Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (37 page)

“No. Absolutely not. But I think maybe I am going to let him get back together with me,” Marquez said. “And I hope it’s before the Bacch, unless I can get Diver to go with me, which seems unlikely.”

When Summer didn’t laugh, Marquez turned to peer at her from beneath shaded brows. “What?” she demanded. “What’s the serious look all about?”

Summer shrugged. “It’s just—What if J.T. really is my brother?”

“I give up. What if?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Summer said. “Only, I was wondering whether he would stay here, or maybe go to Minnesota.”

Marquez’s smile disappeared. “I guess he would want to meet your—his—parents,” she said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean he’d live there.”

“I guess you’re right,” Summer said.”

“Of course I am,” Marquez said confidently. “What kind of an idiot would deliberately choose Bloomington, Minnesota, over Crab Claw Key, Florida?”

Summer laughed along in agreement, and would almost have believed Marquez felt as sure as she sounded. Only, Marquez had never before actually said “Bloomington, Minnesota,” without making a joke.

When Summer got home from the beach, the phone was ringing. To her surprise, it was Marquez. Summer had left her only twenty minutes earlier.

“Hey, Summer. Babe. What’s been going on in your life since we got together last?” Marquez asked.

“I walked home. Then I picked up the phone. There, now you’re up to date,” Summer said. She squeezed the phone against her ear with her shoulder and glanced around the room. The stilt house wasn’t always perfectly private—Diver occasionally appeared with very little announcement through the hatch in the floor.

“I got a call from work. They have a catering thing on board some big boat that just pulled in. They need a couple of waitresses who aren’t doing anything tonight.”

“But I
am
doing something tonight,” Summer said. “I’m going out with Seth.”

“You can go out with Seth any night,” Marquez argued. “We’d split fifteen percent of the total food bill, so right there we’ll probably make fifty each. Last summer when I did things like this, the boat guys always tipped extra. Last time the guy gave each waitress a hundred-dollar bill.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, whoa.”

“Okay, I’m there. I’ll just call and tell Seth.”

Summer hung up the phone. She dialed Seth’s number. He wasn’t home, so she left a message on his answering machine. “Hi, it’s me. Listen, I have to work tonight, but maybe we could get together afterward, if you still feel like it.” She almost hung up the phone, but then remembered that Seth lived with his grandfather. “I’ll miss you, little fuzzy wuzzy bunny,” Summer said, choking down her own laughter. “Wittle Summer wuvs you.” She hung up the phone, well satisfied by the image of Seth playing the message back with his grandfather listening.

“Jeez, I’m spending too much time with Marquez,” Summer muttered.

At seven o’clock Summer arrived at the Crab ’n’ Conch, wearing a pair of white shorts and a matching white halter top. Uniforms were not required on jobs outside the restaurant, and she knew that it would be hot work, at least until the sun set.

Marquez was already there, folding linen napkins in a corner of the kitchen. She was wearing a pair of shorts too, though hers were several degrees less modest than Summer’s, and a brightly patterned bikini top. The usual evening rush was going on around them, waitresses hurrying in and out shouting orders, dishwashers clattering plates, cooks cursing and sweating in the intense heat.

J.T. was down on one end of the line, assembling the food for the private party. He was preoccupied and busy, but when Summer arrived he glanced up and sent her a smile.

“Hi,” Summer said.

“Hi. You look great. In fact, normally I’d make some clever, flirtatious remark.” He shook his head in bemusement. “I guess that would be in pretty bad taste now.”

“I don’t know,” Summer admitted. “I guess so.” J.T. returned to arranging little finger foods on a long steel tray. “I don’t exactly know what to do now, about all that stuff.”

“Me neither,” Summer said. “I mean, we should try to figure out whether it’s true or not.”

“I thought the same thing. First of all, what are the odds? We can’t just screw up everyone’s lives without being sure. But how do we be sure, exactly?” he asked. “I mean, what are we going to do? Compare blood tests?”

Summer shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to get my parents all excited and then find out it isn’t true.”

“I agree,” he said solemnly. “And there’s something else too. Whatever the truth is, I can’t get my folks in trouble.”

“Trouble? Why would they be in trouble?” Summer asked.

J.T. met her gaze with eyes so like her own. “Look, someone is going to want some explanation for how I came to be J.T. instead of Jonathan.”

“Wow, I hadn’t even really thought about that,” Summer lied, suddenly feeling overwhelmed.

“I have,” J.T. said solemnly. “It’s about all I can think of.” Summer saw his gaze dart toward Marquez. She was flirting ostentatiously with Alec, the bartender, who was by the sink cutting lemons.

“Are you going with us to this thing?” Summer asked.

“Yep. I’m handling the food. So you’re stuck with me tonight.” J.T. grinned. “And we’re both stuck with her.” He jerked his head at Marquez.

“We’ll figure everything out, J.T.,” Summer said reassuringly. She took his hand, which was greasy with crabmeat stuffing. For some reason she felt like crying. What if? The question never seemed to be far away from her thoughts. What if?

“Yeah, of course we will,” J.T. said.

“Honestly, J.T., I can’t leave you alone for five minutes.” It was Lianne, bustling back into the kitchen with a full tray of dirty dishes. She set the tray down and took J.T.’s hand from Summer. “Summer, I’m disappointed in you. I expect Marquez to be trying to steal other people’s boyfriends.”

Lianne’s voice was only mock angry, but in the reference to Marquez there was genuine resentment. Lianne stretched up on her toes to kiss J.T. on the lips. Summer found the moment strangely embarrassing. Marquez obviously wasn’t pleased either.

“Lianne,” Marquez said, leaving the bartender’s side, “I’m surprised to see you here. I heard that you joined the circus as the two-faced woman.”

“That’s funny,” Lianne shot back. “I heard the same thing about you, only it was as part of the elephant act.”

“I guess everything looks big when you’re a midget,” Marquez said.

“Excuse me,” J.T. interrupted, “but we all have work to do, right?”

“Well, I’d love to go on trading insults with you, Marquez, you’re such an easy target,” Lianne said, “but I have to get changed.”

“Finally getting that plastic surgery?” Marquez said gleefully.

“No. I’m going with all of you. They just called in to say they’re adding guests, which means an extra waitress.”

The cabin cruiser was long, and not a particularly elegant-looking boat, but definitely large. Larger than a Greyhound bus, and brightly lit with red Japanese lanterns hung on lines that drooped from the mast to the bow and from the radar dish to the stern.

Summer, Marquez, Lianne, J.T., and Alec the bartender all arrived on time, just as the sun was dipping toward the cooling waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

“Nice little raft, isn’t it?” Marquez remarked dryly. “Someday I’m going to own one of these, only not so tiny and cramped.” Marquez and Summer helped set up the buffet inside the carpeted and wood-paneled main cabin, which opened out onto the broad stern deck, where most of the party was to take place.

J.T. was nearby, lighting little cans of Sterno under the steel chafing dishes on a side table and shuttling back and forth to the galley, which was down a short set of three steps.

“Has anyone seen the guy who owns the boat?” Lianne asked, coming up with a box of paper napkins.

“No,” Summer said. “Why?”

Lianne shrugged. “Nice to know who we’re working for.”

“Some fat, rich old guy with a hairy back, little stick legs, and pinkie rings,” Marquez muttered under her breath. “That’s what they always are. He’ll drink Crown Royal, and after he’s had two or three he’ll start asking me if I like older men.”

J.T. laughed. “The world according to Marquez.”

“Marquez, why are you so cynical?” Lianne asked petulantly, seemingly annoyed that J.T. had laughed.

“Why am I cynical?” Marquez asked. “Because it works. Anytime you want to try to figure out why someone is doing something, just apply the most cynical interpretation you can come up with, and you’ll be right about ninety percent of the time.”

Lianne shook her head in disgust. “You should be a politician or a lawyer when you grow up.
If
you grow up.”

Marquez laughed delightedly. “Exactly! That’s just what I plan to be—a lawyer.”

J.T. snorted derisively. He winked at Summer, who was drinking a glass of soda and trying to stay out of what looked like a brewing fight. “Marquez a lawyer. And I might become a transvestite pygmy rabbit jockey,” J.T. said.

This struck Summer as so funny that she choked on her soda. But Marquez didn’t think it was at all funny. “See, that’s why you and me are no longer you and me, J.T.,” she said. “You have no faith in me.”

J.T.’s eyes flashed. “Bull, Marquez. You’re the one who doesn’t have faith. Lawyer. Jeez, give me a break. You’re the only person who knows you who is dumb enough to believe that.”

“Now you’re calling me stupid?” Marquez demanded.

Summer noticed that Lianne was content to stand by and watch, smugly pleased at this new evidence of the permanent rift between her new boyfriend and his old girlfriend.

“No, I’m not calling you stupid,” J.T. said angrily. Then, much more softly, “I’m calling you an artist.”

Marquez started to say something angry, but hesitated, looking confused.

Lianne seemed to realize that the conversation had taken a dangerous turn. “I think Marquez should be whatever she wants to be,” she said, suddenly Marquez’s defender.

“It isn’t a question of what she should be someday.” J.T.’s look was just for Marquez. “It’s a case of what she is right now. She’s an artist. She’ll always be an artist. Send her to Harvard, or put her in a little gray business outfit and stick a briefcase in her hand, and she’ll still be an artist.” He returned his attention to a Sterno pot that would not catch fire.

Marquez busied herself with her work, viciously slicing limes into little wedges. Summer watched her, recalling the awed, overwhelmed feeling she’d experienced when she first went into Marquez’s room. J.T. was right—Marquez was an artist. It bothered Summer a little that she hadn’t seen it clearly before. It made her a little jealous of Marquez. It would be nice to
be
something, to be so precisely identified. Although evidently Marquez didn’t think it was so great.

Then Summer shifted her gaze to J.T., and once again she experienced the queasy feeling that he represented change on a scale so massive it was impossible to grasp. What would her parents think of him? Would her mother—
their
mother, perhaps—be proud of the way he had grown up?

Summer saw Marquez jerk her head toward the gangway, a warning. Someone was coming aboard from the pier.

It was a man in his sixties, carrying a cocktail glass. He was fat, with a huge stomach hanging over his shorts. From the bottom of the shorts extended two narrow stick legs. His bare chest and back were matted with white and gray hair. Summer peered closely at his hands. Yes, there was a pinkie ring.

Marquez arched an eyebrow and grinned cockily.

Summer looked at J.T. “Just like she described,” she said under her breath.

“Oh, yeah?” Lianne said. “Well, she didn’t predict
him.
”

Summer looked back, and there, emerging from behind the wide, waddling form of the man, was a tall, muscular, darkly handsome young guy. He looked as if he might be anywhere from eighteen to twenty-five years old. But, as it happened, Summer knew for a fact that he was only seventeen.

She knew for a fact how old he was because, as impossible as it seemed to her as she stood gaping with open mouth, her forgotten knife falling from her hand, he was none other than Sean Valletti.

Sean Valletti, the crush of her life. The guy she’d drooled over since freshman year. The guy who’d broken her heart a thousand times without even noticing it.

“Ah, good, good, you’re here already,” the man with the pinkie ring said.

“All set up,” J.T. affirmed. “Are you Mr. Holland?”

“Dex Holland,” the man said, extending a chubby hand to J.T. “And this here is my nephew. Just came down from Minnesota.”

“Minnesota?” Marquez said. She gave Sean a good, long look in her inevitably provocative way, being even more blatant than usual in hopes of annoying J.T. She turned to Summer. “I didn’t know they grew them this cute in Minnesota. Why did you ever leave?”

Summer could feel the blush crawling up her neck. It would have been nice if Marquez had just, for once, kept her mouth shut.

“Are you from…” Sean began, looking at Summer in confusion. He paused and tilted his head. “You remind me of someone.”

Someone you managed to look right through for the last three years,
Summer thought.
The invisible girl.
“Yes. I, uh, I mean, you do know me. I guess. Or not. I mean, I know you, anyway.”

“You two actually know each other?” Marquez said.

“I don’t think I do,” Sean said.

“I’m Summer Smith,” Summer said miserably. “You know, I sit behind you in—”

“Summer Smith?” Sean said incredulously. “No way.” He looked her up and down with no attempt to be subtle. He smiled. “You’ve been sitting behind me all year? Wow, I must have been blind.”

“Diana, someone is here to see you.”

Her mother’s voice rose up the stairs, a too-coy tone that affected Diana like fingernails on a chalkboard. But then a thought occurred to her. Diver? Could it be Diver?

No, that was ridiculous. Diver wouldn’t just come up, knock on the front door, and announce himself to her mother. Diana smiled. No, that wasn’t Diver’s style.

“
Diana.
Do you hear me?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Diana muttered. She turned off the TV. She had been reorganizing her room, moving things here and there, piling up clothing and possessions she no longer wanted. Too much of it held memories of sadder times.

She sighed and got to her feet. “Coming!” she yelled. But by the time she had risen completely and turned, he was standing there in the doorway.

“Adam!” she said, surprised and even a little frightened. “What are you doing here?”

Adam Merrick had always seemed to be surrounded by some kind of magnetic field that created in other guys a desire to like him and in girls a desire, period. He was tall and powerfully built without seeming at all ungainly. His dark hair was expensively cut, designed to look ever so casual. In all the time she had gone out with him, Diana had seldom seen him emotional or out of control. So it was a particular shock to see that his eyes were red, as if he had been crying. There was an odd, ashen color beneath the perpetual tan.

“Damn you, Diana,” he said.

Diana recoiled. Before she could form a coherent response, he was in her room, closing the door behind him with a slam.

“I understood your going after Ross,” he said. He was pointing his finger at her, trembling with barely controlled rage. “I understood that. Ross is dangerous. He’s out of control. But my father? What’s my father ever done to hurt you?”

“Get out of here, Adam,” Diana said. Her voice sounded firm enough, but she was quivering inside. Not so much from fear—Adam was not the type to become violent—but from the realization that it had all truly begun.

“No way, Diana. I want an answer. I
let
you keep that tape recorder, you know I did. I could have stopped you, but I let it go because I know Ross needs help, and I know he won’t get it until someone shakes him up real badly. But my dad wasn’t part of the deal.”

“What’s happened?” Diana asked, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

Adam snorted. “Like you don’t know.”

“They never told me what they were going to do,” Diana said.

“No, you just put the knife in their hands, and however they decide to stick it in, well, that’s not your problem, right?” The muscles in his jaw were in spasm. “They were just at the house, questioning him. Questioning my father. They told him to get a lawyer. I was there. He was…He couldn’t look at me. My dad, he couldn’t even look at me, and those idiots in their cheap suits smirking the whole time, pretending to be so respectful but practically drooling like a pack of hungry dogs.”

Diana felt a knot tightening in her stomach. “And where was Ross?” she asked.

The question seemed to stun Adam momentarily. “Ross?”

“Yes. Where was Ross during all this?”

Adam looked away. His brow was furrowed. “He wasn’t there.”

“Hiding like the gutless little worm he is,” Diana snapped.

But Adam wasn’t really listening. “My dad sitting there having to listen to…these creeps, these Kmart cops cross-examining him. ‘No, sir, we are not prepared to make an arrest at this time. But you need to get in touch with your lawyer, Senator. And don’t leave the state of Florida, see, or otherwise it could be a matter for the FBI.’”

“I didn’t want this to come down on your father,” Diana said honestly. “It’s Ross I want to see behind bars.”

“Well, your little revenge is really all that counts,” Adam sneered. “It doesn’t matter to you that you’re ruining a great man’s life. Do you know what the media will do with this? Do you have any clue as to the kind of—You have to stop this,” he said. He looked at her, threatening, blaming, pleading all at once. “You have to put an end to this.”

“It’s too late,” Diana said. She felt her fear receding. Anger was returning, clean, strengthening anger. “You could have dealt with it a year ago, but the mighty Merricks always protect their own.”

“That’s something you’d better remember,” Adam snapped. “We
do
protect our own.”

There was scorn in Diana’s laugh. “Really? How well did you and Ross protect your father?”

The shot went straight home. Adam seemed to crumple. Diana pressed on, noticing Adam’s stricken look and not caring one bit. No more than Ross had cared for her that night when he’d slapped her and torn at her clothing and laughed at her cries for help. No more than Adam had really cared when he’d made his choice between his girlfriend and his brother.

“So the senator is in trouble?” Diana demanded. “Tough luck. I don’t care. I don’t give a damn. He threatened to ruin me if I charged Ross, right? Now look who’s ruined. He threatened to make me look pathetic? Now who looks pathetic? You do, Adam, that’s who.”

“It’s my fault,” Adam said. “I should never have let you keep that tape. I was weak. I looked at you and remembered the way it was when we were together. I was stupid.”

Diana shook her head. “It wasn’t the tape recorder, Adam. It wouldn’t have mattered if you had kept it. See, I had Summer’s video camera in my bag. I figured you might find one or the other, but not both. Besides, my sweet mother burned the little tape. She’s against me in this, but I don’t even care.”

Adam stared at her in amazement. “Well, you cold, calculating little witch.” He laughed bitterly. “Don’t count us out just yet,” he said, but without much conviction.

“I know. You’re very rich and very powerful, blah, blah, and you always protect your own, blah, blah, blah. But you know what? Pretty soon everyone in the country is going to know that Ross Merrick is a rapist, and law-and-order Senator Merrick covered up his crimes.”

Adam was silent, staring at her with a weird, sideways look. Disbelief. Shock. “I don’t even know you anymore, Diana,” he said. “I don’t even know what you’ve become.”

“I guess you’re right, Adam,” Diana agreed. “You don’t know me anymore. See, you used to recognize me better when I had the word
victim
tattooed on my forehead. You liked me that way. Diana the victim. Diana the depressed. Poor, screwed-up Diana. Go ahead, dump on Diana, she won’t even know the difference.”