Miss Fortune

Chapter Seventeen

Alex sighed as she sank back into the slate gray leather bucket seat. "So, where are we going, anyway?"

"Lavallette."

"What?" She turned toward him. "Are you serious?"

"I'm dead serious. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Thorin, it's an hour south of us."

"I know where it is." He grinned at her, lifting his hand from the wheel to let it come to rest on her thigh. Heat sank into her from his palm and without thinking, she covered his hand with hers as he continued, "There's a good restaurant on Grand Central Avenue and it's not far from the beach. I thought we could both use the change of scenery."

"What restaurant?"

"The Crab's Claw."

She smiled. "I haven't been there in years."

"So you know it, then?"

"Oh, yeah. I definitely know it. I used to love going there, and yeah, the beach is right there, which just makes it that much better."

He glanced over at her and gave her leg a playful squeeze. "I knew the thought of a walk on the beach would win you over."

"I'm a cliché, I know." She traced along the back of his hand, along his middle finger to his wrist, and back again. His hands were huge. Huge, but gentle. "But, I do like the beach. We used to vacation in Ortley every summer when I was a kid. We had a house a block from the ocean and it was just the best thing ever. I looked forward to summer every year. We'd go down with Gram and Mom and Dad would join us on the weekends because they were ran the shop. When we were older, like in our teens, we came down mostly on the weekends instead of the entire summer, but it was just as much fun."

"Yeah?" Those long fingers tightened over her thigh again. "We did Ocean City when I was a kid. By the time I was in high school, my parents had a house in Wildwood, so that's where we still go. They live down there year round and we all get together for the last week of July, but this summer is still up in the air. I haven't even brought up vacation with my captain because... well... because I don't know if we're doing it this summer. Neither me nor my sister can figure out a way to ask, either."

Sadness wove into his voice and Alex looked over. "I know. The firsts are the worst. They hurt like nothing else ever can."

He slowed for a traffic light and looked over at her, his eyes hidden behind his Ray-Bans, his face unreadable. Cop face. "Who'd you lose?"

"My parents."

"Both of them?"

She nodded, swallowing hard against the familiar lump that rose in her throat whenever she tried to talk about them or the accident that killed them. "The summer I was seventeen. They died in a car accident on the Parkway. We were all supposed to spend a week at the shore for the Fourth of July. It fell on a Saturday, but my sisters and I got down there on Thursday, while Mom and Dad couldn't make it until Friday. They got hit by a trucker who'd been up for something like two days."

He shifted his hand, turning it palm up and slipped it beneath hers to link his fingers with hers. "I'm sorry, honey. I had no idea."

"You were probably off at college chasing cheerleaders, or sorority girls" she said with a smile, giving his hand a squeeze. "But... Frerin's talked to them, and I'm not sure if I'm happy or mad that they talk to him and not to us."

"It's probably as rough on them as it is on you."

"Yeah. That's kind of what Frerin said as well." She nodded, staring down at his long fingers curved about hers. Her hand almost disappeared in his, and there was something nice about it, to be honest. Something nice about how he felt comfortable enough to just do something so simple.