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Boats Shelter Island is linked to the South Fork by the South Ferry (www.southferry.com) and Greenport by the North Ferry (www.northferry.com). Boat-owning seafarers can take the Long Island Sound and moor up somewhere in Peconic Bay or Gardiners Bay, depending on which Hampton they are visiting. He likes you.” The woman looked at him with surprise and dawning respect. “Dr. Steve says you’re helping him out. Said you were a big-shot vet who worked in some animal hospital in California.” If she’d had to find one word to describe him it would be angry. And she’d never understood it. She got mad from time to time, so did her brother, but there was always a cause. With her father, there was no cause for the anger. It was as if he rose in the morning and bathed in it. He wanted the conversation they should have had a decade before. He wanted answers to the questions that had lain dormant in his head. Most of all, he wanted closure. Unsettled, she dragged her gaze to his face. His nose had a slight bump in it thanks to a football injury the summer before, and he had a scar on his chin where he’d head-butted a surfboard and needed fourteen stitches.
If I leave your father, I’ll lose you. He’d make sure I don’t get custody, and I don’t have the money or influence to fight that. Had he? Remembering the detail, Fliss felt color flood her cheeks. There were things she hadn’t even told her twin. Things she hadn’t told anyone. “Maybe. That’s enough talking for one day.” She felt unsettled, like a snow globe that had been shaken, leaving her previously settled feelings to swirl madly around inside. How could she still have so many feelings after so long? Weren’t they ever going to fade? It was annoying and unfair. “If Seth is going to be living here, maybe I should leave New York. That would be a solution.”H/h had a romance when heroine was 18 and hero was 22. She fell pregnant and they married in Vegas. Then she suffered a miscarriage and filed for divorce. Ten years has passed and H/h are both living in the same area of the Hamptons where their romance blossomed. Hero is a vet. Heroine is a dog walker. She dragged her gaze from the swell of his biceps and stared at the cream velvet pouch in his palm. “You bought me a gift?” I agree, but I don’t see why one badly behaved canine would make you question our entire business. Our business is fine, Fliss. You’ve done well.” That’s your father, not mine.” The words blurted out of her mouth before she could stop them. “Mine didn’t bring a gift.”
Seth had rarely seen her father. Almost all his impressions of the man had come from Fliss and Harriet’s reaction to him. How could he tell that something was wrong? She’d had years of practice at hiding her feelings, but Seth always seemed to see through the layers of protection that blinded everyone else to the truth. If you’d been paying attention at our last company meeting, you wouldn’t be asking me that question.” But Seth wasn’t so easily deflected. “Are you sure? Because you don’t look like a woman celebrating her eighteenth birthday.”The cloudless blue sky seemed hazed with gloom, and she knew that until he left again she was going to be dragging her bad mood around like a ball and chain. What? Don’t be crazy. It was a teenage crush, that’s all. Sex on a beach that got a bit more hot and heavy than we’d planned—” Her voice tailed off as she met Harriet’s unwavering gaze.
It’s the bottom line that should interest you, and the bottom line is looking good.” Fliss poured coffee into two mugs, her head buzzing. With each new success, the buzz seemed to grow. “Better than our wildest dreams.” She eyed her sister. “Not that you’re the wild-dream type.” She could still remember it vividly. Almost as vividly as she remembered everything that had followed. Fliss knew it was him, and the sweet-tasting peach turned bitter in her mouth. She was used to her father ruining every part of her life, but now he was ruining summer, too? In New York? I don’t know. I doubt he knew he’d be this close to you. It’s not as if you’ve been in touch.”Believe me, you don’t want a dose of my feelings.” She stiffened as Harriet stepped forward and gave her a hug. “Oh. What’s that for?” She felt her sister’s arms tighten around her.
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