Guessing his train of thought, Alice was swift to say, “I don’t know what this all means long term, okay? I have a job I love, and problems I can’t solve living here at Shifting Sands.” Damn his chest... even with her body humming and satiated, Alice wanted nothing more than to lay her hands over those gorgeous muscles and push him back down on the bed. Instead, she reached for her clothing and began to get dressed.
Did he look hurt? Alice couldn’t guess behind the frown on his face or his stony silence, but just the idea of it made her stomach clench. “It’s not that I don’t...” she wasn’t going to say that she loved him again. That would only make it harder to leave. “I’m really... I don’t want you to think...”
She didn’t want to leave.
Graham and his naked chest closed the distance between them and he put his hand gently on either side of her face. This made it very challenging to continue getting dressed and Alice stopped trying.
“You don’t have to know,” Graham said softly. “We can take it a day at a time.”
Alice surprised herself with a rush of warmth and desire. “Yeah,” she agreed breathlessly. And that was as long as she could resist his shirtless self, slipping her arms up around his broad shoulders to kiss him. In short order, they had peeled each other out of the clothing they’d just put on and he was showing her how to make the most of those days that they were taking one at a time.
Hours later, freshly showered and still somehow smelling of strawberries, Alice found herself at the buffet.
She took a second baked chicken leg from the buffet, considered putting it back, and then took a third one out of spite.
Spite, or appetite, she thought; she’d skipped breakfast to shamelessly make Graham late for work.
She considered a fourth chicken leg and decided that she should save room for dessert instead. Graham had mentioned a fresh crop of strawberries...
Mary and Amber had their heads together with Laura and Jenny at one of the larger tables and Alice thought they were waving her over until she realized they were trying to catch the attention of the woman behind her.
“Magnolia,” Laura called. “Could we talk to you a moment?”
Magnolia looked like she had never turned down a fourth chicken leg in her life. Or possibly a tenth.
They sat down opposite from each other at the table, Magnolia with a tray heaping with fine cheeses and fruit and fluffy sweetbread, Alice with her pile of chicken legs and a four-inch-high sandwich. Jenny had her laptop open in front of her and was busily typing.
“I’m Alice.” Alice was never sure how long to wait for someone else to introduce her, and generally did so herself.
“Magnolia,” the other woman greeted with a gracious smile and an elegant fingershake. “You’re Graham’s mate.”
Alice blinked at her, momentarily speechless. No one else had said as much aloud after the first terrible day, and it felt weird to hear it. “Yeah,” she agreed. Mate was as good a classification as anything, she decided. She didn’t feel like a girlfriend.
Magnolia smiled at her, and Alice thought dazedly that she’d never been at the receiving end of a smile that lovely and sincere before. “I’m delighted to meet you,” the woman said. “Graham needs a little goodness in his life like you.”
No one had ever called Alice ‘a little goodness’ before, but she supposed that if anyone could, it was Magnolia, who probably outweighed her by two hundred pounds.
“What did you need, darling?” Magnolia asked Jenny.
Jenny lowered her voice and they all leaned into the table when she did. “It’s a bit of a delicate question,” she confessed. “But we’re trying to raise money to buy the island. We’ve recently found out that Graham is Grant Lyons, and he gets first refusal of a sale by contract. If we can get enough people together, we’d be able to buy it outright and we’d never have to worry about Beehag breaking the lease or selling it out from under us.”
She went on hastily. “I’m drawing up contracts that would give investors a stake in the resort, and we can talk about terms and such, but... is that something you’d be interested in? Something you could help with?”
Magnolia looked thoughtful, but not entirely happy.
“Is there are reason that it isn’t Scarlet herself telling me this?” she asked suspiciously.
“She doesn’t know,” Laura admitted. “It’s a long shot, but we’re trying to surprise her.”
Magnolia laughed in delight. “I love a good surprise,” she said eagerly. Then she sobered. “But I’m afraid there’s very little I can pledge. My money comes from a trust that I have limited access to. I don’t have any savings I can reach, and my lease payment here is almost my entire monthly payout.”
Everyone at the table gave a sigh of regret. “I understand,” Jenny said. “We’ll keep looking.”
Magnolia inspected a be-ringed hand thoughtfully. “I have some jewelry. It won’t be much compared to the asking price of the island, but it’s yours, no contract needed. Scarlet should own the island.”
“Saina’s offered to fence anything we can get together,” Laura said gratefully. “Bastian’s got her looking for buyers for part of his hoard. We’ll put our insurance settlement in, if we can ever get it litigated. Fred managed to get a fancy law firm in New York to defend his estate, so there have been problems.”
“We’re also writing to all the survivors of Beehag’s zoo,” Mary explained. “They all owe Scarlet for her hospitality, and this would be a great way to repay it.”