The music slowed from its exhausting pace into a gentler but still intoxicating reggae song. This, at last, was the right music, she thought. The melody of sun-baked islands and warm nights and people who never, ever wore parkas.
Summer realized they were no longer on the floor. There was grass under her feet as she danced, and the music, though still loud, had softened a little. It was darker now, and Adam was closer. Inches separated them, and his eyes were focused on hers. She looked down, embarrassed, but this time she didn’t feel like being embarrassed, so she looked up and met his gaze.
The music paused between songs. Summer felt something rough at her back and leaned against the tree. Adam came closer.
“You are very, very beautiful,” Adam said. He made no attempt to hide the fact that his eyes were taking in her entire body. “Are you sure you don’t have a boyfriend?”
“I’m sure,” Summer said, her voice a distant, Minnie Mouse squeak.
Adam leaned first one hand and then the other against the tree, imprisoning her.
Now would be the time to say, “Hey, hold up, I barely know you,” Summer told herself. Yes, now would be the time. Right now, before he leaned any closer.
This time when he kissed her it wasn’t the quick, almost playful kiss she’d felt earlier. This time he really kissed her. And the music started up again, soft but insistent. He kissed her and to her utter amazement, Summer kissed him back.
Something hit Summer on her right side. She staggered and nearly tripped over a body.
“Whoa, sorry.” A guy scrambled up, standing awkwardly in the very small space between Summer and Adam. “I tripped. Over a root or something. Adam, dude, you ought to talk to your gardener about that. A guy could get killed.”
“You been drinking, Mr. Moon?” Adam asked, taking a step back.
Summer peered through the darkness. Yes, it was Seth. Seth! Possibly the last person on earth she wanted to see right at this moment. What was he doing here?
“Hey, it’s Summer,” Seth said. “Summer from Minnesota.”
“Hi. Again,” Summer said. For reasons she couldn’t immediately explain, she felt guilty. Feeling guilty just made her feel angry.
Seth smiled a little lopsidedly. “So, I see you’re getting to know people, making friends and all.” He rolled his eyes exaggeratedly at Adam.
“Good-bye, Seth,” Adam said tersely. “Great seeing you again, welcome anytime and so on.”
“I was just going to ask Summer to dance,” Seth said.
“She’s busy.”
“That’s very disappointing.” Seth shrugged.
Suddenly a new sound mixed in with the music, then rose louder still. Shouting, one voice loudly enraged and other voices trying to instill calm. Summer saw a disturbance on the far side of the dance floor.
“Sounds like Ross has gone off again,” Seth said, not unkindly.
Adam bit his lip and glanced uncertainly at Summer.
“Go on, deal with it,” Seth said to Adam. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to take her anywhere.”
The noise was beginning to sound like a fight, with shouts of encouragement from at least two sides.
Adam cursed. “I’ll be back. Don’t let Mr. Moon here give you any crap.”
“What’s happening?” Summer asked Seth.
Seth shrugged. “Oh, Ross is drunk and picking fights. Drunk or high, or maybe E: all of the above.”
“Adam’s brother?”
“Yeah. It happens.” Seth looked uncomfortable. “So, um, sorry if I broke anything up. Not real sorry, though.”
“I’m not sorry,” Summer said before she’d had a chance to think about it. “Not that…I mean…” She sighed. “Forget it.”
“Okay. Forgotten. So, you want to dance? It looks like the fight is getting under control. Besides, it’s way over there.”
“I don’t know if I should dance any more,” Summer said. She felt as if she were coming out of a trance. It was a disturbing feeling, like thinking you’d been talking in your sleep and wondering what people might have heard.
“Take it slow, Minnesota,” Seth said kindly. “You know, all this down here gets to people sometimes. Warm nights, ocean breezes in the palm trees, that whole tropical thing…you might just forget who you are. Forgetting who you are is the whole idea of Crab Claw Key.”
Summer blushed. “I did not forget who I was,” she said. She said it with extra conviction because it wasn’t true. “And unlike certain people, I don’t forget I have a girlfriend I’ve been going with for four years.”
Seth winced. “Look, what I told you was true—I did break up with Lianne. Only…I guess she doesn’t want to accept it.”
“Poor you,” Summer said sarcastically. “I guess she can’t give you up because you’re just so wonderful. And you say I’m the one who’s forgetting who they are?”
Seth nodded glumly. “Yeah, I guess I deserved that. Okay. Cool. I’m just saying look out for that tropical effect, that tropical rot. It eats away at everything, so that things here deteriorate faster, fall apart faster, and then it all grows back faster and wilder than before. The old stuff disappears.” He snapped his fingers. “And before you know it, something new has shot up overnight to take its place.”
“I’m a grown person,” Summer said sharply. “I think I can make my own decisions.”
Seth pulled off his cap and made an exaggerated bow. “I apologize. None of my business.”
“That’s right, none of your business,” Summer said.
He started to walk away, then he turned back. “Just for your information, I didn’t lie to you.”
Summer met his gaze, and suddenly she was back in the airport, with his mouth on hers, feeling a surge of something she’d never felt before that moment.
He looked as if he was telling the truth. His eyes didn’t waver or turn away.
Adam had asked her to wait for him. Seth was drawing her closer with just his gaze….
Suddenly there was a loud, feminine squeal. A look of confusion clouded Seth’s face, then was quickly replaced by dread or embarrassment or both.
“Sethie!” the voice squealed again.
“Lianne?” he said in a whisper.
A girl appeared, running joyfully, arms outstretched like something from a slow-motion movie. She was short, but with that uniquely petite perfection. Pale, almost translucent skin. Dark red hair that fell over her shoulders in a luxuriant wave. She was wearing shorts and a cropped top.
She leapt on Seth, wrapping her bare legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. He supported her minimal weight by linking his hands beneath her bottom.
“Are you surprised?” Lianne asked gleefully. “I decided to come down a few days early. I just couldn’t stand to be separated a minute longer.”
She kissed him, a peck on each cheek, then a long, slow kiss.
It may have been that Seth was trying to push her away. It may have been that he tried to avoid her kisses. But Summer had seen enough. She turned on her heel and walked away.
At a safe distance, from under the dark shadows of the trees, she looked back. Seth and Lianne were standing close, deep in conversation. Then Seth turned and walked a short distance. He hesitated. Summer saw his shoulders sag.
Lianne went to him and looked up at his face. A red lantern was just above them, and it cast a shadowy pink light on Lianne’s pretty features.
Lianne put her arms around Seth. His arms hung limp. And then, just barely tall enough to look over Seth’s shoulder, Lianne aimed her gaze directly at Summer. It was impossible at that distance to read her expression.
Summer shrank back against the nearest tree trunk. Lianne couldn’t possibly see her even there in the dark, could she?
And yet, for just a fleeting moment, despite the hot night, Summer felt a chill.
She spotted Seth a few times after that, drinking soda, talking to people, dancing a little with Lianne and other girls. But he said nothing to Summer.
And Summer said nothing to him. She didn’t care about Seth Warner. And now, she assured herself, she would be able to put the airport incident behind her for good.
She was wandering around on the steps leading up to the main door of the estate house, hoping for a clue to the nearest bathroom, when she ran into Adam.
“There you are,” Adam said, appearing at the bottom of the stone steps. He was wearing a shirt now, and he looked subdued.
“Hi,” she said.
“Were you looking for me?” Adam asked.
Summer hesitated and Adam laughed. “I guess not,” he said ruefully.
“I was sort of looking for a bathroom, but I’d rather find you,” she said hastily. She winced. “I don’t think that came out exactly the way I meant it.”
“You meant I was second runner-up behind a bathroom. That’s okay,” he said. “I can live with that. Come on.”
He trotted up the stairs and took her hand. He led her to the door and used a key to unlock it. “We usually just let the party guests use the bathrooms by the pool house. I have to keep the doors of the main house locked or Manolo will kill me. He’s the butler, all-around guy in charge of the house. He’s the real boss.”
They entered an arched atrium and set off down a long hallway. It was like stepping directly out of Florida and clear across time and space to nineteenth-century New England. The senator’s tastes obviously didn’t embrace the lighter, looser Florida look. The walls were lined with alternating gilt-framed floor-to-ceiling mirrors and paintings, all more or less gloomy portraits of stern-looking men.
“The Merrick clan,” Adam said, noticing her awed expression. “There’s a set just like them in the New Hampshire house. All the dead Merrick men. Someday I’ll be there too, looking old and serious. That guy there?” He pointed. “That’s Aubrey Merrick. He used to import slaves, back in like 1795 or something. He didn’t approve of slavery, of course, but business was business.”
“Wow” was all Summer could think to say.
“And that guy, the guy with the whiskers, he was cool. He sort of made up for old Aubrey. That’s Josiah. He died with the Maine boys on Little Round Top at Gettysburg. Took three bullets and was still yelling and shooting rebels when he keeled over dead.”
“I saw that movie,” Summer said. Her eyes met Adam’s and they both laughed. It was a relief to laugh.
“Someday in the year 2090 or whatever, some young Merrick guy will be walking along with some girl he’s trying to impress and point to me. ‘That’s Adam Merrick. Never did a damned thing.’”
“Maybe you’ll do something,” Summer said.
Adam smirked. “Yeah, maybe. If they decide to hold another civil war, I’m there.”
“And then you’ll be in the new movie. Played by Josh Hartnett or someone.”
“Do you like Josh Hartnett?” Adam asked.
“Yeah. He’s cute, I guess. I mean, um, he’s a good actor.”
“You know, when you blush like that it makes me want to kiss you again,” Adam said.
“I thought you were showing me a bathroom.”
“Oh, right.” They reached the end of the hallway and entered a vast, open room, two floors high. Rough wood beams, each as big as a full-size tree, supported the ceiling. The walls were paneled in dark wood. The furniture, though there was a lot of it, seemed lost in the space. At one side of the room was a fireplace, fire roaring under a granite mantel that reminded Summer of pictures of Stonehenge.
“You must have the only fireplace in this state,” Summer said.
“Certainly the only one in use when it’s in the high eighties outside,” Adam agreed. “My dad likes fires. So the staff lights it every night, whether he’s here or not, no matter how hot it is outside.” He laughed. “Seems slightly absurd, right?”
“Maybe. But I’m starting to get the feeling that it takes an awful lot to seem absurd around this place.”
Adam laughed his easy laugh. “Ah, you’re starting to get the picture. See, I know what you mean. I guess New Hampshire is similar to Minnesota in a lot of ways. It makes you slightly schizo going back and forth between the ‘normal’ world and this island.”
“Seth said something kind of like that,” Summer said. She instantly regretted mentioning Seth.
Adam just rolled his eyes slightly. He pointed to a small door, almost invisible in the paneling. “There you go. At least I think that’s a bathroom.”
“How many are there in this house?”
“Twenty-one, I think. We have like twenty-six at the New Hampshire house. We thought that many would be too ostentatious for Florida, though.” He laughed to show that he was just kidding.
But somehow for Summer, the fact that this one family had a total of forty-seven bathrooms (possibly more because who knew if they owned other houses?) was deeply impressive. Forty-seven bathrooms. Forty-seven rolls of toilet paper. They must buy it in truckloads.
When she came back, she found Adam standing a few feet from the fire. It made a dark silhouette of his body, accentuating the heavy shoulders, the muscular torso. Even in silhouette he exuded easy confidence, something bred in him, something that announced to the world that here was a person without self-doubt, without awkwardness, without self-consciousness.
It drew Summer to him, and yet frightened her just a little. He was so different from other guys her own age. He could easily be twenty-five, or even forty.
Maybe being rich made it possible to just sort of glide by all the little tortures of teenagehood. After all, Summer realized, Adam didn’t worry about getting work, or getting accepted to college, or paying for college, or whether he could afford to buy cool clothes, or if his folks would get him a car. If he ever got a zit, they probably flew in a whole team of dermatologists to get rid of it.
He noticed her and turned. “Was it a bathroom?”
“No, it was a closet, but I went anyway,” she said, and he laughed. She wasn’t going to act all impressed and inferior with him. Just because he could probably buy her entire family with his weekly allowance.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked.
“I don’t drink very much,” Summer said.
“That’s probably good. Booze is our favorite family vice. I don’t drink because it makes me break out in hives.” He laughed. “Seriously. It’s not a pretty sight.”
“I guess I should get back outside and see what Marquez is doing,” Summer suggested.
“Marquez can take care of herself.” He shook his head slowly, amused. “She’s very cool. Just don’t ever make her mad. The girl has a temper. One of those ice-cold tempers, you know?”
“She’s been really nice to me,” Summer said. “Like bringing me here.”
“I’m very glad she did that,” Adam said.
Summer debated whether to ask the next question. It could ruin things instantly, and her impertinent questions had ruined other relationships before. “Do you try to pick up just any new girl that shows up around here?”
He looked startled. “You mean you think I’m trying to impress you and score with you so that I can add another notch to my belt?”
“I guess that’s what I mean,” Summer said. “Some guys are like that.” She could think of at least one by name.
“Maybe I should ask you a question. Are you trying to make it with me so that you can tell all your friends you dated Adam Merrick? Or perhaps even go to the National Enquirer and sell the story: ‘My Hot Affair with Boy Billionaire’?”
Summer recoiled. “Why would you think that?”
“It happens,” Adam said. “Just like it happens that some guys, whether or not they happen to come from a wealthy family, try to see how many girls they can pick up.”
“Oh. I guess you’re right. I guess that is true, isn’t it?”
“I’ll tell you the absolute truth, cross my heart and hope to die. I saw you sitting there, looking lost on that Jet Ski, and I instantly thought ‘What an idiot. How could she manage to get stuck o
ut here like this?’”
“That’s very flattering.”
“Then I jumped in to help you—admittedly I was happy to have an excuse to put my arms around you, since we’re being honest here—and…” He made a wry face. “And something just happened. It felt like something I wanted to do again. And when you talked, it was this voice that I wanted to hear again. And when you spit seawater out of your mouth, it was a mouth I wanted to kiss. And then I did kiss you, and wanted to kiss you again. Like I do now.”
Summer swallowed once. Twice. “We’d better not,” she said. “It’s all kind of…tropical.”
“Tropical?”
“I mean, we haven’t even had a date or anything.”
Adam slapped his forehead. “I knew I’d forgotten something! Would you go out with me? Tomorrow? No, wait, day after tomorrow.” He took Summer’s hands in his. “Would you go out with me?”
“Yes,” Summer said, sounding weirdly stiff. “That would be excellent.”
It was about one in the morning when Marquez finally tired out. Half the people at the party had already left, and Marquez found Summer asleep, leaning back against a tree trunk with an empty Mountain Dew in her hand, her now dry but still misshapen dress laid over her like a blanket.
For a moment Marquez considered playing some prank on the gently snoring girl, but she was too weary to think of anything and besides, Summer wasn’t a person you could be mean to.
She knelt and shook Summer’s arm.
“What?”
“Time to wake up. We should get going. This guy I know with a truck said he’d give us a lift.”
“What?” Summer repeated. She was looking around with that confused where-am-I look.
Marquez took her hand and pulled her to her feet. They headed for the driveway, where a battered red pickup truck was idling. In the cab beside the driver were two other guys Marquez knew from school.
“You’re going to make us ride in the back?” Marquez asked. “What gentlemen.”
“James here is probably going to hurl,” the driver pointed out. “You’ll be safer in the back.”