He laughed. “So when people think they’re chatting with your clients, it’s really you?”
“Most of the time.” She broke off another piece of cookie, thought about her curvaceous figure and Ty Gadney’s muscles and almost put it back. Marieka certainly would have. Marieka rarely ate more than a few bites in front of a man. But she wasn’t Marieka, so she took a bite instead. “YaYa, my grandmother, became a computer whiz after she retired, but she just can’t grasp someone being so busy that she’d pay me to ‘speak’ for her.”
“Me, neither, actually,” Ty said. “Shop? You bet. I hate going into stores. Do research, plan parties, take care of my bills, sure. But I can’t imagine wanting someone else to do my talking for me.”
“My clients are mostly public figures. Their jobs require a certain amount of public interaction, but they don’t have either the time or the temperament to sit at a computer and do social media.”
“Interesting. Next time I see my favorite quarterback tweeting, I’ll wonder if it’s really him.” He polished off his first cookie and then glanced at his watch. “Man, I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a big date tonight, and I can’t be late.”
“A big one, huh?” Of course he had a date. He was gorgeous. It was Saturday. Living, breathing women lived in this town. Nev wouldn’t have thought otherwise. How long had it been since she’d had a big date? Four months? Six?
“Yeah, Granddad can’t stand to miss the beginning of a movie.” He flashed that bright smile at her again. “It’s been nice meeting you, Nev Wilson.” He picked up the lone cookie left in the wrapper. “Granddad can’t stand a day without one of Liz’s cookies, either. I’ll see you again.”
That last seemed a bit presumptuous—he didn’t know where she was staying, what she would be doing, how long she would be there, because even she didn’t know those things—but the thought was lost as she watched the back view of him on the way to his car. Snug-fitting jeans, long legs, muscular everything...sigh.
Seeing him again would be a benefit.
But it didn’t change the reason she was here.
Her next sigh was heavy and morose.
Chapter 2
Nev had reviewed online the accommodations available in Copper Lake and settled on the Heart of Copper Lake Motel. If she’d had some of Marieka’s money to splurge, she would have opted for The Jasmine, an antebellum mansion turned bed-and-breakfast. It would be nice to see how the one percent lived. But a night at The Jasmine cost as much as five nights at the motel, and she didn’t intend to spend a lot of time in a room.
She checked in and unloaded her luggage in room ten—too many bags for a stay of undetermined length, but she had to be prepared for anything, YaYa had insisted, from sightseeing to interviewing people for information to a night on the town. Sure, as if Nev spent lots of nights on the town. She took the time to hang up her dresses and then headed out to her car again and drove Carolina Avenue from one end of town to the other, before taking River Road to the north edge and then the south.
She drove through neighborhoods of houses that ranged from small mansion to shack and everything in between. She passed at least one church for every three bars, noted nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, schools and historic sites, businesses of every sort. Some of it she knew from the website. Some she’d never seen before. Some she knew from her dreams.
The sun was low on the horizon when finally she pulled into the parking lot of the riverside park. A woman sat on a blanket underneath a live oak, an electronic reader in one hand, while two kids climbed on the pirate ship nearby. She glanced up with a courteous smile when Nev passed, and then she went back to her book.
Nev walked to the edge of the asphalt path and gazed at the river a few yards away. The Gullah was lazy, not too wide, giving the impression it had nowhere to go and was in no hurry to get there. A few small boats puttered toward docks jutting into the water on the other side, weekend fishermen calling it a day.
It smelled familiar. Important. A century ago it would have been vital to the logging industry that had made fortunes here. Two centuries ago it would have played a major role in the decision to found the town here. People had used it to irrigate their crops and ship them to market. They’d culled fish from the water for their meals. Kids had swum in it. Folks had been baptized in it. It had given life, and it had taken life.
It held secrets.
She stood there so long that her feet began to ache, and awareness slowly crept over her. Floodlights buzzed in the parking lot, and sound—music, voices—came from a nearby restaurant whose deck hung over the river. The sun had set more quickly than she’d expected, and then a glance at her watch showed that, no, she’d been lost in the river longer than she’d realized.
The dusky evening wrapped around her, making her shudder, reminding her of the suffocating closeness of the dream, and she spun on her heels and hurried to her car. Though she was only a few hundred feet off River Road, though there were people within shouting distance, she felt frighteningly vulnerable and alone, and the sensation didn’t ease until she’d locked herself inside the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
No fan of eating in a restaurant by herself, she stopped at a drive-through for comfort food: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and golden buttery biscuits. Back in her room, she kicked off her shoes, her arches giving a little spasm of relief, and sat on the bed to eat, the television tuned to a movie she’d seen so many times that she didn’t need to pay attention.
She’d cleaned her plate, washed her face, changed into a nightgown and was about to settle in bed for mindless channel surfing when her cell rang. Muting the TV, she smiled as she answered, “Hello, YaYa.”
“Do you have a special ringtone so you know it’s me before you answer?”
“I don’t have special ringtones for anyone.”
“I need my own ring. Soon as you get back, give me your phone and I’ll hook you up. Every single person in my smartphone has her own ring. Rachelle’s is that Elton John song about the bitch.”
Her matter-of-fact tone choked a laugh from Nev. Rachelle Newton was YaYa’s neighbor, competitor in everything from cooking to gardening to tweeting and best friend she loved to hate. “YaYa! What if she finds out?”
“Oh, she knows. Her ringtone for me is ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.’ She wishes.” Immediately she changed direction. “What do you think of Copper Lake?”
“Same thing I thought when I left Atlanta this afternoon. I’d rather not be here.”
“See anything that looked familiar?”
“Everything, just about.”
“What’s your plan?”
Nev bent one knee to massage her foot. Heels killed her feet, but they were her only real vanity. She wasn’t as tall as Marieka. She wasn’t as thin as Marieka. She wasn’t as beautiful as Marieka. But she had good legs and reasonably pretty feet, as far as feet went, and she loved heels. “I don’t have a plan, beyond going to church in the morning.”
The words surprised her more than her grandmother.
