I didn’t dare glance behind me to see whether Grayson was a witness to this.
“In the flesh,” I told Alec dryly.
He got the joke, I guessed, and he laughed.
She skittered over to the driver’s side in her high heels and knocked on Alec’s window until he opened it. “Hi! I’m Molly!” She shook his hand.
“I’m Alec,” I heard him say. I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded like he was grinning, and she certainly was grinning back at him.
Then she opened the back door and bounced onto the seat. “Hi! I’m Molly!” She held out her hand to Grayson.
I didn’t want to see this, so I faced forward as Alec pulled back onto the road. But I listened as Grayson said, “Nice to meet you, Molly. I’m Grayson.” He sounded like he was smiling too.
“The boss man!” she exclaimed.
Grayson chuckled. It was the first time I’d heard that sound in months.
“Hi! I’m Molly!” she said again. Something punched me in the shoulder. I realized she was talking to me.
“So I heard,” I said, shaking her hand over the seat. But I smiled at her and tried to telegraph to her, I’m glad you’re here.
“You must be Rapunzel. My God, girl, your hair is longer than Francie’s!”
I took my hand back. She’d inadvertently insulted me, linking me with her rich friend who hated me most. I wasn’t so proud of my hair achievement anymore.
Oblivious, Molly turned to Grayson again. “You know this club has a dress code. No unwashed pilots.”
Grayson and Alec both burst into laughter. It was amazing how alike they sounded when they laughed.
“Do I smell that bad?” Grayson asked.
“You don’t smell,” Molly said, “but you look like you’ve spent the past week outdoors.”
“Do I look like I just hosed off my head?” Alec asked, watching her in the rearview mirror. I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes on the road, but I just grinned along with their good times.
“Mebbe,” Molly said in a funny voice that was an imitation of something.
“We’re headed to shower and change, if that makes you feel better,” Alec called.
“You’re showering for me,” Molly said, “but you weren’t going to shower for Leah? I guess everybody knows what a dirty girl she is.”
Behind me, Grayson cleared his throat.
Alec looked over at me and smiled. “Really?”
I shook my head and opened and closed my hand like Molly’s yapping mouth. In truth, I was so happy to have her yapping, comparing me to her friend Francie, even making jokes at my expense. It beat country radio and silence.
“And here we are.” Alec parked the car at a beautiful condo, white stucco and Mexican tile surrounded by bright green grass and palm trees. “It’ll only take me a sec to shower and change.” He asked me, “Do you want to come up?”
“Is this…” I faltered.
“Where my dad lived,” Alec said, confirming what I was thinking.
And where he’d died. I couldn’t go in there. But I didn’t want to be rude to Alec, or make Grayson think I wasn’t following instructions. “I’ll just wait for you,” I said with a big smile.
Alec frowned, but all he said was, “I’ll be right back.” He left the engine and the air conditioner running as he hopped out of the car and jogged up to the building.
“What’s up with that?” Grayson asked me from the backseat. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been here before.”
nine
I looked over my shoulder at him and had absolutely nothing to say to that.
Molly peeked at me from behind Alec’s seat. “God, Grayson, what’s that supposed to mean? She hasn’t looked at me that way since she and I first met two years ago. And when we first met it was not good.”
I almost laughed, but I couldn’t. Grayson’s words weighed my face down, my whole brain.
Finally he said, “While we’re waiting, I guess I might as well go ahead and change too. I’m just across the street.” He opened his door.
“What do you mean, you’re across the street?” Molly asked. “There’s nothing over there but beach and shacks.”
He grinned at her. “I’m in a shack.”
“You are?” Molly yelled. “I want to see!”
“Okay, come on.”
He and Molly both got out of the car. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to go with them or wait for Alec. Grayson might get mad at me if I didn’t wait. He might lob another insult at me. But I wanted to go. It seemed a little too easy right at that moment for Grayson and Molly to pair off and have private time at his shack of some kind. The thought of this made my stomach hurt worse than the thought of kissing Alec.
Molly peered through the windshield at me and motioned with her head for me to follow her.
At the same time, Grayson startled me by opening my door. “Come on, Leah. Alec will know where we are. Get the key.”
Carefully I turned off the ignition—I figured this worked the same in a car as in a plane—and slid out after them.
We started across the street, but Molly stopped dead on the center stripe and gaped up at the sky. “Wow, look at that sunset!”
It wasn’t a pretty sunset. The colors were as expected: violet clouds, bright orange and pink underneath, against the pale blue sky. But the clouds were high cirrus, wispy, and crossed with the contrails of F-16s, a colorful glowing mess. I said, “It looks like God barfed a rainbow.”
“So sentimental,” Grayson said under his breath.
Molly shrieked laughter. “Charming.” She swung her glam purse on its long strap and whacked me in the ass. “So, Grayson, why do you have a condo and a shack?”
“This property has been in my family a long time,” he said. “The highway follows the original Native American trail.” He pointed north, where the road disappeared under wide-branching water oaks. “Right here it runs so close to the ocean that you’re not allowed to build a house on the beach side, but you can build a shack. My grandparents moved here from Pennsylvania when beachfront property was a lot cheaper. They owned a shack plus a house. Later they sold the house, which was demolished to build condos. They kept one condo unit, and they kept the shack.”
“Sweet!” Molly said. “You must be loaded.”
I couldn’t believe the comments Molly got away with sometimes. Maybe it was her matter-of-fact delivery. Or maybe, in this case, Grayson liked her.