At one point, the waitress appeared with a bottle of chilled wine. It was Moët & Chandon Nectar Imperial Rose; Ty knew the label well. Sixty bucks a bottle, and that was if you bought it at Harris Teeter. “We didn’t order this,” he said, pushing the wine bucket away.

“The lady and gentleman at that table there sent it over. With their compliments,” the waitress said.

He looked up, and Kendra gave him a little finger wave. The Imperial Rose was her favorite, and it had triggered many a fight when they were practically penniless first-year law students at Carolina. Their friends were all in the same boat, living on ramen noodles and Hot Pockets. When they had parties, they were glad to swill whatever rotgut was on sale. But Kendra, who said life was too short to drink bad wine, would appear with a bottle of her Moët & Chandon, paid for with the money Boomer had transferred into their checking account every month.

“How nice,” Ellis murmured. Ty couldn’t send the bottle back, not without making a scene. So he allowed the waitress to pour Ellis a glass, but he’d be damned if he’d touch the stuff himself. Instead he asked for another draft Blue Dawg.

He emptied the glass in a couple of long swigs. Ellis sipped hers slowly.

A dead, awkward silence fell over the table. He thought he’d averted disaster, but he’d been wrong.

The waitress came back to their table. She was a local, with purple-streaked blond hair and too much black eyeliner and a tattoo of an octopus whose swirling tentacles slithered all the way across her chest and probably cost more than the girl made in a week working for Eddie. She looked down at their half-eaten meals and shrugged, although she didn’t bother to pick them up. “Dessert?” she asked, putting a large black slate on a stand on the table. “Eddie’s got fresh peach cobbler with homemade lemon-basil gelato, and the cheesecake tonight is turtle track, which means it’s done with toasted pecans and butterscotch topping…”

Ty gave Ellis a questioning glance. “I don’t know,” she started to say.

“Just the check, please,” Ty said brusquely.

And of course it took her forever to come back with the check. Ellis sipped her wine and Ty drummed the tabletop with his fingers, determined not to look over at Kendra’s table.

Finally, the waitress brought the check. He was tucking the cash in the leather-bound check holder, his escape imminent, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ryan get up from his table and start to approach.

Ty tried to calm himself. Even Fuckface had a right to go to the men’s room, and he couldn’t get there without passing the table where Ty and Ellis had been seated.

But no, Ryan stopped right beside their table. Ty stood and pulled Ellis’s chair out, his back to Ryan, determined to make his escape unscathed, even if it meant ignoring Fuckface.

“Hey Ty, buddy,” Ryan said, putting his hand on Ty’s sleeve, leaning in, talking low, confidentially. Like they were old pals. “Look, Kendra and I were just talking. We saw the notice about Ebbtide in the legal ads. Kendra was saying Ebbtide’s been in your family as long as Cedar Haven’s been in hers. Helluva note, losing it after all these years. Thing is, we’re in the market for a place of our own. So maybe we could help each other out.”

Ty froze. Could this really be happening?

Ryan reached into the inner pocket of his sport coat and came out with a sterling silver monogrammed card case. Somewhere, in the boxes he’d never unpacked after moving back to Nags Head, Ty had an identical card case, although with his own initials monogrammed on it. His had been a wedding gift from Kendra’s mother, who was never noted for her originality.

Now Ryan was holding out a business card, casually, between his thumb and forefinger. “Gimme a call, will ya? No need to let the bank take Ebbtide.”

Ty dropped the card onto Ellis’s plate of half-eaten swordfish. He took Ellis’s hand and pulled her not so gently away from the table. Away from a restaurant called Fish Food. And Kendra and her fuckface new husband and their sixty-dollar bottle of pink wine.

28

Ellis allowed herself to be rushed out of the restaurant and practically slung into Ty’s Bronco. She managed to keep her temper tamped down for maybe five minutes. Then she exploded.

“You own Ebbtide?”

He winced, then nodded. “I do. For now, anyway.”

“And Mr. Culpepper? Our crusty-but-kindly landlord?”

Ty sighed. “You’re looking at him.”

“This whole time? I’ve been e-mailing you? Asking Mr. Culpepper about you? Complaining about you?”

“Afraid so,” Ty admitted.

“Cute,” Ellis said, biting off the word. “I bet you think you’re really cute, pulling one over on me like that. I bet you’ve been laughing your ass off at me, over there in that garage of yours.”

“Look, it wasn’t just about you,” Ty said. “I never tell my tenants about Mr. Culpepper. If they knew the landlord lived just over the garage, I’d never get any peace. They’d be hammering on my door at midnight, bitching about the hot water heater, or the bugs, or any damned thing. Or they lose their key. And I’m supposed to drop what I’m doing because they can’t keep track of something as simple as a key? You wouldn’t believe what a pain in the ass people can be. This way, I’m just some anonymous slacker dude next door. If they want something from Culpepper, they have to e-mail him. And he takes care of it. Eventually.”

“And I’m the biggest pain in the ass of all, right?” Ellis said. “Bitching night and day.”

“Well, yeah, at first,” Ty said truthfully. “I mean, I thought you were a pain in the ass at first, but then, when I met you, well, it was different. Hey, I got you a new stove, didn’t I? And those dishes with the pink flowers? Those were my grandmother’s dishes, you know. And I wanted to tell you about Mr. Culpepper, I really did.”

“But you didn’t,” Ellis said, crossing her arms over her chest. Julia’s underwire bra was cutting into her rib cage, and the corset thing was tied so tightly she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t dare touch the ribbons lacing it together, for fear she’d explode out of the stinking thing. Why the hell had she let the girls talk her into this outfit? What was she doing with this loser, this liar?

“I was going to,” Ty said. “Like, tonight. I was going to tell you. But I didn’t get the chance.”

“Unbelievable,” Ellis said. She turned and stared out the window.

Eventually, they pulled into the crushed-shell driveway at Ebbtide. He parked the Bronco beside the garage, and before he could get out and come around to open her door, she opened it herself and was out of the car like a shot.

“Ellis,” he started.

“Thanks for dinner … Mr. Culpepper,” she said. It was all she could do to keep from running into the house. Anyway, she couldn’t have run in those damned high-heeled sandals Madison had loaned her. She walked, head up, back straight, just as fast as she could, without as much as a backward glance at Ty Bazemore, aka Mr. Culpepper. And when she got to the screen door at the house, its slam echoed in the still, hot, summer air.

*   *   *

Dorie and Julia heard the screen door slam from the kitchen, where they’d been playing a desultory game of Hearts.

“What the hell?” Julia said, glancing at the kitchen clock. It was barely nine o’clock.

They heard the furious tapping of the stiletto heels on the worn wooden hall floors, then heard them ascending the stairs, and then the second slam, of a bedroom door.

“Uh-oh,” Dorie said. “That can’t be good.”

“Damn,” Julia nodded in agreement. “And I had such high hopes.” She raised an eyebrow. “Do you think we should go up there and talk to her?”

“Ix-nay,” Dorie said, yawning. “If she wanted to talk about it, she’d come looking for us. You know how Ellis is.”