opted to adopt the pragmatic “what happens, happens” attitude.
Until then, she’d chill, do her caretaking thing. Which meant she needed to ensure her brother, Matt, crossed paths as often as possible with her friend Candy and encourage her other friend Sara to occasionally pry herself off her laptop.
Speaking of which, time to call the mother ship and see how things were going. She flipped open her cell phone and punched in the speed-dial for Sara.
“Hello?”
“It’s El. Expecting it was your uncle calling again, hmm? Everything going okay?” She nudged her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. “Hey, guess who’s looking for hot-bodied extras?”
“Johnny Depp?”
“I wish. Seriously, Sin on the Beach.”
“Cool!”
“Yeah, remember that festival we read about? Well, Sin is holding an open audition for extras. Better yet, everybody who gets hired also wins a scad of festival points.”
“Ellie Rockwell, I see your name in lights.”
“I’m not wicked and cool enough,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Hey, I’ll bring one of these flyers back to the house. There are all kind of games and competitions.” And she knew just the people to sign up, too—Matt and Candy.
“Gotta go,” Sara suddenly said. “Someone’s waiting.”
“Tell your Uncle Spence it’s your first day on vacation! Girlfriend, you deserve a day off.”
“Yeah, like you ever close Dark Gothic Roast. Anyway, it’s not Uncle Spence.”
“Who is it?”
Pause. “Ellie, your goal is to matchmake Candy, not me.”
A pause could only mean one thing….
“Sara Montgomery, you wanton mortgage broker you. You landed a guy! While sitting alone at the beach house! You rule.”
Sara laughed and signed off.
Ellie shook her head. And here she’d been pondering how to help Sara relax, have some fun. Appeared Sara was a lot more resourceful than Ellie had given her credit for.
She started to slip her cell into her shorts’ pocket, hesitated, then punched in the speed-dial for Dark Gothic Roast. Overhead, seagulls squawked and circled as a little boy tossed pieces of bread from a bag. Nearby, construction workers hammered, drilled, called out to each other as they worked on the festival site.
“Dark Gothic Roast,” answered a female voice.
“Hey!” yelled a male voice. “That your Benz?”
Ellie looked around. “Tish, El. How’s it going?”
A groan. “Kiefer called in sick and I ended up handling the morning rush by myself.”
“Hey,” boomed the male voice again. “I’m talking to you. Miss Spiky Black Hair.”
As if that left any doubt who he meant. As Tish droned on about the espresso machine making a “funny sound,” Ellie scanned the area. None of the construction workers seemed interested in her. Nor did the nearby jocks tossing a Frisbee.
Wait.
There.
The guy in the Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a buffed, brown and extremely hairy chest, was staring directly at her.
“It sounds kind of like keee-keee klunk,” continued Tish, “and it only does it if I’m steaming milk longer than twenty seconds….”
Ellie stared at the man. Something about him looked familiar.
“I suppose I could stop steaming sooner,” said Tish, “but then there’d be no froth and you know how some customers would get if their lattes were flat….”
The man smiled, and Ellie’s heart ratcheted in her chest.
Only one man in the world had a smile like that.
Impossible…and yet…it was him.
Bill Romero.
He was older—seventeen years to be exact—bigger and hotter than the boy she remembered. The rough-around-the-edges guy had morphed into a body like The Rock, with the too-cool aura of a Lenny Kravitz. He leaned against a palm tree, the breezes billowing open his shirt whose bright yellow flowers looked like pats of melting butter on his choca-mocha-latte skin.
“El, what should I do about the espresso machine?”
Ellie cleared her suddenly parched throat. “Turn up the steam,” she rasped before terminating the call.
“That your Benz?” he called out again.
Ah, the voice. It hadn’t really changed. That deep, rumbling tone and clipped rhythm, so familiar it made her insides squeeze. How many nights had she lain in her childhood bed, her window open on the off chance she’d overhear Bill talking with a pal or family member. The summer she turned twelve, when he was eighteen, she must have written more journals than Anais Nin. Page after page filled with fantasies of her first kiss—her first everything—with him.
“Benz,” he repeated, mistaking her silence for not hearing him clearly. “Over there!” He pointed.
Ellie stared at his raised arm. So big, so brown, two-thirds of it covered with a massive tattoo. She couldn’t really see the details this far away, but could tell it was colorful, bold and elaborate.
Unlike her tattoos, which were hidden, secretive.
Sea breezes brushed and stroked her, making her realize all the areas of her skin that were bare. In the distance, she heard waves crashing, the fading away of a girl’s laughter.
Finally remembering to breathe, Ellie looked to where he was pointing. At the far end of the patch of tarmac sat a gleaming silver Mercedes. She had the momentary urge to laugh—did she really look like the kind of woman who drove a Benz? She looked back at him, wondering if, behind those dark shades, his eyes still looked like melted pools of chocolate.
“No,” she called out, her voice breathy, unrecognizable. “Not mine.”
He pushed himself off the palm tree—did his biceps ripple when he moved?—and stared at her. The sun glinted off an earring. That was new, too. And for a crazy moment, she wondered if he remembered her. No, no way. Back then, she’d been freckled and mousy-haired. Hardly the goth chick he was talking to right now.
Besides, they’d only really spoken once, that memorable summer night she’d worked up the nerve to ask if what she’d heard was true, was he was really moving far away? Her girl’s heart had shattered into a million pieces when he’d said yes, he was moving to New York to start film school.
