In mid-June, the sun didn’t set over the Pamlico Sound until almost 8:30pm, which meant that Laire had a beautiful, golden ride to Buxton that evening.

There are moments, she mused as the wind swept her hair back and the spray of salt water landed on her skin, when the whole world feels perfect. And right now, right here—zooming north toward Buxton, where she was about to accept a lucrative summer job and meet up with a young man who made her heart quiver like Jell-O—she was determined to savor such a moment.

Not that her conversation with her father had been chocolates and cherries.

When she’d first asked to use his boat, he told her yes, and for a moment, she almost thought she’d get away with borrowing it without accounting for her destination. But then, as he popped open a beer and sat down in his chair, he casually asked where she was planning to go.

She shot a worried look at Kyrstin, who had sat down on the footrest by their father and reminded him of his initial objections to her working on Ocracoke. He listened, nodding his head, before turning his eyes and asking Laire if she wanted to work with her sister over at the Ocracoke Bistro.

“What if I did?” asked Laire.

“Can’t say I’d love it, with all them tourists playing grabass with the local girls, but you’d have your big sister here to look out for you, and Bernard Mathers has been a fair boss to Kyrs. I guess . . .” He rubbed the scruff on his chin. “I don’t love it to pieces, Laire, but if you want to make a little extra money this summer, I won’t stand in your way.”

He took a long sip of beer. “But come think of it, why d’ya need the Stingray? Can’t you get a ride over to Ocracoke with Kyrs and Remy?”

About to tell her father that she had no intention of working on Ocracoke, Kyrstin interrupted her. “The problem is that Bernie needs Laire on the six-to-midnight shift. And my hours is switchin’ to eight to two.”

“Huh. Why’s that?”

“Well, I was sort of offered a promotion,” said Kyrstin, her attention fixed totally on her father.

Laire nudged her sister in the back with her knee. What are you doing? What about Buxton?

Kyrstin leaned forward, ignoring Laire. “I’m goin’ to do some bartendin’, and Laire’s goin’ to take over my shift.”

Their father’s eyes widened, and he set his beer down on the table. “Bartendin’?”

Kyrstin nodded. “Pays better, Daddy. Way more tips.”

“Slingin’ drinks?”

Laire finally understood what was happening here and why Kyrstin had been so quick to “help” Laire: she had her own agenda. She needed an excuse to take a different position at the Ocracoke Bistro, and Laire getting a job there was a good reason.

“Don’t like the thought of one of my gals behind a bar.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Kyrstin asked defensively.

“Seems base.”

“You’re old-fashioned. My tips’ll be double.”

Their father shook his head, looking troubled. “Nothin’ wrong with bein’ old-fashioned, gal. You think this is a good example for your little sister?”

“Hard work and honest money?” said Kyrstin, raising her chin. “Yes, sir, I believe it is a good example.”

“All this talk about money. You need money? Seems like Remy is doin’ fine. Thought maybe you’d quit waitressin’ when you settled down, not work more hours.”

Kyrstin placed her hand on her father’s knee. “Daddy? You know the old Carver house?’

The Carver house was a centuries-old mansion close to the harbor on Corey Island. It had been a sea captain’s house in the 1800s, then an inn, then a restaurant, but for a good fifteen years, it had been uninhabited, battered by the elements, and given only minimal care by a local real estate office.

“Course,” said their father, wrinkling his eyebrows. “What of it?”

“We’re buyin’ it,” said Kyrstin. “Me and Remy. We’re goin’ to renovate it and reopen it as a bed-and-breakfast.”

“A what?”

“An inn.”

“For who? Ain’t nobody on Corey need an inn.”

“For tourists, Daddy.”

“Tourists on Corey?” he humphed. “Leave that to the Ocracoke folks. Don’t need tourists here.”

“It’s what me and Remy want. Our own business.”

And that was the moment Laire knew that she couldn’t say another word and would need to be a complicit vehicle in her sister’s small deception. They all had dreams, it seemed, and this one belonged to Kyrstin. Laire would do whatever she had to do to ensure it came true for her.

Her father’s eyes shifted to her. “What do you think of all this?”

“I really want the waitressin’ job,” said Laire.

“I mean, about the Carver house.”

“Château le Poisson,” said Kyrstin quietly, her cheeks coloring. “Means Fish House . . . in French.”

“Ch-Château le Poisson.” Laire nodded. “It’s a fine idea, Daddy. ’Bout time we had an inn on Corey. Ocracoke’s got at least six or seven now.” She added quietly, mostly for Kyrstin’s benefit, “And I think it’d make Mama real proud.”

Kyrstin snapped her head around to look at her little sister, mouthing “thank you” as she swiped at her eyes.

Hook Cornish knew defeat when it sat green-eyed in front of him.

“Fine. You make some extra change for your Fish House,” he said to Kyrstin. Turning to Laire, he added, “Want that I have a word with Mathers before you start? Ask him to keep an eye on you?”

“No!” cried Laire.

“No,” said Kyrstin, a little more smoothly. “I’ll do that, Daddy. And besides, I’ll be there to look out for her. She’ll be just fine.”

“Well, then,” he sighed, looking up at Laire in defeat. “I guess you can use the Stingray. Keep it gassed up, Laire. And if I need it from time to time, you be sure to hitch a ride with your sister and Remy, yeah?”

Laire nodded. “Course, Daddy.”

“Now leave me be a while, girls,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning back into his chair. “I’m mommucked.”

Laire confronted her sister later, in their shared room, while she changed into an outfit for her secret date.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “About the bartending, and the Carver house, and . . . and all of it?”

“The house was a secret. And I only got the idea about bartendin’ this mornin’, after I talked to you. Bernie’s been grousin’ about Monica quittin’. I called him and offered to take over the bar. He said yes, and with the extra money, Remy and I decided we could finally place a bid on the Carver property.”

“Is that really what you want to do? Open an inn?”

Kyrstin nodded. “You know it was always Mama’s dream, right? I read it in one of her school workbooks.” Her smile was wistful as she shrugged. “You ain’t the only one with dreams, Laire.”

“Mama’s dream was to open an inn?”

Kyrstin nodded. “She outlined the whole plan: buy the Carver house, renovate it, add a restaurant. It was all there. I showed it to Remy, and he just about fell over—he was just as excited as me. We can do it, Laire. We can make Mama’s dream happen.” She grinned. “And you just helped us. A lot.”

Kyrstin kissed Laire on the cheek and ran to tell Remy the good news.

And Laire took such satisfaction in helping her sister, and, by proxy, her mother, that it assuaged all of her immediate guilt about lying to her father.

But now, as she zoomed toward Buxton, she had misgivings.

What if her father showed up at the Ocracoke Bistro to check on her? What if Bernie Mathers showed up at King Triton to place a special order and her father happened to be there? Surely he’d ask how his daughters were getting on. She sighed. This wasn’t the sort of lie that could remain out there forever. She and Kyrstin would have to find a way to wiggle out of it.

But not yet.

For now, her sister should have the right to follow her dream, Laire could take the job at the Pamlico House, and someday soon, they’d come clean.

She smiled into the wind, letting herself be excited for Kyrstin—and for herself. We’re making our dreams come true! It felt so good . . . and somehow it mitigated her nerves over seeing Erik Rexford again tonight.

With all the jockeying it had taken to make tonight happen, she hadn’t been able to keep Erik Rexford in the forefront of her mind, but now? Knowing she’d see him again so soon? Her heart started fluttering, and she wondered—for the thousandth time—what a boy like him wanted with a girl like her. She couldn’t answer that question to save her life, nor could she refuse herself the opportunity to find out.

Keeping herself off-limits to the island boys had given Laire a reputation for being cold and uptight, but that was just a persona that she employed to ensure her name was never tangled up with someone else’s. Inside, she was just as hot and curious as any other teenage girl who got quivers below her belly when she walked in on Kyrstin and Remy making out half naked, or saw a movie where a boy and girl fell madly in love and moved against each other, skin to skin, moaning and writhing with need and passion.

Like the parents of three other girls in her class, her father had pulled her out of school on the one day in sixth grade that they taught sex ed, instead asking Isolde to have a word with Laire “at some point.” But even though Isolde, a senior in high school at the time, had been dating Paul for years, she’d colored as red as an apple and never broached the subject with her little sister. There’d been no official talk. Whatever information Laire had about boys and sex had come from her sisters talking about their boyfriends and whatever she could glean from TV shows and movies. In short, she knew the facts about the facts of life, but she figured that was a hell of a lot different from firsthand experience.

For the first time in her life, she wanted that experience. Last night, she’d dreamed that she was in one of those movie sex scenes with Erik Rexford, skin to skin, with his body moving over hers, creating an ache deep inside her that had lingered all day and told her something very important: she wanted Erik Rexford to smile at her, to touch her, maybe even—in her wildest dreams only, of course—to do the things that Brodie Walsh had bragged about them doing. But most of all . . .

. . . she wanted him to kiss her.

She just wasn’t totally sure how to go about making that happen.

By off-island standards, Laire knew, she was woefully inexperienced, but up until this moment, that hadn’t been an issue, because she had no interest in any of the boys she’d grown up with. Now she bit her bottom lip, wishing she knew more or had a little more experience. For a moment, she remembered Erik Rexford staring at her mouth with such raw hunger, it had set her entire body on fire. Did that mean he wanted to kiss her too? It had to mean something, right?

She released her lip with a determined pop.

No matter what else happened tonight, Laire wanted her first kiss, and she wanted it from Erik Rexford, the closest she would ever come to her own Prince Charming. And then, no matter what else happened in her life, she’d have the memory of Erik’s kiss. She’d know, for the remainder of her days, how it felt to be wanted by someone like him.

Ignoring the swarm of butterflies invading her belly, she pushed down on the throttle and raced the rest of the way to Buxton.

Tilting her wrist to check the time as she tied up at the Pamlico House, Laire found that it was seven forty, and she quickly changed into the cream suede mules she’d bought brand-new for Kyrstin’s wedding. They were the best shoes she had, but she’d have to be careful not to scuff them, or her sister would surely complain.

They were so new and pretty, wearing them gave her the little boost of confidence she desperately needed. She wore them with cream-colored skinny jeans and a silk blouse. The blouse was the piece she was most proud of. She had shamelessly copied it from a design by Foundrae. It was a deep-plum, layered-silk, fringed tank top that showed off her collarbone and the slight swells of her breasts to perfection. It was, by far, the most sophisticated piece she owned, made even more so by the crepey peekaboo silk that showed the faint outline of her belly button just over the low-slung light denim on her hips. 

She’d washed her hair after her talk with Kyrstin in the kitchen, blow-dried it, then twisted it carefully into a bun for some curl. As she walked up the dock to the Pamlico House, she took out the pins that held it and shook out her pinkish-orange locks, feeling the soft curls bounce around her shoulders before settling.

At the top of the gangplank, she found a sidewalk, but she came to an abrupt stop, her mules still on the concrete. She stared up at the beautiful inn and took a deep breath, having a moment of panic about the job and Ms. Sebastian . . . and Erik Rexford. Suddenly it all felt like too much for sheltered li’l Laire, who barely knew anything about the world beyond Corey Island. Was she crazy for taking this job? For meeting this man? Who did she think she—

“I worried you might not come.”

Turning to her left, she gasped as a smile exploded across her face.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly, putting one of her hands in her back pocket and running the other though her hair.

“Hi,” he said, laughing softly as his smile grew quickly to match hers. “I have a confession. I’ve been here since six.”

“Six? But I said—”

“I know,” he said, reaching for her free hand and lacing his fingers through hers without permission. “You said eight. I guess I just . . .” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to miss you.”

Holding his hand was scrambling her brain and making all the air in her lungs slip through her lips until she was light-headed and had to remind herself to breathe.

“I’m here now,” she said, her voice soft and thin.

He took a step closer to her, so close that his chest brushed into hers with every deep breath he took. His dark eyes seized and held hers.

“I can’t stop thinkin’ about you. I couldn’t wait to see you again,” he said.

His glance slid to her lips as it had last night, and she heard the words in her head:A first kiss. You want him to be your first, don’t you?

Laire tilted her head back to look up into his face, which was backlit with the pink, gold, and lavender swirls of the dying sun, and her heart filled with so much tenderness, there was no way for one organ to hold it all. It spilled over into her chest, and she breathed it in, keeping her face upturned, reluctant to miss even a moment with him.

Her heart raced with awareness—of herself, of him, of being alone with him, away from her island.

Go ahead. Kiss him. Kiss the boy.

“Laire . . .,” he whispered, his breath falling softly on her lips as she leaned up on tiptoe and pressed her virgin mouth to his. 

His fingers untwined from hers, and he wound both arms around her waist, pulling her close, until her chest was pressed flush against his, the buttons of his crisp gingham dress shirt pushing into the thin silk of her tank top.

The hand she’d hidden in her back pocket slid free, tracing the warm, hard skin of his forearm to his elbow, over the folds of his rolled cuff to the starched cotton of his bicep, which flexed beneath her fingers. His lips were brushing hers gently, almost tentatively, and for a moment she panicked, wondering if he was just being nice, if maybe the way he’d looked at her mouth hadn’t signaled interest after all.

But when her fingertips, which slipped soundlessly over the ridge of his shoulder, came into contact with the bare skin of his throat, the kiss changed. Stepping closer to her, his knee parted her legs, and she leaned forward, into him, cupping the back of his neck with her palm and holding on tight as his tongue swept the seam of her lips. They parted for him, inviting him inside.

He groaned, his hot length of tongue sliding erotically over hers as he held her tighter. Her free hand slid up the other side of his throat, her fingers lacing and locking behind his neck to keep his face close to hers, his lips affixed to hers, his body flush and hot and close.

Timidly, she touched the tip of her tongue to the soft, wet, ridged side of his, and she flinched with the intense clench-and-release in her pelvis, the sudden warmth that flooded her white cotton panties as Eric pushed his thigh between her legs. As he supported her against him with strong arms around her back, Laire lost herself in the sensation of their tongues tangling and dancing, teasing each other with hot touches and languorous slides.

More. More. More, please, she thought. More for now, and for later, and for the years that I waited, and for the years up ahead, when we won’t know each other anymore. More.

His chest pushed into hers violently as his fingers curled into fists against her lower back, the knuckles kneading the silk that separated his skin from hers. Her nipples, beaded into sensitive points, met a wall of elegant muscle behind his shirt. The rosy nubs were exquisitely tight under her cotton bra, aching with a yearning she’d never experienced and had no clue how to make better—only instinctively certain that kissing Erik was the key to her relief.

“Laire, Laire, Laire. Baby, we’re in public,” he whispered against her lips before thrusting his tongue back into her mouth again, as helpless as she to cool the heat between them.

She whimpered, slipping her hands from his neck to his cheeks and tilting his head for a better angle, sighing with pleasure when his mouth sealed over hers, invading once again with a hungry growl.

The hands on her lower back slipped under her blouse, his palms flattening on the skin of her back, and pushing her pelvis flush against his, where a long, rock-hard ridge of muscle throbbed against the apex of her thighs.

And it felt so good . . . so good . . . so, so, so . . .

W-wait!

Her eyes widened, and her tongue, which was sliding against his, stilled.

Oh, God. That’s his . . .

Her lips went slack, and the hands clutching his face loosened their hold.

It means he wants to . . .

“Laire? You okay?”

These words were soft and sweet near her ear, the shell of which he licked, sending a thrill straight to her groin and making her sigh with desperation as she forced her eyes open.

“I, um . . . I don’t want to . . .”

He nibbled the skin of her neck, and his voice sounded a little drunk. “Don’t want to . . . what?”

She leaned back just enough to break contact, to make him raise his head so she could see his eyes, which appeared to be black, the dark brown irises obliterated by the wideness of his pupils.

“You want to have sex with me,” she stated bluntly, staring into his eyes.

His lips parted in surprise, and he blinked at her, taking a deep breath that made his chest push against hers again.

“What are you . . .” His eyebrows furrowed. “I mean . . .”

“I can feel it,” she said curtly. “I know you want to. Don’t deny it.”

“I don’t . . .” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I wasn’t tryin’ to—”

“We’re not having sex,” she said adamantly. His arms loosened a little, and she stepped away from him, ending their intimate groin-to-groin contact.

“I didn’t think we were.” His words were said slowly and carefully, speaking the way you would to a startled or frightened child.

“You sure about that?” Giving his waist a meaningful glance before looking back up at his face, she added, “Because part of you seems to think we are.”

He stared at her like he was trying very hard to figure out something important and stay calm while he did so. “Yes, I’m sure I’m not tryin’ to have sex with you. We were just kissin’.”

She raised her chin. No, she wasn’t the most experienced person on the planet, but she knew full well they were doing a lot more than “just” kissing because she’d felt his . . . his thing pushing against her, and, unlike Kyrstin, she wasn’t on birth control. Not to mention, she wasn’t the kind of girl who did more than kiss. Once you moved on from kissing, things got serious fast. She knew that for a fact, and it made her heart race with panic.

“I’m not getting married and . . . and making babies!” she blurted out. “I’m too young!”

“Whoa! What?” he said, releasing her to raise his palms defensively. He took a step back, staring at her in shock. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“I have plans for my life!” she said, covering her chest with crossed arms as she stared up at him.

“Well, hell.” Looking utterly baffled, Erik wiped his lips, then put his hands on his hips. “Me too!”