Sherm laughed. “No, they aren’t married, but Nicasio would be lucky to get Sophie. She’s a gem, that girl. Daisy and I look forward to every summer when she comes to Haven Lake.”
“Haven Lake? Is that far from here?”
“Barely ten miles. You could make it there and back while your aunt took a nap. Do you want directions?”
“That’d be very kind of you.”
“No problem,” Sherm assured, glad to do something pleasant for Thomas when he’d done so much for Daisy and him recently. The man didn’t write down the directions, but Sherm got the impression he wouldn’t forget as he listened soberly and nodded.
When Sherm finished, a thought struck him and he tapped his forehead in irritation at himself. “Forget my own head if it wasn’t attached. Bit out of it, I guess—worried about Daisy,” Sherm mumbled under his breath as he dug in his pant pocket and withdrew the BlackBerry. “Would you return Thomas’s phone to him when you see him? I forgot to give it to him; even been using it to talk to my daughter and tell her about her mother and all. Damndest thing. If it weren’t for this phone, my wife might be a lot worse off. You know all that flooding we’ve had?”
Thomas’s friend nodded once, eyeing the BlackBerry.
“Well our phone lines went down. It about gave me a heart attack when my wife started having chest pains yesterday, and I was surrounded by floodwaters with no working phone. But Thomas had left this on the counter,” Sherm explained, holding up the BlackBerry. “But it didn’t work either.”
Sherm saw a gray eyebrow arch up behind the man’s sunglasses. Strange . . . when his hair was so pitch black.
“No battery in it. But the thing of it was ...” Sherm continued, warming up to the topic. He’d been too preoccupied with Daisy to have told anyone yet, and it really was a good story. “ . . . I’d been with Thomas in his car that evening—he pulled me out of a ditch, bless the boy. He’d been using a flashlight, and when he put it back in the glove box, I saw the phone battery inside of it.”
“Nicasio had taken the battery out of his phone?”
Sherm nodded and threw up his hands in a “hell if I know why” gesture.
The man’s grin widened as he backed away. “Knowing Nicasio, he was probably trying to avoid some clinging woman.”
Sherm laughed amiably and waved when the man turned away.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Thomas walked through the dim hallway, knowing Sophie was in the kitchen because he could hear the faucet running. The woman was probably making them a gourmet lunch, he thought with a mixture of amazement and amusement. He couldn’t convince her to stay on the dock with him in the sunshine and make out until they both got so hot they’d have to rush up to the bedroom to cool off. She’d just laughed and slapped away the hand that had been caressing her breast beneath her bikini top.
“I’m hungry,” she’d protested.
“You’re always hungry,” he’d mumbled as he ran his lips over the delicious upper swell of her right breast.
“Well you’re always horny, so that makes us even,” she’d replied briskly.
The smile that had curved his mouth at the memory faded when he saw Sophie standing stock-still at the sink and staring out the window.
“Sophie?”
She jumped and turned around, sloshing soapy water out of the overfilling pan she’d been washing.
“Thomas. You scared me.”
He grinned bemusedly. “What were you staring at?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly when he crossed the kitchen to glance curiously out the window. “I mean . . . there was a deer out there. At the edge of the woods on the right-hand side of the driveway.”
“Well, it’s gone now.” He turned toward her. “What are you making for lunch?”
Thomas thought the odd moment had passed when Sophie answered lightly, but he began to wonder when she seemed distracted as they ate the delicious lunch she’d made of a walnut and pear salad and hot rolls.
“I think I’ll go and stretch my legs,” she said from behind him as he knelt in front of a cabinet, putting away a pan in a lower cupboard.
“The paths in the woods will be a muddy mess,” Thomas commented as he lifted several pans and slid the larger one beneath them.
“I know. I’ll be careful,” she said, giving him a bright smile when he glanced over his shoulder.