Summer Secrets - Barbara Freethy [37]
"Don't have to. I already know -- Shalimar."
Her jaw dropped open in shock. "How do you know that?"
"I was with Jeremy when he bought for you for Valentine's Day. Frankly, I couldn't believe the kind of cash Jeremy wanted to spend on you. He was crazy."
Jeremy had been crazy, Kate thought as Keith moved down the bar to help another customer. Crazy in love. And she'd felt the same way.
Jeremy had been bold, daring, and impulsive -- and he'd brought out those traits in her, encouraging her to dream big, think large, live life. Jeremy had put the sun back in her life after her mother died. He'd always been a good friend, but after her mother passed on, he had become everything. Leaving him behind had been the hardest thing she'd ever done. But Jeremy had promised he'd see her again. Somewhere out there in the middle of the ocean when she least expected it, there he'd be.
And there he'd been.
She smiled, thinking of the first time she'd seen him after two years apart. He'd been standing on the deck of a beautiful sailboat, his brown hair so long he could have pulled it back in a ponytail, an earring in one ear, a tattoo on one arm, both new since the last time she'd seen him. He'd looked like a pirate, a sexy pirate. And she'd fallen in love all over again.
Everyone had told her they were too young to be in love. It was just a crush, a youthful infatuation that would fade with the years.
The years that they wouldn't have.
Kate took a sip of her diet Coke and tried to focus on the present, the future. She'd learned to play keep away with her thoughts a long time ago, but sometimes the effort it took was exhausting.
"Drinking in a bar? I'm shocked."
Kate was surprised to hear her father's voice. She looked up to see him standing next to her bar stool. Duncan didn't usually frequent the touristy restaurant bars, preferring the more casual atmosphere of the pubs along the waterfront where the sailors and the fishermen hung out.
"What are you doing here?"
"I have a meeting." He pulled together the edges of a well worn navy blue sports coat. "What do you think? Your mother used to love this on me."
Which went to show just how old the jacket was. As she took in Duncan's freshly showered and shaved appearance, Kate's stomach muscles tightened. She didn't like the look of this, didn't like it at all. There was a rare sparkle in her father's eyes. He was up to something, probably something she did not want to know about. Still, she had to ask. "Who are you meeting?"
"Rick Beardsley," he said smugly.
"The owner of Summer Seas?" she asked, naming one of the entries in the Castleton Invitational. The Summer Seas had undergone several owners in the last five years, Rick Beardsley being the most recent. Rick had been on the sailing circuit for years and had garnered himself quite a reputation for being a daring, no-holds-barred racer, a man cut from the same cloth as her father.
"The one and only," Duncan replied. "He wants to hire an experienced skipper." Her father stood taller with each word, pride throwing back his shoulders and lifting his chin.
"You?" she asked, feeling a wave of nausea run through her. "You're thinking of racing again?"
"Why not me? I am the best in the world." He grinned as Keith came over to take his order. "Isn't that right, Keith?"
"Whatever you say, Mr. McKenna," Keith replied evenly. "What can I get you?"
"Your best whiskey and a round for everyone here at the bar," Duncan said, waving hello to three lucky tourists. "Whatever you're having," he told them. "I'm celebrating tonight."
Kate sighed as her father moved down the bar to shake the hands of three complete strangers. Duncan had always been one for grand gestures. As for strangers, they were just friends he hadn't met yet.
"Dad," she said when he returned to her side, "you promised me you wouldn't race again."
"Now, Katie girl -- "
"Don't you 'Katie