It Happens in the Hamptons Read online

  Now George caressed her bare knee in the car. The silence in the car allowed her to remember they felt at ease with one another. Why, when he was absent, did she get a little anxious? It was off-putting how he let days go by with total radio silence—no calls, no emails, no texting—not normal in this era of iPhone ubiquity. She blamed his age, fifteen years older than she, for not checking in more often. And it was strange to leave the house that night and not stay for sex. As she he watched him drive with those sexy long bangs whipping around his head, she reminded herself he was at least stable, strong, and consistent. But still . . .

  “How come you don’t call or check in more?” she blurted out.

  “What do you mean? You wanted to take time to settle in. I’m not going to make you claustrophobic. We got years ahead if we want.” He looked at her as if she were crazy. “You serious?”

  “Yeah, I am. I think it’s a little weird. You’re in town, but you don’t tell me. You don’t call for a few days.”

  “Well, first of all, you call me anytime,” he stated.

  “I do, when I need, but . . .”

  “And secondly, I’m kind of a wise man. I mean that. Give me a little credit here. I’m smarter than I look. It’s only mid-June. Let’s spend more nights a week together in August. Let’s let it build on a slow time frame.”

  “I know you’re trying to do the right thing.”

  “Well, you’re really smart. I’m sure more so than me, women always are. But trust me on this,” he said. “You’re an accomplished woman, published papers under your belt, well launched on your career, and you’ve been living alone. You think I’m going to be some guy who watches ESPN eating Doritos in your living room every free moment? And you’d find that attractive?”

  “I wouldn’t like that.” She had to laugh.

  “Okay, so relax. We got this. You just got here. Give yourself some space, forget about me. I’ve got a busy life, too. I’m working on some big investments, for years now, that might actually pan out. Go hold that windsurfing boom out in the bay. If that’s pure nirvana for you, glide away your days. We got plenty of time.”

  “All right. I guess you have a point.” She smirked a little. He was damn cute. And sexy. And he didn’t crowd her. Not dumb.

  “We’ll be at your appointment ten minutes early. I’ll go into town for the papers, then come back and get you for an all-out oysters feast after.”

  “I could have taken myself, but I’m happy you took me. It means I can just relax a little and feel totally prepped for the session. This kid is a mess.” Katie put her hand on his now. “There’s one thing I know, I can change his life if his parents allow me. I’m going to give her my study on resilience. It’s in my bag here and every parent seems to respond to it. His mother was a freaky worrier on the phone.” She got out of the car.

  He yelled out the window, “Oh, and you’re Miss Cool Cucumber all the time?”

  “Shut up.” She laughed, and slammed the car door.

  Two hours later, the setting June sun showed the last vestiges of its own resilience. Katie and George sat dockside at a low-key restaurant on Northside Harbor. She put a frosty white wine and cassis liqueur Kir to her lips. The blush-colored drink went down smoothly, bitter and sweet all at once.

  “This is a crisp nice white from a local vineyard, Wölffer,” George told her, grabbing the cold bottle out of the ice bucket and topping off her glass. He handed her a just-shucked oyster on a big round tray with crushed ice and seaweed. On top, it was crowded with fresh shrimp, half lobsters, clams, and oysters. “Now, while the Kir is still on your palate, suck this baby down. Nothing better.” The sun reflected off his hair like a halo.

  “Wow,” Katie said. “I’ve never eaten something so fresh.”

  “This place sells seafood at a shack in the lot. We can do takeout one day and eat it on a bench at the marina. They catch everything same day and serve it at night.” He pointed to a fifty-three-foot Viking sport boat docked out front. “That boat belongs to the owners. Everything here they catch on their own, or that’s the story anyway.”

  Katie took another sip of the wine and swallowed an oyster while the tartness remained on her tongue. She smiled and shook her head. Everything felt good.

  George brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “I told you. Pure Bliss. It happens in the Hamptons.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Happy Campers

  Monday, June 19

  “Holy shit,” said Luke the next Monday morning at camp. “That woman. Is here. ”

  “Which woman?” asked Kona.

  Luke didn’t want to point out that that woman with the yellow shorts whom he’d been stalking predator-style inside the surf store three weeks before was walking up to him. She may have been a married housewife for all he knew. But the way her smooth and toned thighs glistened in the morning sunlight in shorter shorts than she had on that night made him extremely hot for her.

  “I said, ‘which woman’,” asked Kona again. He whistled with two fingers to no avail. “Hello? Wake up, shithead. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I don’t . . . know,” replied Luke. “I just thought I saw someone from last summer. And I don’t think it’s her after all.”

  The woman took her son’s hand and marched up the lot with a striped overflowing tote bag. She stuck out from the other women only in her effortlessness. She had on white cutoffs and a simple navy tank that hugged her slim frame. She wore beige rubber flip-flops on her feet and black hair up in a ponytail. She walked up to the four guys, and hesitated a little, looked down, and then, as if she’d just decided, what the hell, life is short, walked to Luke and Luke alone.

  “Hi,” she said, pulling her hair out of her ponytail and back into another one, her clear green eyes astonished that this was the same guy from the shop. “I heard about Tide Runners from a poster in town.”

  “Well, had I known you were looking, I would have suggested by the shark teeth in the store.” What an idiot he could be. Of course he should have suggested water sports camp for her son that night in the shop. Kona would have had her kid in camp and this clear-eyed beauty horizontal in the sea grass by 9:00 a.m. the morning after they’d met.

  “My son isn’t liking his soccer camp. No one answered your main number all day yesterday. I didn’t know if it was okay for him to attend?” Katie couldn’t look him straight on; she’d thought she had fully worked the electric bolt from that Memorial Day night in the shop out of her system.

  “Of course it’s okay. We just take people who show up, and I’m sorry, my partner Kona is supposed to check messages more than once a week . . . oh, never mind, does your son have a wetsuit?” He stared at her hard. “We rent them.” He smiled. She smiled back. “It’s cold in the water for an hour or more and he’ll need one.”

  “I got Huck one,” she said, thinking that just as she was feeling settled, something like this had to come along to uproot her. Ashley was going to have a field day with this one. “We bought one yesterday because the ocean was so cold.” She turned to Huck. “Let’s get your cool new wetsuit out.” Katie grabbed it out of the bag and struggled to bite off the plastic tag with her teeth. She remained crouched down, not wanting to face Luke’s sexy stare, which she could feel over her head.

  She closed her eyes and thought about how George’s hair was damn good in the sun: blond, a little flowy, thick. And his muscled body was crazy attractive naked. Okay, he didn’t text or call all the time. Even so, he was also polite, fun, game, and not clingy. He was exactly what she needed now. Don’t fuck that up; don’t let the thrill of this high drag you in.

  “Hey, Huck,” Luke said. He checked and didn’t see a ring on her finger. “You’re not too young to water-ski, are you?” Huck hid behind his mother, yanking the tank top so much that it exposed the right side of her pink gingham bikini top.

  Huck nodded “yes,” clearly not liking the idea. His shoulders slumped now. His face remained in his hands.
He was pretty sure he didn’t like anything about this new camp already.

  “Well,” said Luke, “then you must like tubing. We have a big blow-up tube with kind of a couch built into it. It has handles and I’ll sit with you so we can ride together. I’ll hold you tight. You’re not too young for tubing, are you?”

  Huck pulled his hands down and looked at Luke’s face on the other side of his mother’s hip. “I’m not too young.”

  That worked with the little shy boys every time. Luke had never met one who didn’t love to be dragged behind a boat on the tube, flying between the wakes and bouncing to and fro like a rag doll.

  “I didn’t catch your name. I know this little man Huck now,” Luke offered, straightening up, grabbing the clipboard, trying to be businesslike to assuage the tension he felt in his throat. “I need it for the signing of releases. We ask all parents to sign one. Sorry, just a formality. Not to make you worry.”

  “Katie Doyle. And yours?”

  “Luke Forrester.”

  “What will he be doing today exactly? I only know from the poster that you are water-oriented, but I don’t really want my son in the big waves.”

  “We don’t let any kid in who can’t handle themselves. We teach them how anyway fast, even ones much smaller than this guy.”

  “You’re one of the instructors?”

  “Yeah, I run the camp. In the summer. In the off-seasons, I’m still kind of submerged in the ocean. I’m a marine biology teacher. Mostly young kids like yours.”

  “You teach?”

  “I do,” he answered, not looking up at her. “It’s an elective in the school, but the kids love it. We do all our classes in the sand, even when it’s cold, we learn right on this beach. Anyway . . . Huck’s birthday is . . .” Luke asked, looking at his clipboard.

  Being with this man, whoever he was, made something inside Katie ache with a mixture of angst and exhilaration. She smiled and stared at him for a moment, letting her eyes glaze over a little. She had to rein it in and remember she’d come here for someone else; someone to whom she owed a fair, focused trial.

  Just then, Kona walked over to Julia Chase, who had just arrived. He threw her son Richie up in the air three times to make him laugh. And for more strategic reasons, he knew this talent with her son would cause Julia to melt with burning desire.

  Next, something strange happened: Kona and Julia walked right into Kona’s Jeep. This did not go unnoticed by the other instructors and a few of the envious mothers dropping their children off. Kona and Julia disappeared down Beachwood Lane right at the start of camp.

  Luke tried to concentrate on this beautiful woman with green eyes, but he made a what the fuck? expression over at Kenny, who had also witnessed Kona and Julia’s sudden departure at the busiest moment in camp.

  “Here, honey, step into the legs,” Katie instructed her son, just to occupy herself and not look up at this man. She realized they’d forgotten the sun cream in the car, so she walked back with Huck. “We’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  Back in the lot, she took her sweet time getting Huck’s suit on, making sure his swim trunks weren’t all bunched up, the shoulders weren’t tight, and that he had room under his arms. As a local teacher, this guy must know something about the school system, so she could just keep it formal, professional, and keep in touch with him. With her child now more ready, she walked up the lot and right back to the cute camp director.

  From the little creases in the sides of her kind eyes, Luke figured she must be about two to four years younger than he, somewhere in her late twenties or perhaps just thirty. Mature, though, not desperate for marriage since probably she’d already been through all that. Nice age, not that rough period when all they wanted was a ring, and not so young she had time to play mind games like his ex, Simone, whose body he still couldn’t get out of his mind.

  Kenny poked him way too hard from behind and whispered in his ear, “She’ll be begging for it if you charm the son like Kona does.”

  Luke shoved Kenny back with his elbow a little too hard so he got the point: shut the fuck up, Kenny; don’t fuck this up for me. I’m not like Kona that way; she’s gonna think we are all idiots.

  Luke knelt down, partially to get out of Kenny’s air space and partially to focus on little Huck, who looked somewhat lost in a sea of entitled kids. Most of them knew each other from New York City private schools. Her child was adorable, and she was a parent who didn’t roll in like the world owed her something. She’d even asked him what he did year-round. That had to be the first show of interest in his life from a camp parent.

  Katie zippered up the thick neoprene wetsuit onto her fidgety boy. Now that she could actually talk to this man, her mind wound all the way back to spring of tenth grade, at the end of a day in April: Tommy, the baseball player (in sloppy uniform), stood on the other side of her locker in a bustling hallway. When she slammed the door, he simply smiled and said “hello,” and she was lost in his spell for years. This damn guy from the shop smiled just like Tommy, and his look was all messy the same way.

  “Where do I go, Mom? How do I know I don’t have to go into the ocean if I don’t want to?” asked Huck.

  Luke jumped in. “We don’t let any of the kids in the ocean who aren’t ready for it and aren’t wanting it. Today, it’s pretty calm out there, not many big waves, so today would actually be a great day for Huck to do the ocean-side activities. If he wants to be with me though on the bay side, not saying he has to, just . . . kind of . . . like it seems he wants to.”

  Huck had now inched closer to Luke, so he continued. “I’ll be on the bay side in the boat doing waterskiing, wakeboarding, and tubing, or whatever the kids are in the mood for. We don’t really impose anything on them, so . . .” Huck was now holding Luke’s hand, his expression still frightened. Luke cocked his head at Katie, knowing his instincts were right. “Why doesn’t he just stick with me?”

  Luke looked for Kona’s Jeep in the far-off spot, and realized it was gone. Kona couldn’t be doing Julia Chase right at the beginning of camp. In his car? Really?

  “That sounds really fun,” Katie answered, looking Luke right in the eye in that adult-understanding-of-kids’-needs way. “Thank you, I’m sure Huck would prefer to stay with you.” She nodded as she watched him pick up Huck. “And for the lessons, you’ll be with him . . . ?” She was trying hard to sound official, efficient, and safety-first oriented. Her eyes noticed the dark hair on the top of his chest coming out of the T-shirt.

  Luke answered, trying to focus on this woman with perfect green eyes and not on the possibility his oldest friend would be murdered by a certain Jake Chase if he were, in fact, getting blown by a married Mrs. Chase in his Jeep at this moment. “We say we do skill-oriented lessons and all that, but we pretty much just do whatever the kids want in the bay and that’s 90 percent tubing, honestly. No lessons a ton of the time. For tubing, we’ll pull him slowly behind the boat. We’re not really regimented, to put it mildly.”

  “What about the propeller? What if he gets caught up in . . .”

  “No propeller,” Luke answered, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare and surveying the lot for a returning Jeep. “We thought of that, and got old used jet boats with jets way underneath, in the middle. No way they can harm you. No propellers. All good. And it’s Huck Doyle, right?”

  She smiled. “Yes.” She knew her face was beet-purple. Her light cheeks always flushed when she cried or got nervous. So she grabbed her baseball hat out of her bag and pulled it down hard on her head. “He’s my son. This is my son.” She knew she sounded strange and awkward.

  “I got that part early on, with his grabbing your leg for dear life.” His voice cracked ever so slightly and Kenny came back again with one of his hugely obnoxious, but encouraging punches, which Luke tried to ignore with a cough.

  “Yeah,” she said. “He’s shy. He doesn’t really know kids yet. This is new to him, and to me. All this. . . .” Katie held her palms up and motione
d toward the private club down the beach and the Gatsby-style estates lining the bay behind her.

  “You said you were from out West, back in the shop?” Luke asked.

  “Like, really, not at all from here. I live in a small town near a lake outside Portland, Oregon. It’s called Hood River. I was a teacher there. I might be a teacher here if things work out.”

  “I can certainly tell you all about the system here. It’s pretty solid with the huge tax revenues.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?” He smiled, wishing she needed him to explain it all.

  “I’m a learning specialist. I also write studies. I’m hoping to publish some with institutes in Manhattan. And there might be a special ed position in one of the local middle schools.”

  Interesting, Luke thought. She wasn’t from here, but she taught. Special ed always meant nice and understanding and patient. “And, you’re here for . . .”

  “The whole summer.” She smiled. Shit. She shouldn’t do this.

  Just then Kona’s Jeep pulled up way too fast. He got out, no Julia inside now. Interesting. He had a stupid, satisfied grin on his face. This wasn’t good for anyone at the camp. He walked up to the group, and studied his buddy handling this beautiful new girl in town.

  “She wants to suck your little dick,” said Kona way too loudly after Katie finished signing forms.

  Huck was squirming and yelling as Katie slathered more white zinc oxide on his face. It didn’t seem she heard Kona’s gracious observation. Luke closed his eyes and prayed to the Good Lord Jesus, the Savior Moses, and the Prophet Mohammed that she hadn’t.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Yes, Her Real Name Is Poppy

  Wednesday, June 21

  “Katie. It’s Poppy Porter.” She sounded stern on the phone.