Holiday In the Hamptons (From Manhattan with Love 5)

Matilda reappeared and took the baby from her. “So where’s he taking you?”

“Sailing.”

“Oh, lucky you.” She slotted Rose onto her shoulder as naturally as if she’d been doing it forever. “Chase loves sailing with Seth.”

She’d loved it, too.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“No. He’s a skilled sailor. He and Chase got into difficulties once out in the bay, and it was Seth who got them out of it.”

“I wasn’t talking about the sailing. I mean, it’s crazy to do something a second time when it went badly wrong the first time.”

“Are you worried about him, or yourself?”

“Both of us.”

Even in the last twenty-four hours, things had changed.

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The discovery that he’d tried to contact her and that no one had told her was another piece of the jigsaw that explained some of the events back then.

“Maybe I should have invited him to join me for lunch with Grams and her friends. That would have scared him off.”

Matilda transferred the baby to her other shoulder. “Seth doesn’t strike me as a man who scares easily. You, on the other hand—”

“What? What about me?”

Matilda hesitated. “You don’t sound as if you’re planning a date, that’s all. You sound as if you’re preparing to defend yourself from attack. You’re not exploring the possibilities of a relationship, you’re formulating a battle plan.”

A battle plan?

Fliss thought about it while she walked Hero on the beach in front of Matilda’s house, and was still thinking about it when she returned to her grandmother’s house.

Her grandmother was in the kitchen with four women Fliss knew vaguely from the summers she’d spent here as a child.

“Sorry to disturb you. I came to walk Charlie. Everything okay, Grams?”

“Everything is good, thank you. You remember Martha? She owns the bakery on Main Street, although her daughter is mostly running it now. And Dora, who you’ll remember from the doctor’s office, and Jane and Rita, who used to live down the road but moved to East Hampton. You all know my granddaughter.” She eyed Fliss, taking her cue from her, and Fliss gave a faint smile.

She’d given up on subterfuge.

“I’m Fliss,” she said. “Hello, ladies.” She murmured a generic greeting, hoping that Dora had forgotten the time she’d visited the clinic with poison oak, having brushed against the leaves on her way to meet Seth. “You seem to be having fun. Cookies from Cookies and Cream?”

“Of course. They’re the best. Apart from the ones your sister makes, of course. And we only do this twice a month, so we’re allowed a treat.”

“Twice a month? So this is a regular thing?”

“We meet once to play poker, and once for our book group. We prefer to meet at lunchtime because we all go to bed early.”

Fliss stared at the cards on the table. “Poker?”

“We are the Poker Princesses, didn’t you know?”

Fliss hoped her mouth wasn’t open. “No,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“Why so surprised?” Her grandmother studied her over the rim of her glasses. “You think poker is something played by men throbbing with testosterone in a smoke-filled room, is that it?”