“All I know is that she’s smokin’ hot and she doesn’t talk much.” Jenna was busy resituating the top of her sundress, pulled tightly across her enormous breasts.
“I don’t know what her deal is,” Bella said. “But she was yelling at her phone the other day.”
“You mean yelling on her phone,” Jenna corrected her.
“No, I mean at. She was staring at it, smacking it, and yelling at it.” Bella made a cuckoo motion with her finger beside her head.
Nothing new here from the girls. A little jealousy over the new hot chick. Jamie picked up his coffee mug. “Mind if I bring this back later? I have to get going. I’m running into Hyannis to pick up a few things. You guys need anything?”
The girls shook their heads.
“You’re willingly going to miss Thong Thursday?” Bella put her hand to his forehead. “You must be ill.”
No kidding. “One look at my butt in a thong and she’ll be chasing me around the complex. I wouldn’t want to subject you three ladies to that. It could get ugly.” He smiled with the tease.
“Ha! Yeah, right. Like you’d ever wear a thong.” Jenna threw her head back with a loud laugh. “Are you guys coming to Vera’s concert tonight?” Vera had played the violin professionally when she was younger, and this summer a group of older Wellfleet residents had put together a string quartet and invited Vera to play. They never saw much of a crowd, but it got her out of the house and playing for an audience again, which she enjoyed.
“I wouldn’t miss Vera’s concert,” Amy said.
“Bella and I are going over together because Caden’s taking someone’s shift and Pete’s hanging with his father tonight, working on a boat. I’ll ask Sky if she wants to come, too.” Sky was Pete’s sister. She’d come to the Cape last summer to run their father’s hardware store while he was in rehab, and she’d never gone back to New York other than to pack up her things. Now sober for almost a year, their father helped Pete with his boat-refinishing business.
“Vera will be glad to hear it, and she loves Pete’s sister.” He glanced down at the pool, then headed for his cottage.
“Wanna bet who’s gonna bang the new chick? Tony or Jamie?” Jenna’s voice trailed behind him.
Jamie slowed to hear the answer.
A crack of hand on skin told him that Amy had shut Jenna up with a friendly swat.
Chapter Two
JESSICA OPENED HER eyes at the sound of her cell phone ringing. She was lying poolside, having a nice little fantasy about sinfully sexy and ever-so-helpful Jamie Reed. Her phone rang again, and she reluctantly shoved the thoughts of him away and dug through the bag for her phone.
Her father’s picture flashed on the screen, and she smiled.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, honey. How is the Cape?” Ralph Ayers was in his mid-fifties. Jessica was blessed with his dimples, blue eyes, and light brown hair—though his was now graying at the temples. Unfortunately, she was also blessed with her father’s passive personality, which she was working this summer to change so she didn’t end up railroaded by her mother her whole life.
She remembered how she’d thrown her phone over the deck. Maybe I’m working a little too hard on that.
“It’s beautiful. I’ve been lying out by the pool all day.” When Jessica was young, their family vacations were more like cultural lessons overseas with only a day or two spent on a beach, and always with her cello in tow. Her mother insisted she keep up her practicing. Jessica could still remember begging to stay on the beach rather than tour museums and countrysides. But her mother insisted that the more well rounded she was, the better she’d be accepted as a cellist.
Unfortunately, life as a cellist, with no social life to speak of, left her feeling like a culturally adept square.
“Not the beach? I’m surprised,” her father said. “I was sure you’d be camped out on the sand all summer long.”
“I will be.” But today I followed Jamie off my deck. “Tomorrow maybe. How are you, Dad?”
“I’m well. Just worried about you. Your mother’s been on the phone night and day with her symphony friends. She’s concerned that you’re jeopardizing your seat with the orchestra and any chance you have with the Chamber Players. I’m not so sure she’s wrong. Are you sure this is what you want to do? After all that hard work at Juilliard?”
The Boston Symphony Chamber Players was one of the world’s most distinguished chamber music ensembles sponsored by a major orchestra. It was made up of principal players of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including first-chair string and wind players. It would be a miracle for Jessica to be invited to join such a prestigious group. Everyone in the industry knew how unique it was for a twenty-seven-year-old to hold a seat in the BSO in the first place. Although her manager had agreed to the hiatus after weeks of discussion and they’d found a suitable replacement, she knew just how cutthroat the industry could be. There was a chance she’d lose her place—and any chance she might ever have at the Chamber Players—and that realization made her feel sick and free at the same time.