Now, on Friday night, she tried to put this growing insanity out of her mind. She and Marsh had negotiated a date, and negotiated was the only word for it. Things probably went faster and smoother when Hillary Clinton visited the Mideast. Marsh’s place was now off-limits since, more than a week after her arrival, Sylvia was still in residence. Tracy’s place was off-limits because she didn’t want to chance another CJ sighting. Besides, her instincts told her that she and Marsh needed a night together with no pressure. A chance to reconnect.
They had finally agreed to a late dinner at a restaurant he loved and she tolerated. Skeeter’s was the kind of dive where it was best not to wear sandals in case something scuttled under the table. But the shrimp was fresh and the beer icy cold. Best of all, Tracy would be there with Marsh. If they got food poisoning, they could comfort each other over the telephone.
To avoid another confrontation with Sylvia, they’d agreed to meet at the restaurant, which sat on the bay in Palmetto Grove proper. Lights were just coming on in the other cottages when Tracy got into her car. On the way out she saw the flicker of a television from Janya’s, and the kitchen light at Wanda’s, where she was probably elbow-deep in piecrust, obsessing about what to make and sell.
She arrived at Skeeter’s just in time to meet Marsh in the parking lot. He was dressed for the occasion. Ragged shorts, a Wild Florida T-shirt, canvas shoes without socks. Definitely no sex on the horizon tonight or he would have made some attempt to impress her. She was encouraged and disappointed simultaneously.
“You just can’t not dress up, can you?” His tone said he didn’t mind one bit.
“You think this is me dressed up?” She kissed him hello, then again for good measure. “These are cleaning rags.”
He let her go with obvious reluctance. “For who? Billionaires?”
She wore capris and a flirty Betsey Johnson charmeuse blouse, along with faux snakeskin flats she hoped would scare away the vermin.
“Not a thing I’m wearing is new,” she pointed out.
“Tell me no snakes died for those shoes.”
“They did not.” She didn’t add that she had other shoes she couldn’t say the same about. She had lost so much when the Feds cleaned out her closet and left so much behind when she moved to Florida. But she did have an obscene number of shoes left over from her former life, and now she was determined to wear them out.
“I’m starving.” He put his arm around her waist and hauled her toward the door, his fingertips searching for and finding bare skin. Over the unmistakable twang of Willie Nelson, she could hear raucous laughter through the open windows. Half a dozen couples lounged against the porch railing, waiting for tables, but she wasn’t sorry to be among them. She was enjoying the feel of his fingers slipping under the waistband of her capris.
“Looks like it’s going to take some time to get seated, even at this hour,” she said, snuggling closer.
“Sorry about the timing. Sylvia had a bunch of things to take care of, so I was minus a babysitter earlier.”
“You could have brought Bay. He loves Skeeter’s.”
“Bay doesn’t want to miss a chance to be with his mom. It was better not to fight him on that.”
Tracy told herself not to feel hurt. So, okay, Bay had grown on her. For a kid with a bunch of problems, he could be fun to have around. And he liked her; she knew he did. In fact, she’d kind of thought she was special. But Sylvia was his mother, the mother whose attention he’d worked so hard to gain, probably since birth. His preference tonight was perfectly normal.
“You would know best about Bay,” she said, after Marsh reluctantly stepped away and asked the gum-cracking hostess to put their names on the wait list. “And I’m assuming Sylvia’s going to be on her way home before long?”
Marsh steered them to a corner on the far end of the porch where the noise wasn’t as bad. She perched on the railing and rested against a post. He stayed on his feet and leaned against it, his chest snug against her hip, one hand resting on her knee.
“I don’t know what her plans are,” he said. “I thought she’d be gone by now, but Bay’s so thrilled to have her, I’m afraid to rock the boat