Page 109 of The High Tide Club
“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “You don’t like to dance?”
“I love to dance. And so did he, but it was so damn embarrassing, dancing with your father, who was trying to be all hip and happening. I’ll never forget the night he tried to do the Macarena. The memory is permanently seared onto my brainpan.”
Gabe winced. “If I promise not to try to break out any new dance moves, would you consider coming to dinner with me Saturday night?”
“At the Cloister? But that’s like an hour away.”
“You could stay over,” Gabe said. “Not at my place. I mean, you could stay at my place. There’s room, and I swear I wouldn’t hit on you. But what I meant was I’d book you a room at the hotel. And I’d bring you home first thing in the morning.”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’d have to see if Farrah is available to stay over. It’s a lot. And you saw how clingy Henry can be. Don’t get me wrong, it sounds like fun, but…”
“Just think about it, okay?”
“I will. Now I’d better get home, or Farrah will have the state patrol out looking for me.”
The ride home took only five minutes. When Gabe pulled into the driveway, they saw a quick flick of the front window curtains.
“Told ya,” Brooke said. “She’s very protective of me.”
“Hmm,” Gabe said.
“But she totally approved of this car. Whatever happened to the Mercedes?”
“I still have it. The Porsche was a complete surprise. Turns out, Sunny bought it without ever saying a word to me. I found it covered by a tarp in the garage at the house at Sea Island the first time I came down after she died.”
“A Porsche 911? She just bought it on a whim?”
He shrugged. “More like on a toot. I’ll sell it eventually, when I sell the house, but for tonight, I thought maybe I’d impress a girl with it.”
“You totally did,” Brooke said.
And before she could say anything else, he leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips. “Don’t tell the babysitter,” he whispered.
46
“Brooke?” There was more than a note of panic in Louette’s voice.
It was Wednesday morning. She’d just walked into her office and hadn’t even had time to fire up the coffee maker or laptop before her cell phone rang.
“What’s wrong?” Brooke asked.
“Those cousins of Josephine’s, Dorcas and Delphine, they’re here! They just come riding up here in a Jeep with some man from the state park. I let ’em in, ’cause I didn’t know what else to do, but now they’re walking around, talking like they own the place. I think you’d better come quick.”
“How the hell did they even find out Josephine is dead?”
“They said there was a big piece in the newspapers yesterday. They already called a lawyer, and he told them they’re fixin’ to inherit this whole island, including the house.”
“What newspaper?” Brooke walked around the office, looking for her copy of the local paper, a weekly that was published on Wednesdays.
“I don’t know. Maybe the Savannah paper? Or Atlanta? We don’t get a paper over here. Shug reads the sports page online.”
“I’ll head over there right now. Can you have C. D. pick me up at the city dock?”
“We ain’t seen C. D. in a couple of days. I’ll send Shug over. He’s off work today.”
“Okay, see you soon. And try not to worry, Louette.”
Brooke flipped her laptop open and did a quick Google search on Josephine’s name. The first citation was an article from the previous day’s edition ofThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
