Page 28 of Star-Crossed
“I remember the fella,” Sheila rasped in a voice created by decades of smoking things she ought not to. “Charming. Great dresser. Smooth talker. Until that sexy mechanic laid him out with one punch for disrespecting your sister.”
Lyra smothered her shame with a derisive snort of laughter, though the memory lent her very little levity. “He was good at hiding his true nature until he came to Townsend Harbor.”
Was he, though? Or had she just accepted some of his behavior because she’d been dazzled by his pedigree and bank account?
Not a question she wanted to analyze at brunch. Or without her therapist.
“This place will do that to a person,” Kiki said from Lyra’s left, her lithe body leaned back on the chair, one ankle crossed over her knee. “People come to Townsend Harbor to find something like a vacation, a place to hide, a place to find peace, but they usually just end up finding themselves.”
“Or showing their ass, in Harrison’s case,” Lyra muttered.
Myrtle pointed across the lawn. “Speaking of, Braedon is watering the hydrangeas.”
They turned to see the kid who’d parroted Myrtle’s cuss word had abandoned his elastic jeans and pullups and was trying to aim his stream of pee at a specific blossom above his head.
“That’s my cue.” Marty pushed himself up from his chair, abandoning his half-eaten breakfast.
Cy had already beelined for the tinkling kid, and instead of freaking out or humiliating him, he lowered the flower to stream height and let the boy finish before sweeping him up beneath the armpits and conducting him toward the house. “Next time, we’ll remember that we only water the Cheerios in the potty, yeah?”
“But you peed in the backyard at Papa Marty’s!” the kid protested loudly.
“That’s because everyone else had fish taco food poisoning and all four bathrooms were full,” Cy explained in the direction of the adults.
“That was a stinky day,” the wriggling kid announced.
“Yeah,” Cy agreed. “That was the stinkiest day.”
Marty caught up with his son and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll grab the diaper bag and meet you in there.”
As the men disappeared into the house, Lyra could swear her ovaries released an egg into the chute.
What waswithher lady bits lately?
“Don’t see something like that every day, huh?” Kiki’s gentle aside broke Lyra out of her thousand-yard gaze at the now-empty doorway.
“Whaa?” She stared at the woman who shared intense, dark eyes with her brother and tried to decipher how weirded out she was that Kiki had noticed.
The native woman was pushing forty, and wore her hair in a smooth ponytail similar to what Lyra was fond of, with a few tendrils free to sweep at her high, proud cheekbones. She relaxed in jeans, a fitted tee, and hiking boots, but still managed to emanate the authority her position as county sheriff afforded her.
“Men handling the preschooler emergency while all the women stay in their seats to eat.”
Lyra shook her head, struck oddly dumb. She and Gemma were the product of a couple of older, professional, only children, and they’d grown up without cousins.
Her folks had parented like all the books told them to, making sure they hit medical and development metrics on time and loving them both honestly, absolutely, with just a little bit of that all-American Gen X aloofness.
All in all, it had been fine. Good. And equitable.
But even in their progressive household, Mom had been the she-fault parent.
Lyra hadn’t realized she’d yet to tear her gaze away from the door through which the men had disappeared until Myrtle spoke with her usual cringy candor. “Our Cy must be killing it with the ladies,” she speculated. “Thought he’d follow in Marty’s footsteps and find a college sweetheart to make beautiful brown babies with.”
Lyra almost choked, side-eyeing Kiki to gauge her reaction.
The sheriff was staring back ather.
“Cy doesn’t really date,” she said with a shrug, lacing her fingers over her ribs. “At least…not for a good long while.”
“Well sure!” Myrtle said around a bite. “He’s probably sowing some oats. Laying some pipe. Pollinating the old—”
