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“You really like our caretaker. I can tell.”
She busied herself puttingCrime and Punishmentback in her beach bag so she could return it to the library later. “I’m grateful for the way he looked out for me during the storm. That’s all.”
“You realize my mothertoldhim to do that. He wasn’t some knight in shining armor riding to the rescue. It was his job.”
She could see a distorted version of herself in the reflection of his sunglasses as she took her hair down, raked her fingers through it, and pulled it up again. “So? It was still nice.”
With a sigh to demonstrate his exasperation, he stretched out on his towel but rose up almost immediately onto his elbows. “Nothing happened between you and Bo before I got here, did it?”
The question was wildly inappropriate and should’ve made her angry. But Bastian was like that—hot then cold, sometimes acerbic, sometimes unexpectedly magnanimous, always unpredictable, and...shallow. That was her assessment of him so far, anyway. But her anger was immediately quashed when the memory of taking Bo’s hand last night landed on her conscience like an anvil. She shouldn’t have done that. She wouldn’t want Remy to do the same thing with another woman. What had she been thinking? She still loved her fiancé. At least...she’d been fairly certain of that only a week or so ago, and real love couldn’t change that fast. “I hope you’re not asking what I think you’re asking,” she said, trying to sound offended enough to beat back his suspicion.
“No, never mind.”
Although he’d finally broken eye contact with her, Ismay felt a sudden impulse to call Remy and confess to taking Bo’s hand. But she couldn’t. That would only distract him at the worst possible moment and make him feel justified for acting like a jealous assbeforethere was any good reason to. It might also cause the Windsors to turn on Bo.
What she had to do was stay in better control of herself in the future. That would be easier if she could just keep her distance from Bo. But he was letting her brother stay with him, and helping her determine what that stash in the closet might mean. She couldn’t avoid him altogether.
Which reminded her of Lyssa Helberg. She wanted to casually bring up the topic of the past to see how Bastian reacted. So she asked him what spending summers on the island was like, whether he’d made any lasting friends here, and, eventually, if he’d known the family of the girl whose remains had been discovered at the lighthouse last year.
He told her he’d always loved summers on the island, they were some of his fondest memories, but most of the people he’d met through the years weren’t his age and they didn’t stay in touch. He said the girl who’d been killed had come to the island with her family as a tourist, so he’d never met her. He’d merely heard about her when she went missing and again when her body was found.
But bringing up Emily’s case allowed Ismay to work the conversation around to the subject of crime on the island, which opened up a small opportunity. She just had to handle it well. “What happened to her is terrifying,” she said. “Is there a lot of crime on the island?”
A beach ball came bouncing over to them, and he tossed it back to the kids. “No. You don’t have to worry about anything like that.”
She slid her sunglasses farther up the bridge of her nose. “Then why’d you call my parents and tell them you’d look out for me while I was here?”
A sly smile slanted his lips. “They told you about that, did they?”
“They did.”
“I just wanted to let them know you’re in good hands now that I’m here. That there’s no reason to worry about you.”
Could his motive really have been that altruistic? Somehow, Ismay couldn’t believe Bastian was so thoughtful. His call to her parents felt orchestrated, designed to impress her—or them. She didn’t know which.
Maybe he’d done it just to bug Remy. Remy claimed his brother did whatever he could to get under his skin. “That was nice of you,” she said, smiling despite her true feelings.
He seemed to revel in the praise. He also seemed to accept what she’d said as sincere, even though her true opinion was that he’d overstepped. “I have my moments.”
“But why did you feel the need?” she pressed. “If the island is so safe?”
He seemed to be searching for an answer when she added, “Wasn’t there another girl? Lyssa Something? Who died at a party?”
His mouth fell open—proof he was shocked to hear Lyssa’s name. “That was something else entirely,” he said. “An accident that happened years ago.”
Although mentioning Lyssa caused a much stronger reaction than mentioning Emily, Ismay had already figured out that the Windsors had known Lyssa. “But isn’t it sort of weird that everyone else got out?”
“It was tragic, not weird. I really liked Lyssa.” He scooped up a handful of sand and let it drain through his fingers as he added sullenly, “I can’t believe Remy told you about her.”
Remy hadn’t mentioned Lyssa, but she went along with the assumption, since it was a logical one. “He didn’t say much, just that a girl died in a fire at a party he went to once.” She was pressing her luck assuming Remy had been there, but she couldn’t get the information she needed without risk. “And that it was something he’d never forget.”
She couldn’t see Bastian’s eyes behind his dark lenses, but it seemed as though he were looking right through her. Had she screwed up? Given herself away? It was obvious he didn’t like this subject. “Remy never cared about Lyssa,” he said when he finally spoke again. “And she certainly didn’t care about him. She didn’t want anything to do with him.”
Then why had Remy—if it was Remy—hung on to her picture? And what was it doing in that duffel bag with the other items?
“What happened? How’d the fire get started?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped and got up and grabbed his towel.
