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“Wait.” She caught my hand as I started for the bridge. “Whatare you going to do?”

“Warn Will that he needs to look out for Garrett.” At Bernadette’s bug-eyed expression, I elaborated. “Don’t you think at least one member of the festival board should know the truth about him?”

“The truth about what?”

“What you heard about him at Novel Con. The guy’s sitting there serenading Will’s sister—histeenagedsister.”

“He’s playing theukulele, Jo. You yourself said that a guy playing the ukulele wouldn’t have impressed you when you were their age.”

“Yeah, if he’d been anordinaryguy. But Garrett’s a bestselling author. That definitely would have impressed me enough that I’d have overlooked the ukulele thing. Did you or did you not tell me that there were rumors flying around about a bestselling author hitting on all the girls at last year’s Novel Con?”

“I did. But I also said I didn’t have any proof of who it was.”

I nodded at Garrett, who’d finished up his song about Spanish ladies and launched into something even worse, a ukulele version of a reggae tune. “I think it’s pretty obviouswho it was. And if Chloe were my little sister, I’d want to know.”

“Oh, God.” Bernadette rolled her eyes. “Fine, okay, go. But don’t blame me if your plan backfires.”

“Backfires how? What do you think Will might do? Throw Garrett overboard?” This would actually make the cutest illustration for a Kitty Katz bookever. I could just see Raul Wolf tossing Rex Canine over the railing of the town ferry, into the Bay of Dogsville.

“Oh my God.” Bernadette’s voice, sounding incredulous, broke into my fantasy. “I know what you’re doing. You’re going to put all of this into a book, aren’t you?”

“What?” I looked away in case she somehow glimpsed the truth through the mirrored lenses of my sunglasses. “No! Of course not.”

“Yes, you are.” Bernadette shook her head in disbelief. “I know you. This is all going intoKitty Katz number twenty-seven.”

“Oh, please!” Too late. She’d seen right through me. “You reallyhavehad too much rosé.”

“If you break up Kitty and Rex,” Bernadette called after me, “your fans will hate you. You’re going to be the scourge of Goodreads!”

Worth it,I thought, but didn’t say out loud.

The Momentby Will Price

She was half asleep. I kissed both of her eyelids. “I have to tell you something.”

The eyelids rose. She smiled. “Tell me what?”

I leaned up on one elbow and swept some of her hair from her face. “The truth. I have to tell you the truth”

Melanie sat up. Her hair fell forward, over her full, round breasts. Her eyes were like twin blue ponds, fathoms deep. “There’s nothing you can say to me, Johnny, that will change the way I feel about you.”

What could I do after that but make love to her all over again?

Chapter Seventeen

The wind began to die a little as I wound my way up the steps to the bridge. It was too bad Frannie feared the ocean so much that she had forced Saul to go to the conch chowder lunch instead of joining us onThe Moment. She was really missing out on a delightful day on the water. And also on what was about to happen.

“So when you see a pair of channel markers,” Will was saying to Jerome as I joined them in the cockpit, “you steer the boat between them. Except when you’re returning to dock, then you steer the boat right of the red ones—red, right, return.”

Jerome gazed in the direction Will was pointing, looking more relaxed than I’d seen him in ages. Possibly this was because he was on a luxury yacht with a beer in his hand, but you never knew. “Sure, sure. I will definitely need this information at a future point in my life.”

Will grinned. “Well, you probably don’t get many channel markers in Iowa.”

“I wouldn’t know. I sawJawsas a kid and vowed never to go near the ocean again. This is my first exception since.”

Will laughed—the most genuine laugh I’d ever heard from him. It was easy to see he felt more comfortable out on the water than he did on land—more comfortable and maybe more himself.

“No great whites here. The water’s only a few feet deep in most places. We could practically walk back to Little Bridge, if we wanted. How are you, Jo?”