Is It Any Wonder (Nantucket Love Story #2) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,97
regatta around nine in the morning, when the festivities began. Louisa had hauled all the silent-auction baskets out to the tables they’d set up near the food booths, and she did a perfectly stellar job of pretending Cody Boggs wasn’t there at all.
He was busy with the water-safety protocols and giving tours to little kids, which he did with such charm and kindness Louisa couldn’t help but notice it made her heart double in size. For a fleeting moment, she pictured him with kids of his own, a little boy maybe, with dark curls and a carbon copy of his brown eyes. She could see Cody carrying him on his shoulders, making him laugh, protecting him from the monsters under his bed. He’d be a good dad.
“Is this where you want the trophies?”
Louisa turned toward a man carrying the box of awards she’d had engraved for the race winners. The kids’ race started in twenty minutes—this guy was cutting it really close.
“Sorry they’re late. We found a mistake on the way out the door. Thought it was better to get it right. I think my boss emailed you?”
Well, she couldn’t fault him for that. “Thanks. You can set them here.”
She led him to the table they’d reserved for the bling, right next to the podium where the announcer would give the play-by-play for each race.
Louisa was helping the man unload the trophies and medals when she accidentally glanced over toward the Coast Guard setup and accidentally noticed that Cody was no longer there.
She scanned the crowd and braced herself for the impact of seeing him with McKenzie (again)—would it ever get easier? But it wasn’t McKenzie he was talking to. It was Louisa’s dad.
Oh no. Would Cody ask him about Maggie’s accounts? She hadn’t been clear enough that she had a strategy when it came to broaching the subject with her father. Namely, Don’t broach the subject with my father. But Cody was curious, so he’d likely broach away.
“I think the medals are upside down.”
“Huh?”
Louisa turned and found the trophy deliveryman pointing to the medals she’d just laid out on the table. They were, in fact, upside down.
She glanced up just in time to see Cody walk off with her dad and shake hands with someone else. Her stomach roiled.
Could this day get any worse?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
WHEN WARREN CHAMBERS SHOWED UP next to the cutter, Cody shook his hand, all the while wondering if he had the answers to the questions that kept Cody up at night.
So many questions about his dad, about Maggie’s money, about the memorial on the beach and all the things he didn’t know about his parents.
His eyes drifted over to where Louisa was setting up trophies with some guy who’d just shown up. He’d managed to keep her in his sights all morning, and her comment about his busy night out had gotten under his skin more than he would’ve liked. What did she mean by that?
As he faced Warren, he noticed the man had the same bright-blue eyes Louisa had. He spotted JoEllen chatting with a group of ladies, all of them dressed up and half of them wearing big sun hats and sunglasses.
“Good to see you again, son,” Warren said, his hand firmly wrapped around Cody’s. “Looks like you’ve done a good job of getting people to come out and support your cause.”
“That was all your daughter,” Cody said. “She’s pretty amazing with people.”
“She is.” Warren eyed him. Could he see the admiration Cody felt? Could he see more than the admiration he felt? “She’s pretty amazing in general.”
Cody nodded. “She is.”
“Are you settling in out there at Brant Point?”
They made small talk for a few minutes, something Cody had prepared for that morning on his drive over. He generally despised small talk, but now that it was part of his job, he’d decided to at least make an effort.
It came so naturally to Louisa, chatting with people she didn’t even know. He supposed that was because Louisa was genuinely interested in everyone and everything. Everyone had a story, and she wanted to know what it was.
“I hear you’ve been teaching Louisa how to sail?”
“She’s catching on, sir,” Cody said. “Mostly.”
That was a lie. Louisa would never make it in the Coast Guard; that much was clear. After the week they’d had, he wasn’t sure she’d even make it as a passenger, but he had given her two easy jobs, and he planned to do the rest. They wouldn’t win, but he’d get to