Sand Castle Bay (Ocean Breeze) - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,32
looked at her blankly. “What?”
“The god that Boone has brought to our doorstep,” Emily replied.
Gabi glanced at Wade again, then shrugged. “I guess he’s good-looking in that HGTV, home repair guy way.”
Emily stared at her incredulously. “Are you blind?”
Just then Wade glanced up, his blue eyes glittering with amusement at his audience. “Hey, Boone, do I get paid extra for being a sideshow?”
“Only if you strip,” Boone replied.
“Oh, my God,” Emily whispered, stunned by the thought and deliberately exaggerating her reaction for effect.
Gabi stared at her impatiently. “Get a grip, Em.” Then she seemed to grasp that more might be going on here than she’d guessed. “Oh,” she said softly, then laughed. “You’re wasting your time.”
Emily regarded her with feigned confusion. “Meaning?”
“I know what you’re up to,” Gabi said.
Boone chuckled. “We all know what she’s up to. And I’m not jealous.”
Emily scowled at her sister, then gave Boone an indignant look. “As if I’d bother trying to make you jealous. Did I not promise you just yesterday that I would not play that sort of game?”
“A promise I took with a grain of salt,” Boone admitted.
“Does anybody here care about my suggestions for building the new cashier station?” Wade inquired, studying the three of them curiously.
“I care,” Gabi said. “And I may be the only female in the room who poses no danger to you.”
Wade gave her a very thorough, appreciative once-over, then commented, “Too bad.”
Gabi blinked in confusion at the flirtatious remark.
“Seems you caught his attention,” Emily said, chuckling at Gabi’s reaction. “Hard-to-get always works.”
“But I am hard to get,” Gabi said in an undertone, casting a worried frown in Wade’s direction. “I have a boyfriend.”
Emily just rolled her eyes. In her opinion, whoever this man was in Gabi’s life, he couldn’t be too important or he would have been here by now helping out. Instead, as far as she knew, he hadn’t even been checking in that regularly.
She observed as Gabi approached Wade with unexpected caution, as if his comment really had thrown her. “Interesting,” she murmured.
Beside her, Boone laughed. “Quite the little wrinkle in your plan, huh?”
“What plan?” she asked, maintaining her innocent posture, even though it had lost some of its credibility.
Rather than answering, he bent down and pressed an unexpected and way-too-brotherly kiss to her cheek. “That’s okay, sweetheart. I was maybe a tiny bit jealous for about two seconds.”
She frowned at his teasing. “I’m so relieved.”
She should have known better, of course. Boone had always been an uncomplicated, confident guy. He’d never liked games. As far as she knew he’d never once been unsure of himself when it came to her. He’d certainly never had any reason back then to be jealous.
What had made her think that feigning an interest in a friend of his would work now? Not that Wade hadn’t been interest-worthy. The man really was sexy as all get-out. She hoped Gabi noticed that. Emily thought he might be exactly what her sister needed to shake up her workaholic life. Wade obviously wasn’t what Emily needed to shake up Boone.
That was going to take an entirely different plan. She’d have to give it some more thought. Because Boone had been right about one thing—she didn’t have especially honorable intentions when it came to her promise to behave.
* * *
Cora Jane took a hurried step away from Jerry when Emily and Boone walked into the kitchen. A guilty blush crept into her cheeks. She had no idea why she felt that way over the fact that she and Jerry had grown closer or why she felt the need to keep her feelings from her granddaughters. Maybe she was just old-fashioned enough to believe that a late-in-life romance was a bit unseemly, that no one would understand.
Jerry glanced down at her, his amusement plain. “You don’t think they’ve figured out that something’s up with us?”
“Probably,” she admitted in an undertone, “but we don’t need to confirm it. I can live without the aggravation.”
He merely shook his head, his expression tolerant. “Your call.”
Cora Jane noted that Boone seemed oblivious, but Emily was studying the pair of them with suspicion.
“Did we interrupt something?” Emily asked.
“Not a thing,” Cora Jane said brightly. “Jerry just asked me to taste his crab soup to see if he’d made it too spicy.”
“And?” Jerry said, going along with her.
“Just right,” she said. She turned to Boone. “How’s Wade coming along in there?”
“He has some ideas for the new cabinetry,” Boone said. “He’s going over them now with Gabi.”