“I’m starving,” Laurel said. “Can it wait until after I eat something?”
Scarlett hopped off her bike. “‘Business’ means ‘money,’” she said. “So I think I’d like to be in on the conversation.”
“We will have a conversation, I assure you,” Buck said. “But first I need to talk to Laurel.”
“Unbelievable!” Scarlett said. She huffed as she pushed the bike up the rocky incline of the driveway.
When she was out of earshot, Buck said to Laurel, “Let me take you out to lunch.”
“No.”
“Laurel, please.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” Laurel said. “I’m not sharing a man with Belinda. I did that once, and I’ll never do it again. You had a chance with me, Buck, but you blew it.”
He looked up. There was so much sky here, whereas in Manhattan, one got only slices. “I know I messed up,” he said. “I’m not interested in Belinda, and she most certainly isn’t interested in me. What happened yesterday”—God, had it been only yesterday? It seemed like three years earlier—“was as random as an asteroid strike. And as insignificant as…” Buck rummaged through his mind, trying to think of something insignificant. “As an ant’s shoelaces.”
Laurel didn’t even smile. “It was significant to me,” she said. “I need someone I can trust.”
“I’ll earn your trust back,” Buck said. “I’ll spend the rest of my life doing it. But right now, let me take you to lunch. Please?”
Laurel’s expression softened. “Okay,” she said. “But only because I’m hungry and there’s a place I’ve been wanting to go.”
In town, Laurel parked the Jeep in front of a restaurant called Black-Eyed Susan’s, with a big plate glass window and window boxes bursting with candy-striped petunias. Buck’s stomach rumbled at the alluring smell of frying bacon emanating from within. He had changed from his board shorts back into half of his suit. He ran his free hand over his face. He hadn’t seen his razor since leaving New York, so he was now sporting gray whiskers. There was nothing worse; he felt like his grandfather. But who cared? He was with Laurel. He had to make this count.
“This will be more like breakfast,” Laurel said. “Is that okay?”
Buck wanted to say he would eat his Gucci loafers as long as he could do it across the table from Laurel, but he didn’t want to sound like a stooge.
Buck and Laurel were seated at the two-top in the big plate glass window, where they could watch the day unfolding out on the street. Laurel ordered a latte, the veggie scramble with pesto, the Yucatán chicken sausage, and the Santa Fe hash browns with extra sour cream.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m starving.”
Buck felt abstemious by comparison: black coffee and the corned-beef hash with two poached eggs and rye toast.
“Can you throw a ladle of hollandaise on top of that?” he asked the waitress.
“Now you’re talking,” Laurel said, rubbing her hands together. “You are definitely giving me a bite of that.”
Buck couldn’t believe he had just added seven hundred calories to his breakfast solely to impress a woman. But then again, it wasn’t just any woman.
Buck relaxed in his chair and inhaled the scent of bacon and coffee. Black-Eyed Susan’s was a homey place, a sort of farm-to-table diner where everything was prepared by line cooks on a griddle that ran the length of the bar. There was music playing, a mellow country band. How long had it been since Buck had noticed music? He and Deacon had gone to see the Rolling Stones on a reunion tour, but that was before Ellery was born. Buck wished he knew the words to this song; he was so happy to be with Laurel, he felt like singing.
A mother and daughter in matching toile sundresses sat on the bench outside; an older gentleman in bright-yellow Bermuda shorts walked a French bulldog. A young couple—in high school, maybe? college? Buck could no longer gauge anyone’s age—stopped right in front of the window and started to kiss as though peace had just been declared after a decades-long war. Buck watched for a second before looking away. He wanted to kiss Laurel like that.
“Do you think people assume we’re a couple?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter, because we’re not,” Laurel said. “I’m here for the hash browns.”
“You know, I’ve tried everything in my power to save the house,” Buck said. “If I had the money myself, I would hand it over to you, and you would never have to pay me back, I swear.”
“I know, Buck, it’s okay.” She frowned. “I thought Deacon was doing well financially. He lived like a rock star—that apartment on Hudson Street, the fancy school for Ellery—and I know he’s been helping Hayes out.”
“He ran through his income. I mean, don’t get me wrong—as of last December, he had a million dollars in the bank. But once that was gone, he started to sink. The TV royalties made him money, but after my commission and losing forty percent in taxes… I mean, it’s a cooking show; it’s not like he was hosting American Idol. I found a canceled check for a hundred grand made out to something called Skinny4Life. Ever heard of it?”
“No.”
“It sounds like one of Scarlett’s schemes,” Buck said. “But unless there’s something I don’t know, it hasn’t paid off yet. One of the reasons she came to Nantucket was because she ran out of money—credit cards denied, checks bounced.”
“Oh jeez,” Laurel said. “What about Scarlett’s parents?”
“Brace declared bankruptcy last year,” Buck said. “Deacon paid for his lawyer.”
“Who else do we know who has money?” Laurel asked. She caught Buck’s gaze. “I refuse to ask Belinda.”
“She has the money.”
“I don’t care,” Laurel said. She took a sip of her coffee, then wrapped both hands around the mug. “I caught her standing outside Hayes’s room.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking guilty.”
“Even Belinda isn’t that warped,” Buck said.
“I put nothing past her,” Laurel said. “And I’m not taking her money.”
“Okay then,” Buck said. “Pray for a miracle.”
“Have you told Scarlett yet?” Laurel asked.
“No,” he said.
“Oh boy,” Laurel said. “She won’t be happy.”
“Put mildly.”
Their food arrived. Buck dug into his hollandaise-drenched corned-beef hash. It was Deacon worthy: the kind of bite that made Buck’s eyes roll back in his head. He took another greedy bite, then he glanced out the window at the gentleman walking the bulldog. Yellow shorts. Could he do yellow shorts?
“I think I need some new clothes,” Buck said.
Thirty minutes later, Buck and Laurel wandered into a store called Murray’s Toggery, which was an old-fashioned clothier, so preppy it would have made Lisa Birnbach pop a wheelie (Lisa had nearly been a client, once upon a time). The men’s section of Murray’s was a profusion of madras and bold-colored prints. There were spinning racks of whimsical ties—yellow with pink anchors, navy with lavender dolphins—piles of cable-knit sweaters, and a whole wall stacked with dusty-pink pants. Home of the Nantucket Red, a sign said. Whatever that meant.
“I have always loved this store, but I couldn’t get Deacon within a hundred yards of it,” Laurel said. “He didn’t like shirts with collars. Do you mind if I start picking out things for you?”
“Go crazy,” Buck said.
In the dressing room, Buck tried on polo shirts—light blue, navy blue, Kelly green, and pink—and khaki shorts in three different shades. He modeled each outfit for Laurel, who was sitting in what he thought of as the judging chair, giving him the thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
“You look fantastic!” she gushed. “You look twenty years younger! You look like a completely different person.”
Their salesman, named Wyatt, was extremely enthusiastic about Buck acquiring something called the “on-island look.” He brought Buck a pair of madras shorts and a pair of navy shorts embroidered with white whales.