Sweet Salt Air (21 page)

“So you’re not coming over tonight?”

“That depends on Nicole. If she’s having dinner with other friends, I can get out.”

“I’m Plan B.”

“You’re Plan Z, if you ask Nicole. She’s afraid you’ll sabotage her project.”

He didn’t respond to that. “What’d you tell her about us?”

“That I didn’t know what in the hell it was, which I don’t. Do you?”

“No. All I know is I want more.”

So did Charlotte. Taking his face in her hands, she initiated the kiss this time. He let her lead it for a breath before taking over, and she didn’t protest. Something happened to her when she was with him, like
this
was where she was supposed to be. When he raised his head this time, she should have been aching for more. But she felt peaceful, like she was home. With a contented sigh, she closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his chin.

“What was that for?” he asked in hoarse echo of her earlier words, but it was a minute before she was willing to draw back.

Then, with an inhalation to steady herself, she said, “Just wanted to make sure.”

His eyes were inscrutable. Finally, he asked, “What’s your cell number?”

She gave it to him and, sliding out from under him, backed away with a glance at the truck. “Is that yours?”

He nodded.

“Nice.” It was dusty, but late model, which raised more questions, but she was tiring of them. So he had a source of income. What did it matter? If the island was in his corner, it couldn’t be
too
disreputable.

Smiling, she faced forward and started walking. Her smile faltered, though, when she saw Nicole at the Chowder House. Apparently having come from the opposite end of the street, she had pulled up to the front door, set her blinkers, and looked to have been ready to go inside if she hadn’t seen Charlotte. Having stopped beside the hood, she was staring at the dark blue pickup.

Frowning, she waited only until Charlotte was close. “Were you kissing him?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Kissing him,” Nicole repeated, like she wasn’t sure she understood. When Charlotte nodded, she asked, “Is something going on? Like, more than helping with his roof?”

Good question. She remembered Leo saying,
Here you are, just perfect for me.
And Dorey saying,
He was different coming in here that night, he likes you.
Charlotte might have blamed making love on the beach to the moment, but there was the kiss just now. It had taken her out of herself.

Her escape. Not a mess of the summer as she had first feared. Her own personal escape from stem cell anxiety and deadlines.

Not that she could tell Nicole that. Needing a minute, she opened the door and climbed into the passenger’s seat. Nicole stared, before rounding the car and sliding in, but she didn’t let it go. As soon as she switched from reverse to drive, she asked, “Is there?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“There’s a physical attraction.”

“Is it real? Or for the sake of the cookbook?”

“It’s real,” Charlotte said. “For what it’s worth, he hasn’t mentioned the book. I think he’s okay with it.”

“Because he likes you?”

“Maybe. Or because he’s knows I won’t steal Cecily’s herbs. I still want to take pictures. Those gardens are something.” She was thinking of the white flowers with the incredibly arousing smell. She wondered what they were.

“Have you slept with him?”

Admitting it made her feel cheap. So she said, “No.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. There had been no sleeping that night.

“Do you think you will?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because I worry about you. He’s an ex-con.”

“Oh, so was my dad,” Charlotte tossed out in a second’s exasperation.

“He was not.”

“He was. He was convicted of domestic abuse and spent ten days in jail.”

“Domestic abuse?”

“Of wife number two, who, not being a lush, didn’t have alcohol to keep her from talking back. He didn’t like back talk.”

Nicole seemed horrified. “You never told me this.”

“I’m not proud of it.”

“Did he ever hit you?”

“He threatened to.”

“Did he hit your mother?”

“No. She knew enough to steer clear when he was in a snit.”

“I had no idea,” Nicole said meekly and was quiet as they passed the road to Okers Beach. They were passing the clam flats when she returned to the other. “Still, ten days is different from four years.”

Charlotte didn’t want to discuss this. “Maybe Dad had a better lawyer than Leo. My point, Nicki, is that there are lots of reasons why people get sent away. We shouldn’t pass judgment on Leo until we know what his are.”

Nicole shot her a look. “You want to find out.”

“Yeah, I do. He’s interesting. So many things about him don’t fit. I want to know who the real Leo is.”

“And then what?”

Charlotte took a biding breath. “Then I get gorgeous pictures of his gardens for your book, after which I go back to New York, and then Paris, and then wherever work takes me. That’s the lesson of
Salt,
is it not?”

Nicole’s eyes lit. “You finished it?”

“I didn’t. I got to the point of caring so much and feeling like things would end up wrong, so I read ahead.”

“Charlotte!”

“I couldn’t help it,” Charlotte declared, unrepentant. “I refuse to finish. This is my protest.”

“But you just said you’d do the same thing!”

“Right. That’s reality. But fiction is fiction. Chris Mauldin took my heart and twisted it. That’s pure manipulation.”

“It’s pure brilliance, if you ask me,” Nicole mused and pulled up at the house.

*   *   *

Charlotte didn’t argue. Not only didn’t she want to further the discussion of
Salt,
which might lead back to her relationship with Leo, but now that they were home, she had other things to do. Having loved her interviews with Anna and Melissa, Nicole wanted her write-up of Dorey ASAP, so that she could impress her editor with their progress.

At the same time, Nicole began reading through the newest recipes in her pile and found a problem.

Chapter Thirteen

C
HARLOTTE WAS AT THE KITCHEN
table when she heard a soft, “Strange.” She stopped typing and looked up.

Nicole stood at the counter, frowning as she thumbed back and forth through a handful of recipe cards. “No thyme in Rebecca’s fish hash? There’s always thyme. It’s one of the reasons I like her hash. And salmon quiche without parsley? Without
dill
? Marie’s quiche has both. Goat cheese would be bland without dill, and even aside from taste, parsley adds color.” Studying another card, she seemed baffled. “Mint extract in peppermint blondies?
Extract?
There’s nothing organic in that. What happened to fresh mint?” She turned anxious eyes on Charlotte. “Quinnipeague is known for its herbs. They’re supposed to be a major part of the cookbook. Remove them, and you lose what’s so unique here. These cards have to be wrong.”

Feeling a chill, Charlotte left the table. “All of them?” There were several dozen in the pile.

“Not all. Some are good. But these others? And
these
?” She singled out several lower cards that were marked with Post-its. “I got these earlier in the week. It’s the same thing, either use of a commercial product or a clear-out omission. Two or three could be innocent mistakes. But eight? Nine? What is going on?”

Charlotte took the cards and glanced through. Original recipe cards would be dog-eared and stained; these were clean. “They’re fresh copies. It could still be innocent.”

But Nicole was shaking her head. “I know these people. They’re not careless. This was deliberate.”

“Sabotaging their own recipes?”

“Protecting them. Someone told them not to give away island secrets.” Her implication was clear, her green eyes direct.

“You think it was Leo,” Charlotte said.

“Who else could it be?”

“Dorey. Or Anna or Melissa.” She had asked each about Leo. “They protect him.”

“From what?” Nicole asked, clearly skeptical.

Charlotte searched for an answer, but her mind was stirring an uncomfortable brew. She had a personal stake in this. How to be objective?

“Aren’t they protective of me, too?” Nicole asked, hurt now. “I’ve summered here all my life. They love my family—you heard how they gushed last week. Besides, these people aren’t timid. If they didn’t want me doing the cookbook, they’d have said so.” Her eyes darkened. “It has to be Leo scaring them off. He didn’t want us doing this in the first place. Ask him to stop, Charlotte, please? There are times when I feel like I’m hanging on by a thread. The last thing I need is a complication, when we finally have momentum going.”

They did have that, in spite of the ongoing heartache of Julian. Nicole missed him—no doubting it—and he shared that, to judge from his frequent texts.
Tired, but okay,
he would say in response to her query. Or,
Just finished a great session with a bunch of top-notch MDs.
Or,
Taped a clip for the local news. Link to follow.
Charlotte assumed that their phone calls were more personal, since Nicole’s anger had faded.

Not so the fear, which shadowed her eyes at odd moments. But she didn’t talk about this as much now, either.
Tiresome
was the word she used when Charlotte asked. And true to that, she was upbeat and smiling when they were in town. Working on the cookbook gave her focus. She was right; the last thing they needed was a glitch.

Charlotte saw an easy fix. “Can you correct the herbs yourself?”

“If I alter the recipes, they won’t sign a release. Please, Charlotte, ask him to stop?”

“I don’t think it was Leo,” she said, though she was unsettled. Hadn’t Leo threatened to prevent their getting recipes?
I’ll put out the word that I don’t want you to,
he had said.

But that was before they were … whatever they were. Now it seemed impossible that he would do this. He had been too caring on the beach Monday night, too understanding on his front porch the next night. And his kiss this morning? Too honest.

“Then how do you explain this?” Nicole cried, holding up the cards. “I didn’t sense guilt when I was collecting these. If leaving things out was deliberate, they were clearly comfortable with it. Did they not think I’d
notice
?” She grew beseechful. “Call Leo?”

“I don’t have his number.”

“Someone must. Maybe Dorey.”

“Uh-huh, like she’d give it to me? She made it clear that I shouldn’t mess with Leo Cole.”

“She was right,” Nicole said, deflating, “and
she
didn’t see the two of you this morning. Are you going to his house this weekend?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to babysit me, y’know.”

“It isn’t babysitting. I
choose
to be with you.” That said, Charlotte’s thoughts jumped ahead. If she wanted to get to know Leo, they needed more time together than an hour here and there. But she didn’t want Nicole to be alone. “Has Julian committed to the Fourth?”

Quietly, Nicole said, “He can’t come. He feels that since the doctors he’s working with won’t be leaving town, he shouldn’t, either, and besides that, it’s too far to travel. I think he means for him. And he’s right. Raleigh-Durham to Quinnipeague is a haul.” She regarded the recipe cards with renewed desperation. “What’re we going to do about these?”

*   *   *

The answer, of course, was to go door-to-door getting corrections, but that meant putting people on the spot when nothing about the underlying problem had changed. If island women were being pressured, the pressure would remain until its source was found.

Leo was the logical first stop. Charlotte could have walked to his house Friday night, but something held her back. It might have been the fish hash that Nicole made with fresh halibut, the rest of Rebecca Wilde’s ingredients, and what she intuitively knew to be the right amount of thyme. They didn’t eat until late, and after finishing off a white Burgundy from Bob’s stash, they were too sluggish to do more than watch a restored version of
Gone With the Wind.

Then again, it might have been fear keeping her from Leo’s that night. If he had carried through on his threats, they had no future.

Or, it might have been simple procrastination. Better she learn that tomorrow than tonight.

*   *   *

Saturday dawned foggy. Nicole played in the kitchen most of the morning, testing first a French toast casserole, then Anna Cabot’s famed layered eggs. Mercifully, these recipes were correct. They were actually perfect, she declared in an ebullient text to Julian following a tasting session with Charlotte.

No answer on the other?
he wrote back.

Not yet. Maybe later.
Charlotte has assured her Leo would be in touch, and Nicole figured that collecting more recipes would be ridiculous until he was stopped.

On one level, she was stymied.

On another, she was freed. When the fog burned off, she took that as an invitation to sit on the back patio and read.

*   *   *

Midway through the afternoon, Leo texted Charlotte.
I’m doing shingles tonight. Want to help?

*   *   *

Since it was a clear, warm night, Charlotte walked. A navy dusk was just settling in when she rounded the Cole curve and saw him setting up the ladders. He wore his usual black, but his tool belt was still on the ground. Bundles of shingles were stacked on a pallet nearby.

Halfway down the drive, she stopped to wait. She smelled herbs, plus those white flowers, which were near the woods on her left. Refusing to be charmed by any of it, she thought of the recipe cards and stayed where she was.

Leo finished with the ladders and was about to open the first bundle when he saw her. He waited. When she didn’t move, he gestured her forward. When she didn’t come, he set down the box cutter and started toward her.

“Something wrong?” he asked as he neared.

She nodded. “We started collecting recipes cards. The herbs were misrepresented on a bunch of them.”