve been friends forever, Hills. You’re makin’ up a situation where none exists.” He decided to hit her a little below the belt in an effort to get her to shut up. “Like you did on New Year’s, actin’ like some li’l ole kiss with Pete meant somethin’ more than it did.”

She gasped lightly beside him, then hid it by clearing her throat. “Low blow.”

He loved his sister and heard the pain in her voice, which made him feel instant remorse. “Sorry, sis. I’m an asshole.”

“And a dumbass if you don’t see what’s right under your nose.”

He settled himself back into the chair with a grunt of satisfaction, letting his forehead drop back onto the warm vinyl. “Why can’t you just let us be friends? Why does it have to be more?”

“Because it is more. To her. And you know it.”

“Even if that’s so—and I’m not sayin’ it is—it’s not my fault that I don’t feel the same. We can’t always get what we want, no matter how hard we want it.” His voice was gentle when he added. “You know that better’n anyone.”

“I guess I do,” she said, all the sass gone from her tone now. “But I also know exactly how she’s thinkin’, Erik. I can see it all over her face. She’s thinkin’, If I just hang in there, one day, he’ll see me. And he’ll know what I’ve known all along: that we’re meant to be.”

The wistfulness in her voice made him cringe.

Hillary was talking about Pete when it was clear as day that Pete wasn’t interested in Hillary. Never had been. Pete wanted Van. And Erik respected that. Hell, in his mind, Van was Pete’s girl, whether she wanted to be or not.

Fuck, but this situation was all screwed up. How were they supposed to get through the whole summer together with Hills liking Pete, Pete liking Van, Van liking him, and him liking . . .

His thoughts of a strawberry-haired beauty were cut off by the sound of the slider opening and closing again.

“I only had Tylenol,” Vanessa called, her sandals thwacking on the pool deck. “Will that do?”

He leaned up to find her approaching with a red and white bottle in one hand and a glass of ice water in the other.

“You’re an angel of mercy,” he called.

Her eyes, deep blue and wide, softened instantly as she approached, and Erik looked away fast, Hillary’s warning fresh in his head.

“Told you,” his sister muttered under her breath from beside him, watching their interaction over the rims of her sunglasses.

Erik swung his body around and sat up on the edge of the chair as Vanessa sidled over. She gave him the glass and two tablets, which he swallowed quickly.

“Thanks, honey,” he said, blinking up at her.

“Anythin’ for you. You know that,” she answered, her tone heavy with unspoken meaning. Suddenly she smiled sweetly, reaching down beside her lounger for a bottle of sunscreen. “Get my back?”

He looked at the bottle, then up at Van.

“Pete!” he yelled, still holding her eyes so that his meaning was as clear as could be. “Can you give Van a hand with some suntan lotion? I think I’ll go inside and catch some zzz’s.”

Vanessa flinched, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment, but she plastered a smile on her frosty face as Pete leaped eagerly out of the hot tub and rounded the pool deck to be of service.

“Sure thing,” he said, reaching for the bottle with his beefy linebacker fingers as soon as he reached the chairs.

“I’ll catch y’all later, huh?” said Erik, standing up and heading for the house.

“Erik!”

He turned back to face Vanessa, who looked at him longingly.

“We’re all goin’ out together tonight, right?” she asked, sitting primly on the edge of the lounger as Pete squeezed some cream on his palms.

Erik shook his head as a sudden image of Laire Cornish made him feel the same sharp longing he saw in Vanessa’s eyes. Hillary was right. This situation was stickier than he’d noticed before today. Maybe he should stop hanging out with Van so much . . . and tonight was the perfect time to start.

“Sorry, honey,” he said gently. “Y’all are on your own. I’ve got plans.”

Vanessa’s face fell as Pete suggested they go to a movie together, and Hillary, who may or may not have been intentionally included in his invitation, enthusiastically agreed.